DINING
‘We Can’t Forget’
Amped Coffee Co. pledges to remember 9/11 with memorial By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski Keith and Janine Walashek remember the 9/11 terrorist attacks vividly. They recall exactly where they were and the pain and fear that overcame their bodies. So when Keith heard that at one point New York was considering canceling the 9/11 Tribute in Light due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he was angry. “I promised to never forget,” he says. “Well, this is how you start forgetting. You start canceling things. You start forgetting things. There’s a whole generation right now who doesn’t even know about 9/11. We need to keep that going. “When I heard New York canceled their lights, it was like a kick in the gut. So we thought, ‘OK, let’s do something.’ So I thought we’d do lights.” It was easier said than done, because lights that bright and that illuminate that high aren’t readily available. One company in Arizona offers them. The town of Gilbert was going to use them, but when it canceled its memorial, the Walasheks grabbed the lights. “It will be the brightest lights in Arizona,” Janine says. “We want the first responders to know this matters to us because it really affected them.” When she thinks of 9/11, Janine recalls the sounds of the television and the feelings she felt that day. She kept her kids home from school. “They were little, and I was scared,” she says. “I remember feeling bonded with my neighbor over this because they felt the same way I did. I think we’re losing that feeling. We’re all in this country together, and we need to support each other.” The event will take place in the parking lot of The Green Room and its sister coffeeshop, Amped Coffee Co., at 6:30 p.m. September 11.
Introducing The Green Room Housed in the former Pizza Hut, The
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Amped Coffee Co. owners Janine and Keith Walashek opened The Green Room, a salad restaurant. (Photo by Pablo Robles)
Green Room is a relatively new venture for the Walasheks. The couple received the keys to the building January, but, of course, the contractors started working two weeks before COVID hit. “We were out of the country when COVID hit,” Keith says about a trip to Israel. “It was the worst time ever to commit to a build. On the other side, we were shut down, so it was the best time to do it. “We took advantage of that. We moved everything out of this space (Amped) and did a super deep clean to keep everyone safe. We took that opportunity to rearrange how we function, too.” The Green Room did open in July. The salad restaurant—not a walk-up salad bar—was the result of the Walasheks’ studies. They monitored what the community was saying, and most wanted to see a healthy restaurant or salad restaurant go into that space. “It’s full service, like Chipotle,” Janine says. “We serve you. I think that’s the hardest part about opening it right now, is really getting
the word out that this is full service. We even made our sneeze guard extra tall, like taller than what the health board requires.” The Green Room—a further play on music, like the Amped Coffee Co. name—boasts five salads. One is the Amptastic, a Southwesternstyle salad with black beans, crunchy jalapeno, corn, cheese, red peppers and fire-roasted red peppers that is served with a Chipotle ranch dressing. The Superhero salad is vegan, with spinach and three types of kale, with shredded carrot, quinoa, broccoli, edamame, butternut squash, pumpkin seeds, dried cherries and a citrus poppyseed vinaigrette. For the protein powerhouse cobb, bacon, eggs, chicken, tomatoes and shredded cheddar cheese sit on a bed of crisp Romaine lettuce. Spinach is topped with quinoa, chicken, mandarin oranges, edamame, pumpkin seeds, dried cherries and shredded white cheddar in the Thai citrus salad. Last, the Fruitopia is a spring mix lettuce
