Location: 335 SW Century Drive

Hours: Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. (winter hours)

Price Range: $3.95 to $6.95

Alcoholic Beverages: Beer and wine

Kids’ Menu: Yes

Reservations: No

Credit Cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express

Contact: 330-1133

Croutons owners Barton and Tara Butler are like many new residents of Bend. They came not for a particular job or because of a family tie to Bend. They came because they fell in love with the town.

A couple of years ago, some friends popped in a video of Bend after dinner. Barton and Tara were taken with what they saw.

”It seemed like a great place to start our marriage and raise a family,” he says. ”Our plan was to come up here for a year and see how it worked out.”

Now the Butlers have opened Croutons, a high-end fast-food restaurant on Century Drive offering salads and sandwiches at less than $10 a meal.

The Croutons chain – of which the Bend restaurant is the third – was launched in San Diego by Butler’s two longtime friends. He had been working in finance for a hospital and then a biotech company in San Diego. When Butler’s high school chums decided they wanted to expand the Croutons chain beyond San Diego, he felt Bend was a natural fit.

”I definitely wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t salads and sandwiches,” he says. ”It’s not on the upper end of cuisine per se. It’s not fine dining with a chef, waitresses.”

Butler maintained the Croutons decor from the original San Diego locations, adding some Central Oregon skiing photographs to give it a local touch. He also adapted the menu to suit local tastes, adding the option of salmon on salads, as well as offering beer and wine.

They offer four soups a day, rotating through a menu of 15. They offer more soups in winter, fewer in the summer.

Salads come in varying sizes, and can be topped with chicken or fish for an extra charge. These aren’t your standard house salads. The pear and bleu cheese salad tops romaine and mesclun with crumbled bleu cheese, Anjou pear, candied walnuts and poppy seed vinaigrette. The barbecued chicken salad includes shredded chicken breast, corn, black beans and cornbread croutons among its ingredients.

For those less inclined to green and leafy meals, Croutons also offers chicken, tuna and egg salads. The panini sandwiches are big enough to require two hands. If you have room for dessert, the restaurant offers Crouton Bites – assorted bite-sized cookies, such as a mini muffin-shaped brownie.

Butler says that he has also added coffee and tea to the menu.

Croutons also offers catering – which includes nearly everything on the menu – to large parties. There are a variety of trays and combinations to choose from. The restaurant also uses Bend Take Out as a delivery service.

Butler is currently in the process of franchising the business. Depending on how everything goes, he says he would like to add two more restaurants to the north and east sides of Bend.