‘Brosia Bowl to open downtown restaurant this week
Aug. 11, 2022
A plant-based chef who has been growing her business for three years is opening her first restaurant.
‘Brosia Bowl will open Friday in the first-floor marketplace of the Jones421 Building at 421 N. Phillips Ave.
Darcy Green’s restaurant will be open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, serving a breakfast bowl and burrito, and five salads and five grain bowls.
“We will eventually have a build-your-own option,” she said. “It’s just going to take a few weeks just until … we get used to what we’re doing.”
A grab-and-go cooler will be stocked with salads, fruit cups, hummus and beverages.
“If you’re in a really, really big hurry, you can just come up to the counter, say ‘I want one of those,’ we’ll ring you up, and there’s no waiting – you can just get going, especially if you have 10 minutes between meetings or something.”
The menu includes customers favorites like the Winter Salad that Green has ended up making year-round since starting in 2019 as a meal-delivery service in Brookings and Sioux Falls, in addition to selling at the Brookings Farmers Market and other venues such as the SDSU convenience store. The Winter Salad has roasted chickpeas, quinoa, apples, pears, onions, cranberries, walnuts, vegan feta and a white wine vinaigrette. The other salads are Buffalo Chickpea, Fiesta Mexi, Greek and Tuscan Artichoke.
The bowls include Burrito, Thai, Creamy Curry, Fajita Chick’n and Teriyaki Chick’n.
The menu will grow with time, Green said.
“We’re planning on just sticking with the menu, and then we’ll probably do weekly specials, even daily specials,” she said. “Come in the fall, we plan to have soups added to the menu. We want to have pasta someday; we want to do paninis or grilled sandwiches. And then we eventually want to have kind of a combo option. You can get like this panini with this salad — that kind of variety because people love combos.”
Green added the food truck late in the season last year and became a Falls Park Farmers Market vendor this year. She’ll continue to operate the food truck at the farmers market, noting that the restaurant will provide expanded space for food preparation. It’s also booked for Aug. 18 and 20 at Levitt at the Falls across the street from the restaurant — dates that were set in the spring before Green even thought about signing a lease.
She has her main team in place but is hoping to hire part-time staff to chop the 30 vegetable varieties ‘Brosia Bowl uses and to do other food prep.
The restaurant is in the former Swamp Daddy’s Cajun Kitchen space. Green is using the entire space for the kitchen. Customers will stand in the hallway to order and can use the building’s common seating areas inside or outside.
The idea for the business came from her own frustration as a vegetarian with the lack of menu options at restaurants, noting in a 2020 interview that “every time I’d go, I could get a side salad and fries.”
Now, she’s excited about introducing her plant-based menu items to more people, “showing them it’s not just leaf lettuce and sprouts. It’s got a lot of flavor and character now.”
‘Brosia is short for ambrosia, the Greek word for the food of the gods or something pleasing to taste of smell, Green said.
“It fills you up and fuels your body. It doesn’t deplete your body of the nutrients that it needs to continue on your day. You’re fueling your brain and your body rather than consuming all that sugar and calories and carbs. … People are becoming aware of the variety of plants and how it’s good for you, and it can also taste good.”
Editor’s note: The names of the two bowls with chick’n, a soy product, have been corrected since the story was first published.
