Fresh & Best 2
1428 Alice St.
Oakland
Summer is about tomatoes, yes, but it is also about sandwiches in the sun. A perfect portable meal, a carby pocket of protein, fats, and if you’re lucky, some crunch and kick. For a fruity fix, but like, make it “healthy,” scoop up a green smoothie and sip that sucker while you congratulate yourself on your moral superiority as demonstrated by such nutritionally based lunch choices.
Enter Fresh & Best 2, where you can survey the plebes from your high ground without breaking the bank
Just a few short blocks from Lake Merritt, this low profile all-day cafe makes good on its name. With American and Vietnamese sandwiches and salads, wraps, rice bowls, breakfast bites, a handful of pastries, and smoothies and juices a plenty, as well as standard coffee options, the small kitchen has something for many palates.
The most expensive menu item, an açaí bowl, clocks in at $12.99. Most other meals range from $7 – 10 and boast large portions, making this a true get in this time and town. With a no-frills but all-care approach to affordable and nourishing meals, it is easy to see why they have such a loyal customer base. (I first learned of them through a friend who still come for weekend breakfast despite moving across town, and have heard fellow customers singing their praises while in wait in time I’ve gone. The vegans love you!)
Spoils in hand, a walk to the lake. Some sips snuck in transit, and a perfect oak shading shockingly green crabgrass. Cue the wind, and lots of it. No sooner had I secured the corners of my blanket when a gust topped the berry bev. With the cup righted and lifted and the corner now freed, the thick smoothie splattered; stains flecked far from the initial spill.
Luckilyy for me, the 16-ounce cup had been filled past the brim, leaving more than enough to enjoy despite the donated dump. Listed under the green portion of their smoothie menu, this was banana, berries, spinach, and peanut butter. While I did not anticipate a leaf-colored drink, the hue was a bit of a surprise, and perhaps a stretch for the category. A good way to get your greens if you aren’t keen on chewing them, but as a certified salad head I’ll probably stick to their classic fruity or full-on-green cousins in the future.
The peanut butter shined through, its salty backbone supporting the sweet fruit, but there was not a huge amount of flavor beyond that. Neither too dense nor too light, it made for a nice contrast to the sharp jalapeños and richly flavored lemongrass seitan to come.
Back to our sandwich: in bahn mi style, with a fat mini loaf of lightly crusted French bread housing julienned carrots and daikon, slices of cucumbers and the aforementioned peppers, a slick of mayo, and well seasoned lemongrass seitan. I’d smelled the sandwich and salad dressing since I’d been handed the bag, but once unwrapped the powerful lemongrass blossomed. The bread was pillowy inside and the exterior held its shape through ‘til the end, and the veggies were packed in with more generosity than most establishments — for which I am very grateful. The lightly pickled roots had crunch and give, the cucumber provided alternative bite and freshness, the jalapeños very welcome heat, and some hearty sprigs of cilantro infused further aromatics to each bite. I could have done with more mayo, but left the container of sriracha I’d filled unopened, content with the healthy peppering of peppers.
Finally, the Vietnamese tofu salad, a heftier-than-the-fragile-plastic-it-came-in number: a bed of shredded cabbages, more carrot and daikon, and red onions topped with sliced savory and sweet tofu, jalapeño, and crown of crushed peanuts and fried onions. The accompanying dressing was sweet for my taste, but the veggies were fresh and crunchy, the peanuts and fried bits providing some salty umami to temper and disrupt the enormous pile of vegetables. A true whomper, it took quite some time to take down as I tried my best to chew, not just swallow, the juicy shavings. Slurp, crunch, repeat. The tofu was firm but easily fork-cuttable, with dense texture and light sweetness.
So hold the sriracha, but bring your favorite dressing, and meet the sandwich of your lake-day dreams.
Fresh & Best 2 is open Monday through Saturday 7:30a.m. — 6p.m.
