Caviar & Bananas is not your average restaurant name, but Caviar & Bananas is also not your average restaurant.
Caviar & Bananas is a market-style café located at 1 N. Laurens St. in Downtown Greenville, just three miles from campus.
The restaurant is next door to the Aloft Hotels on Washington Avenue in a small eatery and shopping plaza.
Although only a seven minute drive from campus, downtown traffic and parking should be accounted for in planning a visit to the café.
Inside Caviar & Bananas, exposed air ducts, hanging lights and metal surfaces give the restaurant a modern industrial atmosphere.
The restaurant, built with an open concept, exudes an essence of spaciousness that in reality does not exist.
Seating is limited for those dining in, but additional outdoor tables are available for fair weather days.
Caviar & Bananas feels slightly crowded only because it offers a wide variety of options to choose from.
The restaurant features a gourmet sandwich and prepared foods bar, a salad bar, a coffee and tea bar, bakery selections and various specialty market goods.
Each customer may collect foods from any station he desires before paying at one of the available counters.
The French Dip is a gourmet sandwich made with a generous portion of their house-made roast beef, aged provolone cheese, smoked mushrooms and roasted onions on a toasted baguette.
The French Dip is available with au jus, or dipping juice, for $9.50.
At the salad bar, specialty salads like the Far East, a spinach salad with soy roasted tofu, edamame, red bell peppers, cabbage, carrots, peanuts, brown rice and a sesame ginger vinaigrette dressing, are available for $9 to $11 as well as the option to design your own salad for $7.25 plus the price of a meat.
The coffee and tea bar offers a variety of pick-me-ups including small cappuccinos for $3.55, chai lattes for $4.30 and house blend coffees for $2.25. Small teas cost $2.60 and large teas are $2.90.
Several teas offered are blueberry hibiscus, Earl Grey, English breakfast, jasmine green, peach nectar and turmeric ginger detox.
Desserts found in the bakery selections are cookies, brownies, cakes, cupcakes, muffins and scones.
A special treat at Caviar & Bananas is the opera cake, an almond sponge cake soaked in coffee and covered in chocolate available for $7.
The opera cake is a cool, creamy dessert that melts in the mouth.
Caviar & Bananas is new to Greenville this year as an expansion of the original restaurant owned by Kris and Margaret Furniss in Charleston.
According to the Caviar & Bananas website, Kris Furniss pursued his passion for food after a coffee run saved his life during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York.
Margaret Furniss worked for a brand creating and marketing company in New York before the couple brought their skills together to create the gourmet market and café which is Caviar & Bananas.
Caviar & Bananas is open Monday through Thursday from 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
They are also open on Friday and Saturday from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
