Dining Deals: Local ingredients star at Homegrown

Homegrown is a restaurant with a manifesto: promoting environmentalism through sandwiches.

This handsome Fremont spot, open since March, uses ingredients that are almost entirely local and largely organic.

The 23-year-old proprietors, Ben Friedman and Brad Gillis, have an activist bent and a yearning for the days of good, unadulterated foods. The former kindergarten buddies aim to rescue your health and the health of our planet, bite by bite.

But gimlet-eyed you ask: How tasty are "sustainable sandwiches"?

Answer: You don't have to sacrifice culinary bliss to eat with a conscience.

The menu: The tall blackboards list more than a dozen hot and cold sandwiches (from $5.75 for half to $11.95 for whole). They traverse through such familiar offerings as chicken salad and toasted cheese to a Reuben sandwich tweaked with sweet mostarda and flank steak daubed with a chimichurri-aioli mix. A half-dozen seasonal salads ($5.95-$11.50) include crab-cake, beet and chicken-thigh versions. Soups and sides, including Japanese cucumber slaw, round out the menu.

What to write home about: My special, catfish po'boy sandwich ($9), featured a fat piece of white flesh that was firm but bland. Fortunately, the spicy pickled daikon, carrots and cabbage came to perky rescue. The borscht had a hint of refreshing sweetness, and its scarlet silkiness was gorgeous against the white mug. The hot flank-steak sandwich (which, like much of the meat, was not organic) was perfectly seasoned.

What to skip: The faux fries made with rutabaga, parsnip and turnip were laudable but unsatisfying. The 8-year-old boy at the next table, clearly a connoisseur of fried spuds, left most of these impostors uneaten.

The setting: Homegrown sports a gourmet deli look, with black-and-white checkered floor and high ceiling lending much-needed airiness to cramped seating. The ordering line can snake out through the front doors during busy times.

Summing up: Two hefty sandwiches, a cup of soup, a side of couscous and an order of veggie fries could have fed four and rang up at $30.15 plus tip.

Kyung Song: 206-464-2423 or ksong@seattletimes.com