Fresh Healthy Cafe – Guilderland, NY

One Sunday, I decided to get something veggie rich for lunch, and I had a stop to make in Crossgates mall, so I figured checking out Fresh Healthy Cafe (located behind Johnny Rockets) would be a fun thing to do.

The menu has a number of options loaded with all different superfoods ranging from quinoa to wheatgrass. Things are listed as wraps or panini, but all of these things can be made into a salad.

There were a number of things on the main menu I wanted to try, but there was a special “green menu” on the board the day I was there. On that menu, there were two wraps centered around kale and two smoothies. I ordered one of each.

The smoothie I ordered contained Matcha green tea powder, nonfat frozen yogurt, and vanilla soy milk. I don’t think it was supposed to be low calorie by any means; it tasted very sweet. When I ordered, the man at the counter asked me to pick a booster from a printed out list. These boosters add different vitamins and/or minerals to the smoothies, and there are easily fifteen to choose from. Of all of them, adding the protein booster is the only option he said would change the taste. I left the booster out.

The smoothie was very good. The Matcha flavor was subtle but stayed around in the background to the more assertive vanilla flavor. It basically tasted like a vanilla milkshake laced with green tea, which is good because that’s what I wanted.

The wrap I ordered contained kale, beets, carrots, red onions, quinoa, almonds, and a raspberry vinaigrette.

There was a good amount of all of the components inside, and everything had the snap of fresh raw vegetables. The raspberry vinaigrette may have been a little too sweet and definitely tasted familiar, but it wasn’t over-applied.

The wrap was served with chips made from a variety of dried vegetables. These were lots of fun. I was trying to pick out and identify the vegetables. I definitely found some yucca chips and other root vegetables, and you can see there were even some green bean chips.

With the water, the meal cost me $13, but I was full for a while after eating and had to take some of my shake on the rest of my shopping trip.