photo by nick holmes

Avocado pizza is just one menu item Doc B's Fresh Kitchen hopes will help it stand out in the world of fast-casual. 

“Fast-casual” is the name the dining world uses for the service model where customers order at a counter, sit, and wait for a server to bring their food to them. The term makes sense for the Corner Bakerys of the world, but what do you call it when the food is less casual?

Doc B’s Fresh Kitchen (100 E. Walton St., no phone yet), a fast-nicer restaurant with a planned mid-August opening, will serve dishes such as a ten-ounce, aged Slagel Family Farm New York strip steak. “We should be able to compete with the steak Gibsons serves at a much more expeditious price,” says Craig Bernstein, the owner.

The breakfast-lunch-dinner spot will seat 95 in the main dining area and 15 at a bar. Diners will receive GPS tracking devices to direct servers to them rather than impaled pigs with numbers or the like. Food ranges from farm-fresh egg sandwiches (on what Bernstein calls the best English muffins ever) through a variety of sandwiches to roast chicken, grilled fish, and that steak. Homemade juice-blend popsicles like carrot-mint-ginger will be available for dessert.

Bernstein says Doc B was his father. “He was a physician up in New York,” he says. “He passed away three years ago. [Naming the restaurant after him] has good karma. How could it not be successful if he watches it happen?”