Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008
Healthy dining is not a new concept in Prince George's County, but the Wild Onion restaurant in Hyattsville's University Town Center offers something different in organic fast food.
"Fast, fresh and friendly," is how chef Rasheed Abdurrahman bills the fare at his funkily modern new establishment, opened in June.
"This is the kind of food that people would fix themselves if they had time," said Abdurrahman, who owns Wild Onion with his wife, Darlene Pinnock.
It was Pinnock who first persuaded him to leave his work in retail management in the early 1990s and go to culinary school, Abdurrahman said. He graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1994 and has since worked as a cook in various situations in the Washington, D.C., area.
A 30-year county resident himself, Abdurrahman said he and his wife finally decided to open their own restaurant because they thought, "we can't be the only people here who want to eat [healthy foods]."
Because of the town center location, Abdurrahman's lunch business is already booming, he said, and he designed the restaurant to make it easy for customers to come in, pick from a variety of healthy foods for themselves, and go. Different "stations" for hot foods, baked goods, cold deli selections, and build-your-own salad and sandwich cases make choosing simple.
All of Wild Onion's meats are organic or all-natural: Abdurrahman shopped around to find reputable providers of chicken, beef and turkey raised and fed in a natural manner. Most of the restaurant's produce is still conventional, but as he moves forward he plans to go organic there as well. The strawberries and bananas that go into the smoothies are organic already.
"These are the things that I feed my own kids," said this father-of-two.
Abdurrahman also makes most of his foods fresh at the restaurant, including all the soup broths, salads and the cookies. Hot foods are served from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. (lunch) and 5:30 p.m. to closing (dinner).
The menu itself is seasonal, Abdurrahman said, with a few popular items – rotisserie chicken and macaroni and cheese, for example – available year-round. But right now, he is establishing and growing the menu, so he makes some changes almost daily: soups and salads are among the items in flux.
The centerpiece of the cold foods at Wild Onion is the "build-your-own salad/sandwich" station, with any choice running a base price of $6.95. Customers pick up a slip of paper and write their name at the top, then choose their bread, spread, cheese, toppings and main ingredient, with fixings like avocado or grilled onions costing an extra 50 cents or a second main ingredient running an extra $2.50.
Among the other cold offerings are a very popular chicken salad ($11.99/lb), made with huge chunks of seasoned grilled organic chicken, Dijon mustard, honey, mayonnaise, red onion and celery; a Thai chicken pasta salad ($7.25/lb); and a potato salad ($5/lb).
Wild Onion
6504 America Blvd.; Hyattsville
Phone: 301-209-0630
Hours: Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday, noon to 9 p.m., Sunday, noon to 8 p.m.
