A new MUST EAT in downtown Palo Alto, California! LYFE Kitchen!!!

As soon as my husband and I start planning a trip to San Francisco, the first thing we start doing is planning where we are going to eat!  San Francisco has AMAZING restaurants from all different cultures and you really need to spend some time in these places. Our usual favorites are The Stinking Rose, House of Nan King, Tony’s Napoletana, and our guilty pleasure:  The Ghiradelli Factory for hot fudge sundaes.  Those are all in downtown San Fran; I didn’t even mention some of our favorites in the surrounding cities in the Bay Area.  Let’s face it, the place is packed with MUST EATs, and I’m sure if you talk to some of your friends, they will all have some of their own restaurants to add to this list.

Back in March I joined the Transformation Community on line and started attending weekly webinars on making a healthy lifestyle change.  At the beginning of every webinar, there was a commerical for LYFE Kitchen. (LYFE stands for Love Your Food Everyday.) The way I understood it,  it was to be a restaurant that focused on bringing delicious, healthy foods to the everyday American.  It was going to be fast, convenient, reasonably priced, family friendly, and in a relaxing setting.  The CEO was a former McDonald’s CEO.  Famous Chef’s were creating the menus.  And eventually they were going to be selling these wonderful meals in the super markets!  I was sold!  The only problem was, I lived in Boise and LYFE Kitchen was being built-in downtown Palo Alto, California!  Okay, it really wasn’t that much of a problem, as my husband travels to the Bay Area once a month and I get to go there occasional, especially since I started working for the same company as my husband!  So every week, I watched this commercial and every week I got more and more excited! It was supposed to be done by the summer of 2011, and I had my first trip back to the area in September 2011.  We drove to downtown Palo Alto and it wasn’t open…yet!  As a matter of fact, it was supposed to open the next week!  I missed it by a week!!!  My heart about broke, but I told my friends about it, and they went for me!    They told me it was amazing!!!

Finally, my turn came!  We planned another trip for me.  The very first restaurant that made the agenda was LYFE, everything else got planned around it!  I was so excited I could hardly stand myself. Finally when the day arrived, my friend Christina and I kept saying, “Tonight’s the night!  LYFE!!!”  I couldn’t wait for the work day to end!  I had been Facebooking LYFE for a while now. I had been looking through the menus and browsing the pictures, and I couldn’t even begin to decide what to eat!

Finally, we walked up to the restaurant, and Christina and I posed for a picture!  This was my Mecca!  As we took the picture, one of the managers kinda joked around, “That had better find its way to Facebook.”  Boy, he had no idea who he was dealing with!  I couldn’t contain my excitement and I just started telling him how excited I was to finally be there and how long I had waited for this place to open and then how long I had to wait to finally make it there!  He treated us like royalty!  The whole restaurant did!  And my friend (who had been then a couple of times now) told me that they ALWAYS treat people like this there.  Everyone is always made to feel welcome, appreciated and special.  Not just their first time, but every time!  (Have I mentioned lately that my passion is customer service??  Ya.  So this royal treatment was going a very long way in my book!)

When we walked into LYFE, the energy in the restaurant was beautiful and peaceful.  There was a nice size crowd, it was decorated with comfortable couches and or love seats and chairs.  The space was open.  Everyone was smiling and laughing.  There is a beautiful herb garden growing there by the register/ordering area.  The kitchen is open and you can see them cooking.  There are inspiring quotes printed on the walls.  The whole place just makes you want to take a deep breath and really in-joy “LYFE”.   It completely resonated with everything I have focused on for the last 44 weeks!  I was home!

   

How do you go to a restaurant you  have been so excited to visit when you know you are only going to eat there once (at least for this trip)? How do you choose what to eat?  Everything looks so good!  Even the fresh squeezed orange juice looked amazing, but for dinner?  How do you choose?  Well at some point, you just have to.  Since I am extremely picky about my fish tacos, I figured I would jump in and try those. My husband picked a good ol’ stand by, Cheeseburger. Christina ordered the Salmon and a bowl of Corn Chowder.  Then there was the issue of dessert!  OH MY! We ordered Banana Rum Dairy-free Cheesecake and the Chocolate Volcano Cake.  Tracy and I had beers. (Don’t ask me which flavor, but when I told the nice man who helped us asked what kind of beer I normally drank, he suggested this one.  It was very yummy!)  We were handed a pager type thing and went to find a comfy couch and table to sit and visit and wait.   Our little pager thing had the number 4 on it, but more importantly it said, “LYFE is Calling.”  Yes, indeed it is!  Are you going to pick up and answer when LYFE calls or are you just gonna let it pass you by?

