Zest! Exciting Food Creations

We once again roped Grandma into watching Jackson, and we ventured north to try Zest! Exciting Food Creations, on 54th Street between Keystone and College, in a little strip of shops that might actually be called, if I remember correctly, the 54th Street Shops. Space is not an abundant commodity at Zest!, either outside with respect to parking, nor inside with respect to a space where people can wait to be seated, should they arrive when the restaurant is busy. And you should expect the restaurant to be busy, since it’s situated in that part of town that has apparently been christened SoBro—and everything in SoBro is terribly, terribly hip at the moment.

Zest! is one of those places where they serve both breakfast and lunch from when they open until they switch over to the dinner menu in the late afternoon, a kind of fusion between the fine dining dinner places that have popped up in SoBro in the last couple of years (Recess, Taste) and über-brunch places like Patachou and Three Sisters. I haven’t eaten at any of the fancy new dinner places, but we’ve been to Patachou and Three Sisters several times each. Zest! doesn’t have the charm of the big old house that became Three Sisters, or the vaguely retro diner feel of the Patachou places, but it does have excellent art and photographs on the walls and a welcoming staff that sort of helps to offset the cramped feel of a place that doesn’t quite have enough space to serve the number of people that it hopes to attract.

That said, the menu is ambitious, with breakfast standards like omelettes and biscuits and gravy and sandwiches and salads for lunch. The mushroom sandwich, with marinated wild mushrooms, goat cheese, organic greens, tomato, and balsamic vinaigrette called out to me, as did the stuffed tortilla, which is basically a big breakfast burrito with eggs, sausage, cheese, and the slightly more unusual black bean and corn salsa and lime sour cream. But it was the omelettes that got me, as is almost always the case when I wind up at a place where they serve omelettes. It’s even better when you can get the omelette made with egg whites, which Zest! offers (as one of the three ingredients in a make-your-own omelette for $9.95).

I took the egg whites option and added wild mushrooms and white cheddar cheese for my other two ingredients, with whole grain toast and what they call “beautiful fruit” for the side. The menu says it’s the most beautiful fruit they can find, but in reality it’s just a cup of mostly pineapple, with a couple of grapes and one lonely, thin slice of strawberry. The omelette also did not quite live up to its name, coming out as a dish of scrambled eggs with mushrooms and cheese worked in—not the rolled up or even folded over presentation one usually associates with the word omelette. It tasted awfully good, though. The mushrooms, in particular, gave it added texture and an earthy flavor that you don’t get with plain old button mushrooms. Curiously, Swiss cheese, which works beautifully with mushrooms in just about any setting, is absent from the list of omelette ingredients.

Amy had the meatloaf and “world famous” macaroni and cheese ($8.95) from the lunch menu. Also modestly portioned, the macaroni looked like ziti (a nice touch) and was baked under crunchy bread crumbs and served piping hot—a good thing on a cold, windy day. Along with a slice of somewhat dry, but undeniably delicious meatloaf, it was a solid comfort food dish that would satisfy most, but perhaps not the heartiest, appetites.

There are some intriguing options on the dinner menu, including Asiago ‘fried’ chicken (their quotes, not mine) served with wild mushroom ragoût, rosemary-gorgonzola polenta, and roasted green beans, and the so-called 3-napkin burger loaded with barbecue sauce, grilled red onion, white cheddar, smoked gouda, bleu cheese, and cherry-wood smoked bacon; but I can only imagine what the parking situation and wait times must be for dinner, even on a weeknight. A return trip could be in the offing one of these days, to have a go at that dinner menu; but I can’t imagine coming back for an omelette—not as long as Patachou and Three Sisters are still going strong.

1134 East 54th Street
466-1852
www.zestexcitingfood.com