What could be a harbinger of fast food restaurants to come opened near 40th and Walnut this week.

Sweet Green features “make your own” salads that include season and, when possible, local ingredients for $6.35. Ingredients include a range of greens – from mesclun (lettuces combined with some dandelion greens or other edible leaves) to baby spinach – a ton of fruits and vegetables, five kinds of cheese, and more than a dozen dressings. Meats, tofu and shrimp are a little extra. Other salads and wraps range from $7.50 to $11.

Organic frozen yogurt is also on the menu. A naked cone is $2.50. A small bowl of soup is $3.75 and drinks include housemade lemonade and iced tea.

The West Philly location is the second in the area (the other is in Ardmore). Sweet Green started in the D.C. area and company officials say the West Philly location design is a throwback to their original store. The inside of a fast food-style restaurant can’t get much more hip than this place. The woodwork, for example, is made from recycled bowling lane planks.

The restaurant is taking advantage of the trend of buying local, something familiar to many of us in West Philly thanks to places like Mariposa Food Co-op, Milk and Honey Market and the Clark Park farmer’s market.

There aren’t too many chances these days to have a say in where you buy your food in West Philly. Actually, there may be only one chance. Mariposa Food Co-op launched a new membership campaign today that will provide that chance.

Mariposa will move to a new building next fall that increases its size five-fold, making it the only community-owned grocery store in West Philly. We’re talking fresh produce, fresh fruit and staples we all need – all on Baltimore Avenue near 49th Street. West Philly needs to step up ownership – that means becoming a member. Just to be clear, folks who aren’t members can shop at the new store too. But membership, as they say, has its priveleges. Here they are:

• Members get a discount and members who chip in to help run the store get an even bigger discount.

• As a member you get a voice in how things are run.

• Finally, and maybe most importantly, becoming a member means that you are helping to create a business that we all have a stake in.

Peter Collopy, a Mariposa member explains: “Membership in Mariposa is about more than getting a discount,” said Collopy. “It’s an opportunity to share ownership of an important resource for our community.”

You can join online here.

Writer Ann L. Rappoport has discovered and written about a well-kept secret in West Philly: The bathrooms at The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College (4207 Walnut St.). They are pretty magnificent.

Rappoport writes in today’s Phialdelphia Inquirer:

Entering it through the bar in the school’s international restaurant, I was greeted by hundreds of antique perfume bottles. Vintage ladies’ hats and beaded bags commanded notice, posed on vintage hat racks suspended from the walls and ceiling, which also host over-the-top sconces and chandeliers. Lace and feathered boas drape the stalls, recalling at least the French Quarter of the Big Easy, if not Paris itself. Somebody had a blast putting this together.

College president Danny Liberatoscioli had the initial idea to make awesome bathrooms to compliment the school’s restaurants.

“We’ve got this thing for restrooms here,” he told Rappoport.

We were honored to be featured along with Milk and Honey Market‘s Annie Baum-Stein earlier this week on Madame Fromage, a top-shelf Philly cheese blog.

The good Madame is featuring blue cheese all this month and when asked where one might find a nice hunk of blue we first thought of Milk and Honey at 45th and Baltimore. As Madame Fromage mentions in the post, we sometimes like to pair blue cheese (and a variety of pickled things and black bread) with some icy cold vodka.

You might see Madame Fromage, who also goes by Tenaya, on any given day or night at any number of local cheese venues. She also writes a regular cheese column for Grid.

Come on Craig LaBan. We love the restaurant critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and all, but he lists the best coffee places in the region and just one is in West Philly? Only Lovers and Madmen made the cut. Great coffee shop, but what about the others over here? Green Line? Earth Cup? Milk and Honey? Satellite Cafe? Or how about Manakeesh? Gold Standard? Cafe Clave? I’m sure we’re forgetting others.

Dude, there is life past 40th Street.

Mariposa Food Co-op has a new tool in its quest to raise money for its move to a new (and much larger) building in the fall. The co-op has opened an account on the fundraising site IndieGoGo.com, where individuals can securely contribute any amount.

The co-op hopes to raise $10,000 toward its move costs on the site, which will be bundled together with other fundraising ventures – from member and institutional loans to brunches – to cover the estimated $2.2 million purchase and rehab of the new building at 4824 Baltimore Ave.