Smarktafe Capitol Hill

I sought out smartkafe Capital Hill after reading an interesting article in the Post about a group of entrepreneurs delivering high quality, healthy food. They operate a number of mobile vending trucks, as well as cafes in Foggy Bottom and Capital Hill with plans for further expansion. In theory their main kitchen is in Capital Hill.
I was pretty disappointed. First of all, the Capital Hill «kafe» is located within Results: The Gym. The setup is somewhat confusing. As you walk in, smartkafe is on the right, but there is no staff in the café, and there is no obvious place to pay. It turns out that you take your food outside the café, to the gym’s check-​in counter, and pay there. This may be obvious to members of Results, but is definitely not clear to a first timer.
On the web site, they publish a separate «menu» for each location. This led me to believe that they actually prepared at least some food for you. After all, who ever heard of a «menu» for a 7 – 11, but in fact, the smartkafe is really more of a tiny, healthy 7 – 11 than a café.
The only food available is pre-​prepared and pre-​packaged. I’ll admit I’m sort of picky, and won’t eat sandwiches that have been sitting around all day, especially when the price is the same as many other places that prepare the food when you order, so this was also sort of a disappointment. Some of the food looked like it had been sitting around for a while. I stopped by around 6pm, and the breakfast foods (oatmeal, scrambled egg whites and turkey sausage) were still sitting in the refrigerated shelves available for purchase. They stock items that smartkafe prepares in their own kitchen (wherever that may be), as well as other local vendors like Julia’s empanadas.
I ended up buying the turkey chili. It was fine, if I happened to live right next door, I would probably stop by and grab something on occasion, but based on their current options, I can’t ever see myself making the 5 minute drive from my house specifically for smartkafe.