Tender Greens Fast Casual Organic Restaurant

By Merrill Shindler
Pasadena Star-News

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.