Grassroots and the Holiday Inn Express

We went to Grassroots last night. If you've read any of the reviews on happycow, they're completely accurate.

It's hidden in this pretty sketch neighborhood that looks abandoned. It's pretty nice inside though-- almost too nice. Sort of stuffy and quiet with spa-like water fountains and easy listening playing. However, regardless of how nice it looked, they lost MAJOR points on service. I was prepared for it after reading the reviews on happycow, but man, that waiter was bad. I asked if their pasta was whole wheat and he became frazzled and said "uhh yeah I think it's wheat or something". He seemed so stressed out by the question, I didn't proceed further like I normally would. Andrew wanted to get the raw spaghetti and treat balls, but they were out of treat balls. So we both just got the parmesan. That wouldn't have been a big deal, but last time Andrew went there, they were out of a bunch of stuff. The parmesan was really good, except the pasta WAS white pasta, in spite of his frazzled assurance that it was whole wheat. It set us back in the regiment a bit, but we weren't going to waste food. We also got some appetizers, sprout wraps, that came out AFTER our dinner. It was just a bunch of veggies and live sprouts stuffed into rice papers with this sesame dipping sauce. Nothing to write home about.

An interesting thing we noticed is their salt and pepper is actually salt and a hot chili powder. It's not labeled and no one told us this. I couldn't help but think that some poor shlub was going to burn his mouth in the worst way. The only reason I noticed was because it looked funny so I dared Andrew to try it on his salad. I also noticed they charged for tap water. Wtf?

We ordered four chili dogs for the next day since we were going to be on a 9 hours flight where I'm sure we'd have nothing to eat. Those were pretty delicious if you like mayo on your chili dogs. That was a bit strange for us. Delicious nonetheless. I have some pictures of those I'll have to upload once we land in California. And alas, those were on white buns, and not their standard sprouted wheat buns. At least it was all organic, right?

We stayed in the Holiday Inn Express last night so we wouldn't be rushed for our flight today. I was stoked to find out they had treadmills so Andrew and I got a run in last night. One of them was broken, so we had to take turns. That kind of sucked. And of course, the complimentary breakfast offered us nothing but maybe a crappy cup of coffee and some juice. The only fruit they had was partially opened bananas. Didn't touch those though-- we just had our standard clif bars.

I'll be posting the chili dog pictures when we land.