sweetgreen Coming to Capitol Hill This Spring

This spring is about to get much yummier around Capitol Hill.  Along with the many new restaurants on 8th Street, sweetgreen will open its fifth location on the 200 block of Pennsylvania Avenue SE in the space that used to be Trovers Bookshop.  If you have never been to sweetgreen, or had the joy of a trip to their sweetflow mobile, you are in for a treat.

I was one of those kids who would refuse to eat my vegetables… and anything that they touched on my plate.  While I did eventually learn to love my vegetables (well, some – I still won’t touch brussels sprouts) I’m ashamed to say that I only really discovered a love for salads a few years ago when my sister made me try sweetgreen.  Before then, salad bars meant ugly plastic sneeze guards, bland iceberg lettuce, and an array of toppings that never seemed all that appetizing when displayed under horrible florescent lighting.  At sweetgreen, and now the many other specialty salad joints that have sprung up around the city, your salad bar options are created by “salad dudes” (the guys at Chop’t actually have that on their shirts) who toss and mix some really tasty creations.

image uploaded by ehpien on Flickr

sweetgreen, a fast-growing local chain started by three Georgetown graduates, offers fresh all-natural salads and delicious frozen yogurt that is so good you’d never believe it’s only 80 calories a cup.  Yes, I know I sound like a commercial for them but I have an addiction to their frozen yogurt that is continually fed by the sweetflow mobile’s visits to my downtown office.  Fresh strawberries, blueberries and crumbled up ice cream cone on top makes one of my favorite afternoon snacks.

One of the owners, Nic Jammet, tells me that they have been wanting to open a location on Capitol Hill for some time and the old Trover Bookstore spot fit exactly what they were looking for.  By placing the kitchen and bathrooms downstairs, they will be able to provide plenty of seating upstairs, as well as sidewalk seating, which is sure to be popular now that the weather is warming up.  With each location they open, they take care to make each unique to the neighborhood it is in so you do not feel like you are visiting another chain restaurant.  They realize that the Hill loves places that can serve as a meeting spot for friends and neighbors, which is one reason they wanted a location that could provide a large seating area.

Celebrating the opening of their Logan Circle Location, courtesy of sweetgreen

Along with a focus on fresh and healthy food, sweetgreen’s locations are designed with sustainability in mind – in the design of the restaurants as well as their operations – which helped earn them the “Green Certified Restaurant” label from the Green Restaurant Association.  Their design approach, using reclaimed hickory wood and recycled materials, was recently highlighted by We Love DC – if you are into design or want to see some pictures, be sure to click through to read it.  And for a sneak peek at the construction of the new Capitol Hill location, check out sweetgreen’s blog.