Luca Banfi of Tender Greens sources the carrots for his Spiced Baby Carrots from Suzies Farm, a local farm in the San Diego area. He visits most of the farms Tender Greens partners with and is therefore able to work with the farmers and help them adjust their practices. The restaurant is a big customer for the local farmers and consequently, has a large influence on their farming practices. Tender Greens tries to buy as much produce from the Point Loma farms in order to revitalize the local agricultural landscape. Luca hopes to see an increase in pickle production and subsequently, an increase in pickle consumption.

For as long as I can remember the corner of Arizona Avenue and Second Street was home to The Lighthouse Seafood Buffet. For me, all you can eat seafood lost its luster somewhere between a bad experience at the Tropicana buffet table, and the documentary “The Cove.”

For many Santa Monicans, organic, hormone-free, and portion-controlled cuisine has become more than just a trend, but rather a way of life. With many people changing up their eating habits, it was only a matter of time that The Lighthouse indeed went dark. But out of the vacant Lighthouse sprouts up a new restaurant with fresh fare and ideas, as Santa Monica welcomes in Tender Greens.

This being the newest of its seven California locations, Santa Monica seems to be a good fit for the franchise, and is more of an extension of the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market, rather than an imposing chain. Chef-turned-manager Rian Brandenburg admits that the food is his priority at the Santa Monica location. Much of the ingredients are purchased at the Farmers’ Market happening right outside Tender Greens’ front door every Wednesday and Saturday. Fresh, locally-grown produce going from the stand to the kitchen in 5 minutes is one of the perks of the restaurant’s prime location.

Natural, antibiotic-free, and sustainable fare is certainly a draw for people trying to eat right. With a menu that boasts a variety of salads, as well as hot plate items, at a flat rate of $10.50, sustainability on the wallet is another plus. Although with add-ons and some really tempting desserts strategically placed by the cash register, it can be easy to go above that mark.

The salads range from your classic Cobb, to the more creative grilled octopus and everything in between. The hot items are your choice of marinated steak, chicken, albacore, or grilled veggies presented on a hot plate or sandwich both accompanied by sides. You can pick your protein on a simple salad as well. There is nothing too complex about the menu, just quality ingredients that are able to stand on their own rather than being masked by over seasoning or drowned in sauce.

This was the case with the Chinese chicken salad I ordered. The sesame dressing was very light and was more of an accent rather than a gloppy mess. Most notably, it rendered a serious crunch from the carrots, wontons, and roasted peanuts. Upon finishing I was very much satisfied but not rolling over and slipping into a food coma.

With windows everywhere, the dining room is bright and inviting. Recycled tables, microfiber organic carpet, and compressed hay ceiling seem more expected than anything with the franchise’s all natural, eco-friendly mantra.

With the name Tender Greens, salads are obviously going to be a staple, but it appeared that the hot plate items were just as popular with the customers. As the weather starts to cool down, it is nice to know that there is some healthy, fresh, and easy access comfort food amongst the mayhem of the Third Street Promenade.

A new Tender Greens restaurant has come to Santa Monica at the corner of Second Street and Arizona Avenue, a location formerly occupied by the Todai Lighthouse all-you-can-eat Asian buffet.

Open barely a month, the establishment is busy with local diners of all stripes who’ve come to check out the new restaurant on the block.

“I like coming here. I’ve eaten here seven of the last eight days,” said Colin Garr, who works nearby.

Since opening in 2006 at its original location in Culver City, Tender Greens has been expanding and attracting diners who like the restaurant’s way of serving simply prepared, locally sourced ingredients in a casual, no-frills setting. Nothing on the food menu is more than $10.50.

“I’m a giant fan of Tender Greens because everything is so fresh and delicious, there are so many options, and it’s very reasonably priced. I’ve been to all of them. This is my first time in the Santa Monica store,” said West Hollywood resident and realtor Amy Byer. “If you just get the salad with no soup or dessert, it’s healthy, reasonably priced, and you’re full.”

The Tender Greens restaurant concept is the brainchild of business partners Erik Oberholtzer, Matt Lyman, and David Dressler, who met while working at Shutters on the Beach hotel in Santa Monica.

