I’m watching the crew build my cobb salad at beyond-virtuous sweetgreen.

          My “District Cobb” salad ($11.85, 680 calories) is huge. It’s rich and fresh but alas, it’s full of the dreaded kale. It’s my fault. I was too quick to get in line, I didn’t study the “signature salad” ingredients posted on the wall. Who’d dare violate a Cobb with kale and goat cheese instead of Swiss? Not that I mind the goat. It’s a millennial Cobb, I suppose. And my assistant’s Santorini ($10, 425 calories) with chopped romaine, citrus-daubed shrimp, feta and red grapes is delicious. Blueberry basil lemonade from the help-yourself drink bar is tangy and refreshing, sweetslurp.

Find your extraordinary. Find your blueberry basil lemonade. Photo: Blair Wilson

          Of course I wondered how sweetgreen  -- the beyond-virtuous, community-minded, organic farm-to-table salad shop, innocent newbie in town -- would fare in Manhattan. It launched in NoMad a few weeks ago with daunting lines, an hour or more wait for a bowl of greens. I didn’t rush.

Young titans Nathaniel Ru, Nicolas Jammet and Jonatham Neman build the brand with a music festival.

          But I’d heard the story: the trio that dreamed up sweetgreen while still students at Georgetown. Our own hometown son, Nic Jammet, with college pals Nathaniel Ru and Jonathan Neman, had opened the first 560 sq. ft. sweetgreen in Georgetown in August 2007 because they despaired the hunt for good, clean meals near the dorm.  Now, six years later, they’re at 20 units and counting. the lowercase “s” in sweet is just one symptom of sweet marketing.

Customize your salad from multiple choices, healthy or not so. Photo: Blair Wilson

          Feel virtuous with every crunch. Sweetgreen is committed to plant-based compostable packaging, reclaimed building materials and furniture, LED and fluorescent lights, eco-friendly paints and wall coverings, and tithing one percent to City Harvest.

How cool to attach your 2500 sq.ft. salad biz to the NoMad Hotel.

          How smart are you to build your first 2500 sq. ft. New York city flagship on the hip of the NoMad Hotel? It’s a major trek for me but I must check it out. Mom Rita Jammet is a friend. and organic, eating plants and modest footprint are trending now. My assistant Blair and I pull up at 2:40. I emerge from the taxi into the bike lane and. dodging one biker. Narrowly miss colliding with a second.

Table-grabbers may linger but you can sit in the bleachers or on the windowsill.

          The bright space is huge and high, tables full. A long-legged Barbie in shorts is parked in the window, getting the sun. At first, it’s dizzying. There are so many people, young, mostly employees, an assembly line behind the counter in grass green aprons, majorly female, with colorful turbans, headbands and baseball caps.

Check out the signature salad ingredients above and watch out for kale.

          There are floor walkers too, managers, they’re mostly taller. And yes, customers, eaters and loungers, a few with strollers parked. Photos of bands, indie bands, says Blair. (It’s still Beatles, Dylan and Coltrane for me. She keeps me connected.)

          Anyway, I am so intent on speed-walking to beat the next two guys to the end of the line, I don’t take time to scan the options and their ingredients lined up overhead.  I just see “Cobb,” my favorite, dating from an early discovery at the Brown Derby in Hollywood.

          “How are you today?” asks the smiling woman. “And what have you chosen?” She reaches for my bowl and passes it to the next woman.

It’s a lot like assembly line Detroit except it’s bacon bits not door handles.

          She looked up and her face breaks into a smile too. “How are you today?” Quickly the word spreads. I am the Cobb. Number two or maybe it is number three -- “How are you today?” -- fetches the greens from a vast lawn of sprigs stashed behind her and tosses them into my bowl (plant-based and compostable). Number four throws on a friendly measure of bacon bits or maybe that is the one who passed the hard boiled egg through a little hand slicer like an amateur magician.

          “How are you doing?” she asks with a smile.

          “If you don’t mind, I’m not going to respond to that question asked for the fourth time,” I respond, forcing a smile to soften the churl, hoping she won’t be emotionally damaged for life.

          A scoop of goat cheese is set precariously on one edge of the bowl. “I think that’s going to fall,” I warn. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you more,” says number six or is it seven, tossing on an extra scoop of goat.

Will you want the dressing heavy, medium or light? It’s a moral quandary.

          Blair’s Santorini follows close behind. I spy one empty table. “Grab that table before someone else does,” I tell Blair.  “And I’ll bring our salads.” She’s Southern. I’m trying to toughen her reflexes so she can be a model New Yorker.  Now my Cobb and I have come to the tosser. “Do you want your dressing light, medium or heavy?” I’m asked. Of course I want heavy you fool, I think, but what’s the point of kale if you’re drowning it in dressing? “Medium,” I say, knowing all too well, that won’t be ooze enough.

          Next to me a customer tells one of the greenskeepers, “You forget the chicken in my salad last time.”

          “Oh no. Let me fix that,” she says, handing him a glass. “Have a free drink on us.”

Santorini, salt on the side, peach gazpacho, my kale-fortified Bibb with pepper.

          I’m not sure what’s going on at the end of the assembly line. “Is this where you put on the bread?” I ask, spying a thick slice of serious bread. Sullivan bakery, it seems, and not cut too far ahead. “Oh yes,” says an idle server as if emerging from a quinoa trance. The cashier knows I am custodian of the Cobb and a Santorini. I take a $4.5 container of peach gazpacho from the cooler. I tell him to charge me for one drink. I pay with my credit card and drop the salads and compostable cutlery on the pale wooden table.

The sweetgreen teams studies local resources and wisely chooses Sullivan Street bread.

          “Some of the best ideas have come from the back of a napkin,” is printed on the back of the napkin (compostable, I would bet).“Ready to share yours?” On the other side is a game plan: “Snap a photo, post it to instagram and @sweetgreen for a chance to win #sweetswag and other prizes.” I notice managers on the prowl looking for…anything the stafflings have not noticed.  “Do you have everything you need?” one asks me. “Are you enjoying your salad?” I decide not to engage him in a dialectic on the presumption of kale.

You can’t get lost looking for the john. A sign in the ladies room says: “You look great.”

          I know sweetgreen believes in “Leave a Gentle Footprint.” And “Make bold moves, blend great things together,” because I read their manifesto.  So I’m sure there’s a sound formula for how many employees you can hire to do a $10 salad and thrive to open another twenty units.

          The man at the next table seems to be relishing his salad. “It’s wonderful,” he says. “It’s healthy and delicious and cheap. And it’s all so clean. I’m from California, so coming from me, that’s something. I’ve been here at least once every day since I arrived.”

Plain yogurt with berries is marvelous, just 80 calories, but the moch is flabby.

          I let Blair choose the sweetflow – tart yogurt with live cultures and fruit or crunch toppings, $4 for a generous scoop with three toppings in a cup, 80 calories. We agree the vanilla with berries is marvelous but the cocoa is wimpy.  The gazpacho doesn’t seem all that peachy but we’re both high on the salads and lemonade.  We’d be back I’m sure, ordering online for a faster pickup, if sweetgreen were to bloom in our neighborhood.

Hey lady, curb your baby.

          Blair goes off to find the rest room. In the distance I notice mommy duos. As I watch I realize that a young woman is changing an infant. I gaze in horror. She is wiping her baby’s ass and chatting with her pal. And never mind if it is organic.

Photos may not be used without permission from Gael Greene. Copyright 2013. All rights reserved.

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