See what I mean? This place is amazing!!!

    

  

The food was truly delicious!  My fish tacos were to die for!  The salmon was very tasty!  My husband thoroughly enjoyed his burger.  But more importantly, my husband ate his Kale salad!!!!  Okay, so usually when my husband hears “health food” he kinda of shrinks and hides.  He crosses his fingers that there is something he will be able to eat and usually has a back up plan for the ride home (which burger, taco, or sandwich joint can he hit on the way home to fill his belly?)  I’m sure that was probably on  his mind when we made plans for LYFE.  Instead, what I heard was, “That was really good!  I really enjoyed myself and I would go back there any time!”  That is high praise from my non-healthy eating husband!  There truly is something for everyone on the menu!

One of the other things I was excited about was getting to visit with the CEO, Mike Roberts.  He was there working and visiting with the guests and when I asked if I could get a picture with him, he was very sweet and willing. I HAD to ask him, “How does a previous McDonald’s CEO from McDonald’s to LYFE?”  He was more than willing to share the story with me!   He has a passion for bringing  healthy food to the American Public. He wants it accessible to everyone.  He wants the children to love it as much as the parents. He wants the plates to be filled and our tummies to be happy.   When I asked him what it would take to open a LYFE in Boise, he said, “Give me a minute.”  I thought he literally meant a minute to think it over, but what he really meant was to give him time to make  LYFE perfect at its current location.  (Yes, it takes me a while to “get” things.)  We continued to talk.  He was gracious enough to listen to my healthy lifestyle changes and accomplishments, but he was genuinely happy for me because this is what LYFE is about!

So I think I will give Mike about a “minute”, but I am not letting this one go!  LYFE needs to be opened here in Boise!  We have the best market for it.  Boise has that same downtown Palo Alto feel (with less money maybe), but it is certainly getting there.  Downtown Boise has that outdoor living, be alive, live life to the fullest vibe!  It’s perfect for LYFE and LYFE is perfect for Boise!   And since Mike has made many trips to Boise to purchase fries for McDonald’s and he has some contacts here, I have hope!

Anyway, dinner at LYFE was so amazing, that before we left that night, we decided we would visit for breakfast the next morning!  Fresh squeezed orange juice that tasted like Florida!  As soon as I took my first sip, I had visions of Florida sunrises and I could smell the sweet winter orange blossoms!  It was heaven! (It really did taste like it was fresh from the Groves; the kind we had when we used to live in Florida.)  Tracy had the whole wheat pancakes topped with greek yogurt and fresh berries and served with real maple syrup. I had a delicious egg white breakfast burrito with a side of fresh fruit that was so sweet!  Tracy said it was the best whole wheat pancakes he has ever had! Again, high praise from someone who shrinks from healthy food.  It was perfect!

  

It was a bitter-sweet moment when we walked out of the restaurant that morning.  I resolved to make it back to Palo Alto soon so I could eat there again.

But on Sunday as we finished our hike in Muir Woods, we were hungry and Tracy asked me what I wanted to eat for dinner before we got on the plane to fly back home.  “If I told you I wanted to stop at LYFE for the 3rd time in 3 days would you think it was over kill?”   His reply, “No, I was going to suggest the same thing!”

And that is exactly what we did!  We rushed back to our car, drove as fast as we could over the windy mountain roads, rushed through the traffic to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, darted through the cars on the high way to Palo Alto and made a bee line for our new favorite restaurant!!!!   There are no pictures from dinner that night because I was just too hungry to take them, but I guarantee you my taste buds sang with every bite! Oh ya..and you MUST have the strawberry lemonade when you visit!!!

So there you have it. The new MUST EAT in the bay area!!!!  Put it on your list, and don’t forget it.  Get there an in-joy LYFE!