Picture this.
It's finally a nice day here in the 'Ville, and you decide to go running -- big shocker. You do your usual three miles around central Grounds and 14th Street, finishing up right around the Corner. Sweat dripping down your flushed face, you crave a treat that will not only quench your budding thirst, but your hunger as well. Luckily for you, such a place now exists.
Just when you thought the Corner had no more room for another restaurant, up popped yet another chain -- Tropical Smoothie Café. However, this is not just your typical smoothie locale. With a menu that can rival any popular stop on the Corner, Tropical Smoothie Café has all the right components to become a name stay at the University.
Let's split this up into two sections: food and smoothies.
The Café's menu is divided into eight sections for its food choices: gourmet wraps, tortizzas (yum), specialty sandwiches, hot and cold subs, salads, soups, breakfast and breakfast wraps. And before we begin discussing what we ate, it's important to note that breakfast and breakfast wraps are sold anytime throughout the day. Who needs a Bodos on the Corner anyway?
In choosing our food, we decided to go with wraps and a tortizza instead of the typical sandwiches, subs and salads. Prices for sandwiches (all made from Boar's Head Brand meats) ranged from $3.95 for a Grilled Cheese to a very pricey $8.49 for a whole Italian sub, while salads ranged from $4.49 to $5.99 and came with a variety of dressings.
A "tortizza" is exactly what it sounds like -- a tortilla pizza. This style of pizza is one we have not seen anywhere, although it reminded us a lot of the extremely light, thin-crust pizzas one often finds in Italy. Prepared and baked on a thin tortilla, our pepperoni tortizza ($4.99) came as a 12-inch tortilla with marinara sauce, parmesan and low-fat mozzarella cheeses. Each bite was very light, although the crispy crust and bottom gave the "pizza" some needed texture. It was well spiced, and the thinly sliced pepperoni and the small amount of sauce were not overwhelming (you know what I mean -- how sometimes at Frank's your pizza is all sauce, or all cheese).
Our only recommendation would have been for the bottom center of the tortilla to be baked a bit longer to make it hard; the soft center made it very difficult to eat without a fork and knife.
Now onto some gourmet wraps -- three actually.
First, the "Veggie Veggie." At $4.69, this combo of southwestern rice, corn, black beans, asparagus, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, onions, Swiss and parmesan cheeses and light olive oil vinaigrette dressing is worth every bite. However, with so many ingredients, we almost thought the wrap needed to be larger in order to get enough of each bite -- it was hard to tell what you were eating because everything was in such small quantities. The dressing was the best part. It gave a zing to a rather bland wrap overall.
Next, the "King Caesar" ($4.89). We fought over this one. In trying to compare this Caesar wrap to that of Zazus (both have almost exactly the same ingredients), we looked at overall size, dressing, chicken flavor and price. In every category except price, the nod went to Zazus.
Last, the "Chicken Mango Habanero" ($4.89): chicken breast strips, romaine lettuce, crunchy wontons, low-fat mozzarella cheese and mango habanero sauce wrapped in a white tortilla. This was the best wrap of the three by far. The burst of mango that counters the somewhat spicy, hot, marinated chicken, makes for an excellent combination. Finally, the crushed wontons added a nice contrast of texture to an already winning wrap.
Now this place isn't called Tropical Smoothie for nothing. Its smoothies definitely are the focus of the establishment. The Café offers low-fat smoothies, power smoothies, smart smoothies, dessert smoothies, meal replacement smoothies and weight gain smoothies. We tried one low-fat smoothie and one dessert smoothie, leaving the rest for the runners.
The Strawberry Beach smoothie ($3.89) is simple but still wonderful, a perfect blend of strawberries and non-fat yogurt -- fruity, yet creamy at the same time. These hefty portions certainly make up for the smaller wraps and leave you very much fulfilled.
The Strawberry Cheesecake ($3.89) dessert smoothie was definitely more smoothie than dessert. Tasting very much like a strawberry smoothie, it offered a nice, subtle white chocolate infusion brought to us by the good folks at Ghirardelli.
Overall, Tropical Smoothie Café has the right ingredients to lure some business away from other Corner shops, but in the end, their smoothies will undoubtedly be their best seller. The store was immaculately clean, the service was prompt and the atmosphere was fun and bright. We'll definitely be back before graduation.
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