Fresh City

Alright we’re in Herndon guys, so lets lower our expectations…
Fresh City is a solid place for salads and stir frys. It’s Noodles & Co style: order at the cashier, take your number, and have the food brought to your table.
They offer salads, salad wraps (salads that they wrap in pita), sandwiches, burritos, and soups. They also sell Bud Light for just $ 2, Heineken and some other beers. If you’re looking for something unhealthy, they also have cookies and brownies, and a complimentary (and very sketchy looking) pita chip bar covered in cinnamon sugar. They also have smoothies, teas, and sodas.
The nice thing about this place is that the salad and stir fry portions are generous considering the price. You can opt to add chicken or turkey for $ 1.50, or Tuna Salad for $ 3.50. With stir-​fry, you can choose white rice, brown rice, or noodles. They have a special deal to make your meal a combo with soda for an extra $ 1 or so, and they have a pick-​2 combo option for $ 7 so you can get soup/​sandwich/​salad.
The stir frys are not very healthy (see nutritional information at the computer inside the restaurant). I’m a little doubtful of the accuracy of the nutritional content of their menu in general because the salads and burritos seemed underestimated at around 200 – 300 and the fatty lookin stir fry was at 600. But who knows.
Food’s not bad.
Prices not bad.
And hey, it’s just another excuse to leave the office.

I know its fast food! Once again I know its fast food, but I think its great!
Very fresh and upbeat and very cheap. If you can sneak a beer at lunch Sam Adams and Yuenglins are 2.00 a bottle. They have a little bakery section and carry smoothies-​including a redbull smoothie.
For me:
Monterey Chopped–
Carrots, tomatoes, feta cheese, pumpkin seeds, eggs, craisins, edamame and Fresh City Power Dressing®
Crisp and fresh produce. I’m glad one meal in my otherwise deepfried world is this.

2 stars, plus 1 for real fruit smoothies = 3 stars.
This place is neither fresh nor anywhere near the city. It’s another of those Herndon strip-​mall eating establishments that is favored by hordes of corporate clockpunchers on their lunch hours. As with most of the other lunch spots, I go because my coworkers go, and they aren’t nearly as picky as I am.
The stir frys are ok. A good gluten-​free vegetarian option. One friend likes the buffalo chicken salad a lot. It’s not bad, I suppose. The buffalo sauce makes it a bit more exciting.
The smoothies are probably one of the better options. Made from frozen fruit, juices, and sherbert or yogurt, you can order them without yogurt or sorbet to get a just-​fruit concoction that’s tasty. Compared to other restaurants, where smoothies are made with artificial ingredients (Baskin Robbins, anyone?), that’s just dandy!

Should b called mess city. This place is terrible. My stir fry was done quicker than u can blink. They prepared it much of the delight of your local pei wei. Great location tho. Right by the herndon/​reston corporate business arena. But this «mistake city» has minor taste with major calories attached! It was expensive too! I had no idea bland stir fry would cost me over 10bucks with no drink!
I was gonna give it 1 star but the cutomer service there is good, so I’ll give it a pity two stars overall. But most of the time I’d rather prefer whats in the food than whos providing it.

For the first time I visited Fresh City, I was there at a slightly odd hour, 3:00pm. I was pretty hungry not yet having had lunch but for the life of me I was having issues deciding with that menu. It’s kind of all over the place and the specialty items are of narrow selection. I ended up going with a buffalo chicken burrito. It was good, but probably helped out by the fact i was so hungry. The presence of fresh ingredients was easily noticeable. A few grains of rice were overcooked and hard but beyond that it was a fresh burrito. I’m seeing people review the caloric values of the items… well i just looked mine up and the whole thing was only 765 calories. That’s almost 400 less than the equivalent burrito from chipo… tle, and just as filling.
I will agree that I would have enjoyed more taste, but i’ll save saying it needs more flavor until i get a chance to try some of the other items.

I actually like this place — although the reviews discussing calorie information give me some payuse — I’ll have to look.
The things I’ve had there are tasty — turkey and stuffing sandwich, clam chowder (very good, and I’m from NE), and a few other things. Nice for a quick sit down when nothing else sounds great.
The staff is good, but I’ve heard them loudly complaining about their jobs more than once. Not great to do!

I agree with others about Fresh City. I checked out their nutrition information online and I have no idea how they pack that many calories and fat into their meals.
I found the food to be VERY bland. I do have to say that their smoothies are pretty good and their pita chips are alright, but Lord knows how many calories and fat are in those concoctions.
I had the peanut satay stir fry when I visited for dinner one night. Now, I only mention this to you as a possible warning as I have no real evidence that this is connected to my meal, but overnight after my meal I fell quite ill and began to vomit and had other flu-​like symptoms for about the next 24 hours. I vomited 3 times overnight. It could just be a coincidence, but no one else in my family came down with this illness even after I had it and the flu is usually quite contagious. I have no idea if it was related or not, just wanted to throw that out there as it was an unusual experience for me as it’s never happened before. I know how bad I felt, and even if I can’t prove it’s related, in my mind’s eye I will always associate that illness with Fresh City. I have no ambition to ever return.
Not recommended.

