Pretty Good Advice is a reenvisioning of what fast food can be — seasonal, fresh and locally grown. The fast-casual restaurant is fueled by Matt McNamara’s farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. McNamara is best known for co-founding Sons & Daughters in San Francisco, which received a Michelin star in 2012. He originally started his 83-acre farm in 2013 to grow ingredients for Sons & Daughters but left the restaurant in 2017 to live on the farm with his family.
A few years later, he opened the first Pretty Good Advice location in Soquel, which he followed with a second location in downtown Santa Cruz. Now, he’s bringing the restaurant’s fresh, vegetarian-leaning sandwiches, burgers and fries north, to downtown San Jose, meaning Bay Area residents will no longer need to make the trek down Highway 17 to enjoy his creations. The location at 125 Paseo de Antonio opens Wednesday, with starting hours of 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday.
McNamara stepped away from fine dining because he wanted to make his food accessible to more people, he told SFGATE in a recent interview. “My objective is not to charge you 300 bucks to sit down,” he said. “My objective is that this fruit should be consumed by the whole community.”
He also felt that he couldn’t take full advantage of his farm-to-table pipeline. “We produce massive amounts of fruits and vegetables — fine dining uses very little food,” McNamara explained. “We were sold out every night, but you’re sold out with like 50 people.”…