This weeks Ave Eater: Lauren
Guys, it’s been so long since we’ve posted that I no longer have bangs. Yikes.
Some AveEater Updates: our ranks are ever smaller. Tom left his job at the UW Press for a cool new opportunity downtown. And Tim! Tim up and moved! He’s now living in Oakland, CA. Maybe we can convince him to blog from afar for us.
So for now, there are only two AveEaters remaining. Nevertheless, we will persist.
Down to Business: Sizzle & Crunch
Overview: Sizzle & Crunch is a new Ave establishment. It opened just a few months ago, replacing what was Taco del Mar. And let me you, the Ave is better for it. As you will come to learn, I’m a big S&C fan.
Sizzle & Crunch is basically a Vietnamese Chipotle – you can opt for a limited variety of bowls or sandwiches, prepared by very efficient and friendly servers who pepper you with fast-paced questions so that you can get your bowl or banh mi just right. Pro tip: go for the salad bowl with a little bit of rice. If you get the rice bowl, there’s waaaaayyyy too much rice. I found the banh mi to be too big and unwieldy and the bread was dry. There are better banh mi’s on the Ave. Go with the bowl. Oh, and put an egg on it.
Ambiance: S&C has a modern, dare I say it, chic vibe – at least for the Ave. The walls are painted a moody gray/brown and there’s some reclaimed-looking wood that boasts a large S&C sign. They have these light fixtures that look like they were trying to recreate a Design Within Reach pendant, but instead went to Loews and just bought some Edison bulbs on a cord and randomly tangled them up and hung them from the ceiling. Classy.
S&C plays the jams. Over lunch one day I heard: Phil Collins, Huey Lewis and the News and Bonnie Tyler. It was glorious. They even played that Obsession song by Animotion, which pretty much sums up my feelings for S&C.
Colon Consequences: None. I feel pretty good after eating there. And in fact, I don’t feel crazy full like I do when I wolf down a burrito from Chipotle. I think the food is delicious and if you get a fried egg on your salad bowl, it will definitely help tie you over until dinner…or your afternoon snack.
Ave Factor: while S&C isn’t grungy or dark or scuzzy, it does have this trying-to-be-fancier-than-it-really-is vibe that I find sort of charming and very “Ave.” It’s also packed with people, students, staff, faculty – I saw a four people I knew in there one day. The UW community is loving it.
Value: a salad bowl is going to run you about $9, which is pretty standard for a lunch on the Ave these days. I don’t bat an eye at the cost. I think it’s worth every penny, especially for the creamy cilantro mint sauce that the servers will add to your bowl if you ask them to. YUM.
One thing I didn’t appreciate is that they give you a plastic cover for your bowl even if you say you are dining in. So I literally take this piece of plastic off and recycle it after about 5 seconds. Ahhhhh. Talk about single use plastic. How about seconds use plastic. Next time I’m going to refuse that cover. So there.
4 thumbs up.
The Awkward Photos!
eatinguptheave 