Critic's Review
I go to Fresh Market twice a week, so the opportunity to try this place again presents itself regularly. Not sure why I decided to try it today.
They now have a menu on the sidewalk and this is a good thing. This is as far as you should get. Look at the menu and run away. You've been warned.
The price of a small bowl is up 12.5% to $8.99 because people who eat this stuff have no sense of value when it comes to food.
4 customers in the place is always a bad sign. My first time here I was ignored. This time a dude greeted me but offered no explanation of what to do. There's a register up front.
"Do I pay first?", I asked, knowing full well that you pay at the end. He just pointed.
I'm keto'ing it most of the time lately, so greens were my base. The menu says "field greens", but they really just have 3 kinds of kale. Grains are probably a better choice but I wasn't eating rice today. "Chipotle Mac" caught my eye; Why ruin Mac and Cheese with foul tasting Chipotle powder?
The vegetable choices include buffalo cauliflower; no beans today. I went for the broccoli which didn't seem as charred as the last time.
The protein choices fail to impress. Buffalo chicken was the chicken special. There's a real innovative chef here; when did hot sauce and butter become health food? Two of the "protein" choices had chickpeas mixed in. Are the owners so dumb that they think chickpeas and soybeans are the same thing? Or are they counting on their customer being idiots?
I went with the southwestern chicken.
With a small bowl you get a "booster"; not sure why corn and tomatoes are considered a booster.
You take your tray and you find a seat. Lots of reclaimed wood, because people who sell bowls of bad food are environmentally conscious.
For just $9.62 you get this.
You also get a "sauce", which is really a dressing. Could they be any more generous with the sauces?
This was "Avocado Caesar", but it didn't appear to have much avocado in it. It was kind of slimy and gloopy. I was kind of afraid to eat it.
The bowl was one of the most bland experiences of my lifetime. The "Southwestern" chicken were unseasoned cubes of seemingly boiled chicken. I got up and went to the condiment station and there was nothing there. Nothing. No salt, pepper, hot sauce. Nothing you could use to add flavor to the food.
I basically ate the chicken, tomatoes and broccoli and chalked it up to a purpose meal. The greens were completely inedible and I doubt could be digested by humans.
$9.62 wasted. I looked around at the other customers; the kind of people who sit around and think to themselves
Look at me; look how smart I am. I'm eating Kale and Quinoa.
People are so dumb I can''t believe it.
Conclusion
Another bowl restaurant opened by people who don't know how to cook or season food has opened in Fort Lauderdale and I couldn't be more disgusted. Restaurants like this are why the culinary morons who live in Fort Lauderdale can rave about $16 burgers and Mac and Cheese at *restaurant name here*. After eating tasteless garbage for lunch at the local bowl restaurant for lunch they'll pay any price for some Mac and Cheese.
Review 4/9/19
Today, I reluctantly went into Vale Food Co to get a bowl of stuff. I say reluctantly because I've just about had it with the dopey bowl restaurants; they're all pretty much the same, with food not as good as Chipotle for 30% more. But I feel obligated to try the new places.
It was a drizzly day; I hadn't noticed the sign that is basically an advertisement; I'm pretty sure these types of signs aren't allowed. There was a women toting a baby and I let her go in the door in front of me, which turned out to change the entire experience for the worse.
She was taking forever to order, going through the ingredients; tick, tock; They have fast food type menus around promoting all kinds of different products, but I couldn't find anything about the bowls. They had some menus for the bowls by the register.
The dining room is designed for Millenials; edgy seating where you can eat your bowl. I really don't see much difference between teenagers and Millenials.
So the women finishes and I tell the girl I want a bowl. "Oh, you want hot food, you have to order over there", and she points towards the back. Thanks for the help.
So I wander past the food stations but there's nobody serving. I had planned on starting with the "daily greens", thinking it might be weeds or some sort of salad, but it was kale or something similar. Great. I didn't want that, nor did I want Rice or Quinoa.
As I got to the back I realized there was a register in the back. The girl at the register was engaged with some dude; it's not clear what they were talking about; it didn't appear he was ordering. More delay.
I decided to go look closer at the food. The meats all looked pretty bad except for the meatballs; what was I going to have, rice and meatballs. The beans and the broccoli were both charred; I'd dealt with burned broccoli at bowlicious; I couldn't order either of these.
The dude left the back register so I was standing there and the girl wasn't paying any attention to me, so I decided to leave. I knew I not only wasn't going to like the food, but that I wasn't going to eat it. $12. saved.
Conclusion
This place isn't quite how I pictured it; I thought it would be a bit nicer, but this place is exactly like every other bowl restaurant. The dining room looks like it was assembled from items obtained at a garage sale; more like a cafeteria than a restaurant. And the help here is totally incompetent. When I can walk all around a relatively empty restaurant and nobody offers to help, it's time to take your business elsewhere.