Lemonade is located at 151 University Ave., the former home of La Boulange. Its "chef-driven, vegetable-centric menu" is served in a cafeteria-like model — customers can pick and choose from a variety of hot and cold seasonal dishes ($2.95 each), plus proteins, sandwiches, soups and desserts. The menu changes four times a year with the season.
Customers can choose from one to six portions of each dish. Two portions plus a "land and sea" (meat or seafood) costs $12.85. Lemonade encourages customers to mix and match dishes as they please.
At Lemonade, diners can mix and match dishes as they please. Photo courtesy Lemonade.
Expect to see summer-specific menu items in Palo Alto like ahi tuna and avocado poke with tangerines, icicle radish and sesame; yellow wax beans and pickled green asparagus with a goat cheese dressing; and Chinese long beans with summer plums and hoisin vinaigrette, among other dishes.
Drinks-wise, there's — you guessed it — several lemonade flavors, from the classic "old fashioned" to cucumber mint, blood orange and guava limeade (all $3.50).
View the full menu here.
At 2,500 square feet, the Palo Alto space allows for three dining areas with both indoor and outdoor seating. A rotunda, visible from the street, boasts floor-to-ceiling glass walls and a large community table. California designer Ilan Dei created Lemonade Palo Alto to "specifically showcase the surrounding neighborhood and community, with a look and feel of its own," a company press release states.
Renderings of the new Lemonade Palo Alto on University Avenue. Images courtesy Lemonade.
Lemonade CEO and founder Alan Jackson started cooking in Los Angeles at a young age and opened his first restaurants, Jackson's and The Farm in Beverly Hills, in his 20s. He later got into catering.
At some point, he realized he was missing somewhere flexible where he could pick up a quick, quality meal, and the concept for Lemonade was born. There are now 22 Lemonade locations throughout California.
The Palo Alto opening is part of a larger Bay Area expansion for the Southern California company. It is the second of six new restaurants the company will open in the Bay Area in 2016. (The first was in San Francisco; others will follow in Walnut Creek, Burlingame and two other San Francisco neighborhoods.)
Lemonade Palo Alto will be open for lunch and dinner daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Editor's note: This story was updated to correct inaccurate pricing information.
