A Blast From the Past -- Fresh & Fabulous in Oxnard CA and the Woolworth Museum
I was asked to highlight a woman-owned restaurant, preferably one with a female chef/cook for the VC Reporter's special Women's Issue. I got great suggestions like Feast Bistro and World Flavor Cafe in Ojai but I'd seen reviews of them fairly recently so I headed out to Oxnard to visit a place I hadn't been to before. There were really fun surprises as you'll see when you read the review.
There is also a slideshow with more pictures of food and fun after the jump , didn't want to make everyone crazy each time they open the post. :)
Fresh & Fabulous is owned by Magda Weydt, MS, RD, a registered dietician who believes in good food fast! There was a bustling crowd and food came out quick.
I enjoyed eating the food but equally fun was the location. The restaurant is currently housed in a corner of the Woolworth building in downtown Oxnard but is moving two doors down to the larger space that once held Experi-Mental Cafe.
It's a beautiful building and there is actually a quaint museum that pays homage to Woolworth's in the linoleum-laced hallway that leads to the restrooms. There you can use your change to buy a postcard for a dime, get a squirt of lanolin lotion for a quarter or play vintage games for a quarter. They even have an old photo booth.
Can you imagine the first Woolworth store was started with a $300 loan?
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Comments (5)
I wish I could reach into the computer and eat that piece of cake. Man, does that look DEEluscious!
Now I will read the rest...
Comment #1 Posted by: Suza | March 12, 2009 04:00 PM
Aha!
No wonder it looks sooo goood!
"After having eaten so conscientiously, we decided to splurge with a slice of vanilla cake thickly iced with butter cream frosting and fresh blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. The moist cake lay somewhere between the realms of pound cake and a fluffy vanilla cake. It brought to mind memories of hot childhood summers spent at the homes of great aunts who specialized in serving slices of such delicacies still hot from the oven, stained by fresh summer berries spooned over the top. We relished it!"
DK, your writing is so vivid, I have just eaten vicariously!
Comment #2 Posted by: Anonymous | March 12, 2009 04:06 PM
Thanks Suza, less calories that way! maybe that's the new recessionary eating. Instead of people trying to get calories from sunshine they can just eat vicariously. Hmmm...
Have you been to the restaurant or the Woolworth Museum?
Comment #3 Posted by: DK | March 12, 2009 05:15 PM
Not yet but it sounds fun!Will keep Fresh & Fabulous and the Woolworth Museum in mind next time I head out of town.
I can actually imagin that the first Woolworth store was started with a $300 loan. Know why? Because my dad borrowed $500 for a down payment on the house my parents still live in on Fairview Road!
I remember my mom and I and my two younger sisters catching the bus on El Roblar and going to Woolworth on Maine Street in Ventura. We bought all sorts of stuff there, as I recall, like buckets and shovels for the beach, thongs (for your feet, not thong underwear) and socks and real underwear. I sort of remember the soda fountain... Later, as teenagers, my friends and I took the bus to Woolworth to get our photos taken in one of those booths for 25 cents...
Comment #4 Posted by: Suza | March 12, 2009 05:58 PM
now the booth is of course $2 but still there! did you ever eat at the lunch counter? I miss those! there was something so fancy about going to eat there and shop.
Love the thong comment. Instead of just BC and AC we could have BT for all those who remember the time before the thong! lol
also the fact that woolworth's was such a huge success and now they are not shows again how things go in cycles...
:::sigh:::
Comment #5 Posted by: DK | March 12, 2009 06:24 PM