They were the same age, at the same stage in their careers, and ready to take a chance and strike out on their own.

“We wanted to make the type of restaurant where we would go on our days off,” Oberholtzer said. “We pool a lot of the quality and technique from the (hotel dining) world that we’ve come from, but (we charge) a neighborhood price.”

From the beginning, Oberholtzer said they wanted to be here in Santa Monica.

“It just took an economic collapse to free up some real estate for us,” he said. “What was bad for the economy ended up being good for us; the right location came up. So we’re home again; we’re back.”

Salad greens are impeccably fresh; there’s no tired lettuce on your plate here.

Most of the veggies served at the Tender Greens restaurants come from Scarborough Farms in Oxnard, although some, like the Weiser Farms potatoes and carrots, come from the Santa Monica farmers’ markets, said Executive Chef Rian Brandenburg.

There are a dozen main dish “big” salads ($10.50) like the Tuna Nicoise or the Chipotle Barbecue Chicken, and half a dozen small veggie salads ($5.50), like the Baby Arugula with Tomato or the Kale Salad with parmesan.

The beef is free of hormones and antibiotics, the fish is sustainably caught, and the chicken is cage-free. You can have your protein in a sandwich, on a salad, or hot on a plate with a side of mashed potatoes and salad. The menu is rounded out by soups ($4), and cookie and cupcake desserts ($2 to $5) made in-house by Chef Rian’s mom.

Service at the restaurant is basic and generally quick. Walk in, order your food at the counter, and see your order being swiftly prepared as you make your way to the cash register, where you receive your order on a tray. There’s not much space between the entrance and the counter, so a line forms quickly, especially at lunchtime, when there can be a backup at the cash register and a line of customers spilling along Arizona Avenue.

The former restaurant’s dark interior has been opened up with lots of light and windows. Wood from the site’s previous restaurant has been recycled here into tables, walls, and light fixtures. Artwork by the artist Jeremyville adds a playful vibe that extends the farm-to-table theme.

Given the restaurant’s location at the western end of the downtown farmers’ market, there are plans to begin a Wednesday Farmers’ Breakfast where the farmers can dine on eggs, potatoes, house-cured bacon, and breakfast pastries, said Oberholtzer.

The auspicious beginning of Tender Greens in Santa Monica just might be due to the blessings of seven Tibetan buddhist monks who were invited to the restaurant to perform a blessing ceremony about a month before opening on Sept. 10. Wearing orange robes and headgear, the monks chanted and played musical instruments. After the ceremony, the monks dined on Happy Vegan salad and other Tender Greens dishes.

“They absolutely loved it,” said Chef Rian. “They took the food with them when they left.”

Erik Oberholtzer
Tender Greens
7 locations

Before he opened the first Tender Greens, co-founder Erik Oberholtzer wrote a contract to partner with Scarborough Farms in Oxnard, California. “I had a relationship with them from the past and knew they were small enough to assure quality but big enough to provide a consistent supply,” he says. To support the partnership, Oberholtzer gave the farm equity in Tender Greens, which is on course to grow to 30 stores in the next 10 years. “We are now Scarborough’s largest customer,” he adds. “We get preference on ingredients and if there is a shortage, we get the produce first.”

The produce served at Tender Greens is organically grown but not necessarily certified, since certification is expensive for small farms. “Sourcing everything from California protects us against fluctuating exchange rates and shipping costs,” he notes. “We also commit to a certain volume and contract set prices.”

The fast-growing Tender Greens chain – with a lively branch in Pasadena – is dedicated to the joys of, well, tender greens. Though, just to balance things out, it’s not a bad place to go for a bowl of soup either – the roasted Roma tomato and bread soup flavored with basil oil is pretty fine stuff, and the rustic chicken soup with lemon and thyme is a pleasure on a chill day, or when you have a chill. This is the sort of place where you can eat day in, and day out, with no pain at all.