I’d have given it one star because of the über-​below-​mediocre food and the appalling amount of calories in a flavorless raw veggie & overcooked brown rice stir fry… but the service was pretty good and the staff was nice.
But seriously. the stir fry was raunch. I don’t understand how they managed to pack 700 calories in to some stringy grilled chicken, vegetables that apparently hadn’t been cooked, mushy brown rice, and some sort of sauce that was supposed to resemble a peanut satay. Wtf?
I’ve been waiting for more healthy fare to pop up in the Herndon/​Reston/​Ashburn area. and this place looked like it was going to fit the bill. But alas… if I’m going to down 700+ calories at lunch time I’d rather sit and eat two or three Lean Cuisines than waste 8 bucks on this nasty excuse for stir fry. Granted, I haven’t tried the sandwiches and I might give it ONE more shot for some vegetarian soup or something because some of the other stuff on the menu looked interesting. but that’s a big maybe.
That being said, the décor was nice and bright, and there was plenty of booth seating. The staff was very friendly and the manager came up and gave us a free bag of Sweet Pitas (tasty sweet pita chips; also galavanting as a healthy snack but nowhere near actually being one).
Looking forward to the Saladworks that’s opening up on Elden where the Caribou Coffee used to be! Hopefully it won’t suck total balls like this place did. Sorry, I have a sailor mouth.

Should be called FAT City. I was drawn into this place under the impression that the food was healthy, because it was so «fresh». It’s not. Their menu gives you that impression with vegetarian and gluten-​free options and even a fat-​free vinaigrette that can be served on any salad (along with the piles of blue cheese & buffalo sauce & guacamole). Trying to stay low-​cal, I ordered the steak stir fry with house vegetables, brown rice and teriyaki sauce. AFTER you order, you can walk up to their kiosk and check the nutrition facts of your meal. ~75 calories for the Teriyaki and ~800 for the stir fry!!! I didn’t even want to eat it at that point. I fill my glass with the organic black tea and it tastes like it has been there for a day or two. There was virtually no seating for the huge crowd that swarmed in for lunch. There were people hovering over us, waiting for us to finish so they could swoop on our table. Very uncomfortable. Overall, I will never eat here again and will recommend that others skip it as well. There are many other places to eat in that shopping center, so take a pass on FAT City.

Love the place, go there all the time. I don’t understand people giving it one star. The food I get is great (the tuna sandwich, kung pao vegetable stir fry, and clam chowder), and I find the staff a little high energy at times, but I like their great service. I’m a tough critic, but for what it is, this place is a great local lunch destination. Not so impressed by their desserts though, but I don’t have a big sweet tooth so it’s okay.

Just had Fresh City a little earlier today bc we received a coupon in the mail for it’s opening (free burrito, 5 dollars off, and 25% coupon). It’s like a combo of Panera and Baja Fresh merged into one. The chain itself markets a «fresh foods» approach. being that all the food is supposed to be fresh, no preservatives, organic, etc. They serve sandwiches, soup, burritos, some stir fry and shakes. I had the burrito fajita while my fiancé had the Asiago Roast. My friends had the burrito grande and stir fry.
The stir fry is good, burritos are good to. But don’t get the Asiago Roast. The bread was hard as a rock. It hurt your gums just to try to bite into it. Fiancé had to remove the bread and pick at it and at some of my burrito.
Food averages around 8 – 9 bucks per, with shakes costing 5 bucks. So it’s cheap but not McD’s cheap.
I guess on the good note is the manager came around and asked if we were all ok and made sure everything was good. I guess since it’s newly opened he wanted to make sure things went well. All the staff seem to be on hand, cleaning up the place and cooking and asking if you needed help.

There are two new chains that have popped up on Elden St in Herndon recently. Fresh City is one of them. I can’t remember what the other one is because it isn’t open yet. Based on the outside, I can only ponder what yuppie treats lie inside.
Fresh City appears to be a chain that started up in Massachusetts according to the website. It appears to be the Wegman’s approach to lunch i.e. «let’s cover as many types of food as we can.» I had a Kung Pao chicken stirfry and a fajita burrito. They gave me the option of either going with the house mix of vegetables or letting me pick my own for the stirfry. I probably should have picked my own. They had the basic «Mongolian bbq» vegetables (carrots, water chestnuts, broccoli, green peppers, onions). They also give you the choice of brown rice, jasmine rice, or lo mein (costs extra). The jasmine rice was ok, kind of clumped together like couscous. The kung pao sauce wasn’t spicy at all. There was a decent amount of chicken. All in all, not bad but not great. This is essentially like going to an Americanized Mongolian bbq for 8 dollars a bowl, with no potential of completely screwing up the order because they do it for you. The burrito needed a lot of work. The vegetables and chicken were ok, but the rice was really undercooked. This was more of a rice burrito than a fajita burrito. The burrito was around 8 bucks. I think you’ll get a better burrito at Chipotle. Make sure to grab yourself some of their cinnamon sugar pita chips. Not bad at all.
The place looks like Baja Fresh took a dump all over Panera. They have burritos, quesadillas, stirfry, sandwiches, salads, soups, and smoothies. I guess the target audience is the standard office group that can’t agree on what they want. This place still has some opening quirks to work out such as cashier training.
Will I be back? Possibly, although the Clocktower center has better options.