We were all over Moka Bros when they opened their first Nali Patio location back in September 2013, because it was really close to our office, and we scour the Greater Sanlitun area daily for new restaurants to write about and for all of the other Beijing magazines to subsequently pretend they independently discovered (e.g. Satan Dog), and because we were bemused by all of the huge-font, feel-good slogans hanging out all over the walls. Indeed, Moka, a spinoff of established pan-Sanlitun food-lounges Mosto and Modo, proved so successful, so quickly, that they'd inspired a battery imitators and straight-up bootleggers within a year (e.g. Tribe). Hadn't been back to Moka for a while, to be honest, because we're really more of a hamburgers-and-ice creams publication here. But they've recently undergone an overhaul, introducing a new menu for the first time since their opening. It's actually more of a major rebranding than a run-of-the-mill Summer menu update. Gone are the aggressive PMA slogans on the walls, replaced with a set of photos depicting Moka Bros regulars against a tropical-palette background, doing interesting things to citrus fruits. The menus also got a graphic-design reboot. As for the actual food content: the biggest update is to the salads section of the menu. The only repeater from Moka Bros 1.0 is the popular Shrimp Avocado salad. To that they've added a diverse set of new options, most of them protein-heavy enough to function as a standalone meal. The Spicy Roast Beef (tomato, avocado, red onion, chickpea, sunflower seed, olive oil, balsamic syrup, birds-eye chili; 60rmb) came highly recommended, but I wanted to try something a little lighter, on account of the one slogan that's still on the wall by the entrance of Moka Bros Nali location ("KICK TODAY'S ASS!" or "LOSE WEIGHT FATTY YOU'RE ABOUT TO TAKE WEDDING PHOTOS" or something like that). And also because I wanted to try the new roast beef sandwich (see below). Protein Boost: quinoa, roasted pumpkin, beetroot, walnut, pear, flaxseed, goat cheese, parsley, lime; 68rmb I'm not a big beet guy, the one veggie against which I still withhold some childhood prejudice. But this salad was great: the earthy tang of the beetroot is well balanced against the sweetness of the pear and pumpkin, and there's nice textural contrast with the crunchy walnut and creamy goat cheese. Pretty filling too, with the quinoa adding some heft to the affair. Roast Beef & Swiss Cheese with tomato, roasted zucchini, roasted eggplant, chimichurri; 58rmb This Roast Beef guy is the one new addition to Moka Bros's sandwich section. What you see here is what you get: a very, very well-executed comfort food classic. Roast beef and Swiss cheese. Pretty hard to fuck that up, really, but Moka does it right, adding enough sautéed veg to lend some flavor and make you think this thing is semi-healthy, but not so much that it sogs the crunch out of the perfectly toasted bread. The chimichurri adds a wonderful zing, too. I'm pretty sure that is the professional food writer terminology. Zang maybe? Extreme close-up: Paleo Rice: cauliflower rice, bell pepper, kale, cashew nuts, chive, tomato, bamboo, garlic, cumin; 48rmb One more thing Moka Bros has added to the new menu is this Paleo Rice bowl, which has been running in Beta-test mode for the past few months. It proved popular enough to make the A-team, apparently. I've Sherpa'd this guy up once or twice. The "Paleo" stands for Paleolithic diet, which is some health trend about eating only what Paleolithic hunter-gatherers ate. I don't know. In my opinion we have made some pretty fucking critical advances in the culinary arts since caveman times. But eat this thing if you want to get your veg servings for the day without carbing out, I guess. It's good. The highlight of Moka Bros 2.0 is this new open-faced smoothie fridge section they have. Basically they have a few pre-made smoothies with the ingredients all still in pre-smoothie (roughie?) form, so that you can see the food you're getting in your amorphous smoothie deal beforehand. You can also DIY some add-ons, including stevia, chia seed, spirulina, flaxseed, goji berry, jujube dates, a veritable Reader's Digest listicle of "things you should be eating because if you don't eat them or don't eat enough of them you will 100% die" things. SUPERFOODS, they're called. All I can tell you is I broke my knee last year and ate Spirulina pills every day for six weeks, and then my knee wasn't broken any more. Coincidence? For this test run we went with the Tropical Breeze (mango, passion fruit, peach, kale; 45rmb), on account of my well-documented love of kale, and the Cacao Superfoods (raw cacao powder, banana, coconut milk, berries, spinach; 45rmb), on account of my deep affinity for the Ancient Maya. The Tropical Breeze was just fine. Pretty hard to mess up a tropical fruit smoothie. The whole point of a drink like this is to throw in just enough bold citrus flavor to mask the kale, because kale tastes like green dirt. The Cacao one though, wow. Very impressed. I guess I've been out of the States for too long or something because I didn't know that Raw Food Hippies had graduated Cacao to the level of Whole-Foods-mainstream smoothie ingredient. But this thing was great. Earthy, dense, filling, just sweet enough to not cloy as most fruit smoothies tend to. Super repeatable. I might start dragging myself to Moka Bros to grip this thing more regularly. Would be a great mobile liquid lunch. Big co-sign on the cacao. *** So, there you have it. Check out Moka Bros' new menu at their Nali Patio or Solana locations, from 10:30am-10:30pm daily.