Tender Greens is a casual concept, the sort of place where you order at the counter, are given a number, and wait at your table for your food to arrive; self-service with runners. (It’s something they’ve done at Burger Continental on Lake Avenue for decades.) The place has a functional decor, with an outdoor patio on one side. Come lunchtime, it can be very busy; the Dilberts from the surrounding office buildings do like their salads.

I like my salads, too, even for dinner.

There’s a fine – if a bit revisionist – version of the Chinese Chicken Salad on the menu at Tender Greens. The tender greens in this case are tatsoi and mizuna, a pair of distinctly flavored ingredients that fans of our local farmer’s markets no doubt know well. In this case, they’re tossed with golden pea sprouts (which have more substance than gnarly old bean sprouts), carrots, crispy wonton strips, roasted peanuts, cilantro, scallions and a sesame dressing. Chicken, too, of course.

At Tender Green, you can get chicken add-ons, done either salt & pepper coated, or chipotle barbecue if you want to make it multi-ethnic. If I read the menu correctly, you can also add steak, albacore or veggies: a Chinese Chicken Salad without chicken.

There are 12 “Big Salads” on the menu at Tender Greens, along with five more “Simple Salads.” They do a snappy Thai Shrimp Salad (tatsoi, mizuna and jicama too!), a fairly traditional Tuna Nicoise, and a snappy Craft Salad, fashioned out of cured meats, feta cheese, pickled veggies and roasted peppers: good stuff.

If you aren’t of the salad persuasion, the steak, chicken, tuna and veggies go well on a sandwich, and on a hot plate with mashed spuds. Though both come with a simple salad. At Tender Greens, you can’t get away from the tender greens.

By Lisa Jennings
Nation’s Restaurant News

There was a time when the restaurant kitchen was a mysterious, unseen place where any wizardry that occurred was cloaked safely behind the figurative velvet curtain

These days, however, chefs and operators across all segments are pulling back that curtain to offer guests a view into their kitchens in ways that have become a fundamental part of the dining experience.

“Often these are cooks who are used to spending their working hours in a kitchen basement somewhere, with fluorescent lights and no windows,” said Matt Lyman, founder of the open-kitchen Tender Greens concept in Los Angeles. “In our restaurants they’re surrounded by windows, and we have a lot of regulars, so they develop relationships.”

At the fast-casual, farm-to-fork Tender Greens, Lyman aimed to “take out the middle man: the waiter,” so guests could speak directly to the person preparing their meal.

“It’s part of the show that a lot of people don’t get to see except on TV,” said Lyman “But they are also seeing the bounty of the produce and the freshness” of chicken hot off the grill or a just-tossed salad, for sample.

At any Tender Greens, guests walk the service line to select their meal. At the newest location in Santa Monica, Calif., that meal might be a grilled-octopus salad with wild arugula, roasted fingerling potatoes, shaved fennel and chickpeas marinated in a grilled-lemon vinaigrette; or chipotle barbecued chicken with Yukon Gold mashed potatoes.

As guests walk the line, Lyman said, “They can say, ‘Could I have more sauce with that, or a little more cheese?”

Although the concept has seven locations with certain core menu items in common, the chef at each restaurant drives menu specials and almost everything is made in-house – from the jams to the cured bacon – or sourced locally.

“It’s labor intensive, but food is served quickly,” said Lyman.

Because so much of the cooking is done directly in front of the customers, Lyman said the training of staff is very different from that of a closed kitchen, where cooks can yell or curse out of earshot.

“We have to drill it into their heads from the beginning,” said Lyman. “They have to think about things like picking up a dirty rag or scratching their ear or touching their hat. People can be hypercritical.”

In a shaky economy the sight of a dusty empty storefront can trigger a little bit of alarm. After all, we’ve witnessed the ebb and flow of our city’s (and our nation’s) financial state. We remember when old Pasadena became sketchville and then watched as restaurants, high-end retail shops, and crowds came back.

We’ve rounded up a dozen brand new businesses – restaurants, retail outlets and other services – that have set up shop in Pasadena. Meet the proud owners and enterprising entrepreneurs who are helping our fair city grow and thrive.

