Diners enter the restaurant and order from overhead menus. Chefs plate your food, which is prepared throughout the day, to your custom preferences. Thus the cafeteria element comes to mind, as the food is in many cases already prepared, and being kept warm at the various stations. Bread will be supplied fresh by a local bakery to be determined, and local craft beers and wine will be available.
The food is upscale, but you order like you would at Chipotle, and carry your meal to a seat you find yourself. Perhaps it is a vision of our dining future in the post-Fight-for-$15/Initiative 77 world - no servers, just chefs.
The menu at Urban Plates features mostly straightforward American cuisine, with an international flavor here and there. There's a chicken vegetable soup and a tomato soup. Eleven salads range from House and Caesar to Thai Shrimp and "Antioxidant." Main plates are dishes your grandfather would recognize, like steak, salmon and turkey meatloaf with BBQ sauce, and include 2 sides and rustic bread. Mac & cheese, mashed potatoes and Brussels Sprouts with turkey bacon are among the side items. The Urban Bowls are the most diverse, drawing on the current poke fad.
A variety of sandwiches will probably be a bigger draw at lunch. Desserts include jumbo size cookies, a number of cakes from which they'll cut you a slice, chocolate pudding, and a Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Crunch Cupcake. Hipsters can be reassured that kombucha is on tap, the chicken is free-range, the beef is grass-fed, and the fish is caught by line and pole. Success here will likely come down to execution of the more straightforward dishes - how tender is the steak, how moist is the cake? Their California restaurants all seem to earn a solid four stars on Yelp, which suggests the quality is consistent across the chain - always a positive sign.
Urban Plates has chosen the D.C. area as its launch point on the East Coast. Its first locations here are scheduled to be in Tysons Galleria (opening July 16) and the Mall in Columbia (opening August 2018). The Westfield Montgomery location will open in 2019, according to Westfield.
20 comments:
I gotta say, this, for a change, looks really good. The Food Court lacks pop. This will do really well I predict.
The NY Times has an article on how serve-yourself is trending to be the new normal...https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/dining/san-francisco-restaurants-service.html
I was wondering what was going into that space.
Just another version of the Eatzi's chain that left town in a flash. No big deal.
Except Eatzi's was very good. It failed, yes. But they were ahead of this trend by a lot. Had they been operating today, they would do very well here. This place will do well. Why? Fresh, very good and healthy options for those who want that and other foods for those who aren't watching their diets all t decent prices with sit down or takeaway.
sounds like a twin of Modern Market
Which isn't anywhere near the quality of Eatzi's.
Looking forward to it!
The Eatzi's chain still exist in the Atlanta and Dallas areas, wish they would return.
I think Dyer's right about this one. The higher minimum wage is forcing restaurants to adopt business models that require fewer staff.
So the result is fewer jobs.. not sure how this is great for MoCo. I really hope Elrich doesn't win.
Washington DC is also raising their minimum wage to $15, and unlike Montgomery County, their citizens just voted to eliminate the tipped minimum wage.
7:50: A rare time we're ahead of D.C. on something. Terrible servers getting $15 an hour, while the effervescent, outstanding customer-service servers will probably make half or less per hour from what they make now. Karl Marx just felt a thrill go up his leg.
10:09: Yes. McDonald's is actually admitting this now. Remember when the touchscreens were rolled out nationwide, and McDonald's corporate and Fight-for-15 apologists both claimed it "wasn't about firing cashiers," and that they were "actually going to be hiring more employees" (LOL!)???? Well, McDonald's corporate just announced profits are up, and they credited a companywide effort to slash employees for the boost.
"outstanding customer-service servers will probably make half or less per hour from what they make now"
Looks like Dyer doesn't understand how the tipped minimum wage works.
5:58: Actually, you don't understand how the initiative passed will work - otherwise, you would know that a majority of servers and bartenders opposed it for the very reason I mentioned.
It doesn't abolish tipping, Birdbrain. It simply requires employers to pay tipped employees full state minimum wage before tips. It's already the law in Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, and Washington state.
7:37: If it doesn't affect tips, why are a majority of tipped employees opposing it? It most definitely reduces their earnings. That's why they - duh! - oppose it.
"The public debate was dominated by higher end restaurant operators and higher end restaurant servers and bartenders, most of whom were white men. Not a big surprise there.
"As usual, lower end restaurant workers, including back of house workers, bus boys, minorities, and women, didn't have a big voice in this debate. I think that is highlighted by the high Yes %'s in the black and latino communities. They recognized (rightly) that the initiative is an attempt to reduce income inequality in the industry and to require this industry to pay a living wage."
“The sign-up posters in every bar/restaurant window looked like the kind of thing the owner would put up and it seemed like it could backfire if someone already felt workers were being excluded."
8:42: It would be a no-brainer to support it if you were a dishwasher - you're going to get a raise. That doesn't surprise me. What about the black and Latino servers and bartenders who will lose income, and possibly their jobs, due to Initiative 77? If you want server tips, apply to be a server, not a dishwasher.
"It most definitely reduces their earnings."
For that to happen, their amount of tips would need to fall by a greater amount than their wage increase. What proof do you have that this will happen? Can you show that this has happened in the states that already have abolished the tipped minimum wage - Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington State?
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