Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Law & Orders: New cafe serves up healthy stuff in Roanoke's municipal building
Juice Do It!, a new cafe, has opened at Roanoke's municipal building.
Lindsey Nair
Front Burner blog
Recent columns
- Be sharp about knives
- What restaurant staffers shouldn't do
- Good gourds: How to make your own pumpkin pie filling
- Column archive
Recipes
Most Roanoke residents probably associate the city municipal building with paying parking tickets -- or worse, paying property taxes.
Wouldn't it be nice if that gray brick behemoth in downtown Roanoke instead conjured up images of sausage biscuits, chicken salad and delicious fruit smoothies? Well, now it does -- at least for those who have discovered a new cafe nestled in the heart of all that paper and bureaucracy.
Juice Do It! opened on the lower level of the municipal building on Dec. 8. It is the sister to another Juice Do It! cafe that is located in The Edge Sports Performance Center in Northwest Roanoke.
You may be wondering what I initially wondered myself: What is a fitness center cafe doing in a government building? It happened quite unexpectedly, according to Adam Williams of The Edge, but the healthy food philosophy at Juice Do It! dovetailed nicely with the city's concerns about employee wellness.
Williams saw a request for proposals published by the city in the newspaper and online in the late summer.
"We saw it late; we had like three days to put everything together," Williams said. "The nice thing was since we had Juice Do It! at The Edge, we had an idea of what we wanted to do and we had a menu."
At The Edge, the cafe was already serving an assortment of sandwiches, salads and smoothies with a focus on healthy ingredients -- no fried stuff. But business there wasn't brisk enough, so Williams decided to pare that cafe down to a concession stand and open a full cafe in the municipal building, where they can also offer catering.
Sharon Gentry, the purchasing manager for the city of Roanoke, said only two proposals came in for the space, which had been empty since a former cafe closed about a year ago.
"We've been kind of waiting for a while for something that would come in there that will draw folks to the building," Gentry said.
As she indicates, the cafe is not just for city employees. When the municipal building is open, the cafe is open to the general public. I went over last week and picked up a personal-sized tomato and pesto pizza (the daily special) for $5. It was tasty and the service from manager Willie Dye and employee Anthony Owens was very friendly.
Sam Dean | The Roanoke Times
A roast beef sandwich at Juice Do It!
The downtown cafe has a broader menu than its ancestor, in part because Williams and Dye sought input from city employees about what they would like to see.
"This is a different clientele" than at The Edge, he said. "This is geared toward working adults who need something fairly quick."
Because many city employees requested soup, the cafe has been serving a couple of different soups each day, and they rotate those among about a dozen options, from chicken and dumplings to tomato.
The sandwiches are cutely named. The "Quittin Time Chicken Prime" is herbed chicken salad; the "7 Habits of Highly Effective Hummus" is hummus served with shaved veggies and lettuce. The "T.G.I.F.B.L.T." speaks for itself.
Sandwiches range in price from $3.50 to $4.75 and can be turned into a box lunch with deli salad, fruit and a cookie for a couple of dollars more.
Juice Do It! has also been serving breakfast biscuits and planned this week to start selling breakfast platters. The menu is rounded out with salads and a few baked treats, but Williams says they will always have a daily special.
"Daily specials are a big deal because we know that we have to impress people" and keep them interested, he said.
After all, even though Juice Do It! hopes to draw from other downtown Roanoke businesses, they first have to please the folks in their own back yard. Gentry said she hasn't heard a single complaint about the cafe so far, even from employees who are craving something fatty and indulgent.
That's probably because the menu offers enough not-so-healthy options, like ham and Swiss, grilled cheese, an Italian sub and those occasional pizzas, to keep everybody happy.
And if Gentry's review is any indication, they are on the right track.
"I have been every day," she said. "They had the best patty melt yesterday. It was just to die for."
Join us on the blog, where we are developing a guide to the best diners in Southwest Virginia.