Tender Greens
From the friendly staff to the tasteful décor the atmosphere at Tender Greens restaurant is casual but elegant and modern. The eatery, which specializes in fresh, quality food at affordable prices, was opened this past July by chef and entrepreneur Erik Oberholtzer and his business partners. Oberholtzer first conceived of this idea when he was working as an executive chef at an upscale Santa Monica restaurant. He wanted to open a place that was reasonably priced but still served consistent high quality food sourced from local farms like the meals served at higher end restaurants.

And though the new Pasadena location is one of seven throughout California, this is not your typical chain business. “I don’t like the word ‘chain,’” Oberholtzer says. “The focus has always been to protect the mojo of the brand.” He explains, in his soft spoken down-to-earth manner, that he wants each Tender Greens to have a unique identity with connections to the community they are in and each is decorated by a local artist to create that link visually. Oberholtzer is currently working with artist Chris Reccardi on plans for Tender Greens Pasadena. Oberholtzer also works to foster relationships with other local businesses and here in Pasadena he has begun to build them with Vroman’s and the Pasadena Playhouse. Oberholtzer also started an internship program to train at-risk youth in the Los Angeles County foster care system for future employment.

“We really strive to be an employment culture that provides more than just a paycheck,” he says, “so that there’s some deeper meaning to being part of what we’re doing. We want to participate in the positive change of the community.”

The first NorCal outpost of a popular SoCal operation, Tender Greens is packing ’em into its new downtown Walnut Creek location, with salads, sandwiches, and hot plates all sporting ingredients from small, sustainable California farms and ranches. But it’s not environmentalism that keeps Tender Greens packed: It’s the taste of those fresh (fruit from Brentwood’s Frog Hollow and Knoll farms) and yes, tender (delicious cage-free chicken) ingredients.

atmosphere: Befitting its L.A. roots, Tender Greens exudes a sleek, modern feel—like 54 Mint’s eco-chic opposite. Its ordering system can be a little haphazard: After choosing your meal, you’re shuttled down to the register to mill aimlessly with a pack of other hungry customers while the staff sorts out the orders.

price range: Everything’s priced under $11—barely. Most salads, sandwiches, and hot plates cost $10.50.

don’t miss: The huge signature salads are big enough to share: The craft, with salumi, feta, and an array of wonderfully tart pickled vegetables, and the chipotle barbecue chicken, with a zippy, south-of-the-border cilantro lime vinaigrette, were two standouts. Also, make sure to sample the excellent house-made pastries.

Sometimes you don’t even know there’s a niche that needs filling — until it’s filled.

So when Tender Greens, a casual, organic, farm-to-table SoCal chain, announced it was opening a Walnut Creek outpost last year, we took note. We didn’t start singing hosannas or anything, but the fact that the small chain — with seven eateries, including six in Southern California — is co-owned by Erik Oberholtzer, whose résumé includes stints at Chez Panisse, Lark Creek and Left Bank, was promising.

That the executive chef was to be Orinda resident Charles Hechinger, a French-trained chef who worked at Berkeley’s Claremont Hotel and San Francisco’s Boulevard and Sutter 500, was also a good sign. And when Hechinger and Oberholtzer started talking about sourcing all the ingredients from local farms, such as Brentwood’s Frog Hollow, Nicasio’s Devil’s Gulch Ranch and Guinda’s Full Belly Farm — well, our hearts beat a little faster.

Turns out, this is exactly the kind of casual, laid-back, inexpensive place Walnut Creek needed. It’s a quick-bite eatery with a Slow Food twist — house-made charcuterie and pastries, lavish salads and grilled meats, and reasonable prices. Plus, there’s wine by the glass, craft beers and artisanal sodas.

It’s the kind of place you drop into before a show at the Lesher Center, after a movie, midway through a shopping expedition, or just because the weather is lovely and the patio beckons.

So, although we normally give you just a snapshot glimpse of a restaurant — our impressions based on a single visit — we can’t help ourselves here. We’ve been to Tender Greens for lunch, dinner and lunch again. Our teens have visited, with and without us. And together we’ve made a few inroads into that voluminous menu.

