Happy Healthy Dining
Flower Child restaurant blooms for Dallas' healthy hippie diners
Opening day has arrived for Flower Child, the latest concept from Fox Restaurant Concepts, the Arizona-based group that also owns True Food Kitchen. Flower Child is the fast-casual chain that skews younger and healthier, with more vegetarian and vegan options on the menu.
Look for it to open in all its hippieish pop-art glory on March 14, in the former Gap store at 5450 W. Lovers Ln. in Inwood Village, near Empire Baking Co. and the Inwood Theatre.
A preview was held on March 11 for media, neighbors in the shopping center, and various bon vivants who took in Flower Child's food, fruity drinks, and "modern bohemian abode" setting, with splashes of '60s-era colors — lots of lime green and a pretty rainbow-colored mural on the back wall.
You order at a counter and get a number, and the food is delivered when it's ready. Silverware is metal but drinks are served in plastic cups with lids and straws, which doesn't seem to go with the hippie spirit. There's an open kitchen, wrap-around patio, and designated "yoga mat parking," where you can drop off your mat while you eat.
The menu offers organic, gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan items for lunch and dinner seven days a week. There is much mix-and-match, with make-your-own combination bowls where you can choose vegetables, grains, and proteins if you must. There are also salads, wraps, and entrée bowls designed by the restaurant, combining foodie ingredients such as quinoa and heirloom beans.
So you can order anything from a side of mashed potatoes to a wrap sandwich to something as composed as the Forbidden Rice, a bowl with black pearl and red japonica rice, snap peas, bok choy, broccoli florets, and root veggies in season such as maroon carrots or turnips.
The Mother Earth bowl combines ancient grains with sweet potato, portobello mushroom, avocado, cucumber, broccoli pesto, leafy greens, red pepper miso vinaigrette, and hemp seed.
Salads include kale with grapefruit, apple, black currant, smoked almonds, white cheddar, and apple cider vinaigrette, and a "vegan ingredient" salad with Romaine, diced cauliflower, avocado, roasted corn, grape tomatoes, olive bits, and sunflower seeds in a lemon-tahini dressing.
You can slap a slab of protein on top of anything you order, from a selection that includes chicken, grass-fed steak, salmon, and tofu. They're all grilled until they acquire a browned crust, including the tofu, which had an impressively creamy-yet-firm texture.
There is wine and beer, kombucha on tap, and Flower Child's own cold-brew coffee.
The first Flower Child in Texas opened in 2016 in Austin, which seems only fitting. It'll be the second Fox restaurant to open in Dallas; True Food Kitchen opened in Preston Center in 2013.
But Fox isn't done with us yet. It'll open another TFK in Plano at Legacy West plus a branch of North Italia, the Italian concept. A second North Italia will open in Uptown Dallas in 2018, alongside The Henry, cast as the "greatest neighborhood restaurant."