The space is cavernous, but it’s cozied up by wood paneling and enormous, framed black-and-white photographs of farmers and farm scenes. Outside, shaded tables invite diners to linger in the summer breeze. In short, it’s a welcoming space and pretty darn classy for what is, essentially, a cafeteria. You order at the counter, move along the line and receive your food and drinks at the cash register around the corner.

The menu is posted on an enormous chalkboard near the counter, but if you haven’t been here before, grab a pale-green copy from the basket and retreat to a quiet spot to peruse it. It’s not that the menu is particularly complicated or enormous. It’s just impossible to decide.

A menu of temptations

Everything sounds pretty heavenly, from creative, enormous salads to the five grilled entrees that can be served three ways: tucked in a ciabatta roll, alongside mashed Yukon golds or tossed in a salad. Those grilled showstoppers include a marinated steak, salt-and-pepper chicken, chipotle-barbecue chicken, albacore and a selection of Brentwood vegetables that change according to season.

Our favorite salad was the Southern Fried Chicken (which, like all the salads, sandwiches and hot entrees, was $10.50). It included freckled romaine and butter lettuce topped with sliced fried chicken, paper-thin radishes and cucumber, and was tossed with a fresh dill dressing that put ranch to shame.

The Chipotle Barbecue Chicken salad and Grilled Chicken Cobb looked enough like each other that we had to ask which was which. It was a little odd. A classic Cobb is a chopped salad, served in layers, so the flavors remain distinct. Here, the elements — hearts of Romaine, blue cheese, bacon, egg, avocado and tomato — were left fairly large and had been mixed together with a degree of enthusiasm that left the flavors muddled.

It may have been a case of overripe avocados and a too-generous hand with the dressing, because the barbecue chicken salad suffered from similar issues — a lack of crisp, bright, distinct flavors and textures.

That day’s salads stood in marked contrast to every other salad we’ve tried there. In other words, we’d take a chance on those salads again — if, that is, we could tear ourselves away from the Southern Fried Chicken salad or the divine Backyard Marinated Steak sandwich.

Cooked medium-rare and sliced thinly, the Backyard Steak was pretty darn fabulous tucked into a ciabatta roll with roasted red peppers and aioli, with a small salad alongside. But you can get the same steak as a “hot plate” entree or served atop interesting greens with equally intriguing vinaigrettes — tarragon, balsamic or cabernet, for example. And the chicken sandwiches, which use the salt-and-pepper and chipotle-barbecue versions of the bird, are equally lovely.

Abundant variety

Really, there are no wrong choices here. Nor, realistically speaking, are there enough days in the year to sample everything.

A Fritto Misto salad offers crisp Monterey squid, fennel and frisee with a lemony vinaigrette. A Happy Vegan salad features a trio of whole grains — farro with cranberry and hazelnuts, quinoa with cucumber and beets, and green hummus tabbouleh. And the very tasty Chinese Chicken salad gets added zip from pea sprouts, roasted peanuts, cilantro, mizuna and a sesame dressing.

Tender Greens also offers soups, including a roasted roma tomato and a rustic chicken soup ($4 each), and an array of side salads ($5.50).

Our only quibble was with the desserts. All the bakery items, from the gourmet “poptarts” ($2) to the fudgy brownie squares ($3), are house-made. They’re enormous and they look fantastic. But the two we tried were so sweet and so cloying, we gave up after a bite.

The orange bar — think classic lemon squares — lacked the citrusy zest and brightness that makes these things delightful, and the texture wasn’t great either. Lemon bars typically play up the contrast between smooth, sticky filling and crisp, shortbread-like base. These melted together into a rather gummy oneness. And the peanut butter-chocolate fudge bar ($3), so promisingly filled with generous layers of peanut butter frosting and chocolate, lacked peanut flavor. Mostly, it tasted like sugar.

Tweak the desserts and Tender Greens would be sweet from beginning to end. As it is, we certainly will be back. Heck, we’ve already been back — multiple times. You should go, too.

6 | Pop-Tart Tender Greens
Tender Greens’ Pop-Tarts—with seasonal fruit fillings—turn a kiddie favorite into a gourmet treat. Walnut Creek.