Raw Eats

I know it’s not new, but it’s new to me and I’m so excited I have to tell you about it. Raw food. When my friend Cristina suggested we eat raw for dinner recently, I quickly stashed a granola bar in my bag in case I left the restaurant starving. Images of naked broccoli stalks, shredded carrots and raw advocate Demi Moore floated in my head. Whatever I thought I was in for, I couldn’t have been more wrong and more pleasantly surprised.

My intro was at Pure Food and Wine, owned by Sarma Melngailis, who co-founded the eatery in 2004 with award-winning chef Matthew Kenney, located in Gramercy Park in Manhattan. It has since expanded to include a takeaway shop, online boutique, raw animal food line, and Melngailis has co-authored two cookbooks. The first clue that I was going to leave happy was the ambience: elegant and serene with gorgeous dark wood walls and gentle lighting. Once we had been seated and ordered a glass of wine from a list organized by easily digestible headings like “soft and fruit forward” and “substantial and bold,” we ordered our meal. The food knocked my socks off.

We started with a salad of winter greens, with Medjool dates, pignoli and saffron Meyer lemon with curry vinaigrette, shaved onion, argan oil, and chestnut honey. Earthy and heavenly. Not a morsel remained. Then we split two entrees: Pad Thai with kelp noodles and baby bok choy with snow peas, king oyster mushrooms, tamarind sauce, sesame salted cashews, and cilantro oil, and—my new favorite dish—zucchini, local Roma and heirloom tomato lasagna with basil pistachio pesto, sun-dried tomato marinara, and macadamia pumpkin seed ricotta. It was so rich yet fresh, with slices of zucchini replacing pasta noodles. Honestly, I never see the need to eat gooey, heavy lasagna again. Not a pair to leave without dessert, we tried a salted chocolate caramel tart with pecan caramel, dark chocolate ganache, maldon sea salt and vanilla cream. Yup. As amazing as it sounds.

I left elated, sated but not overfull and ready to return the next day. Which I did, for lunch with another friend. Since it’s not a cheap meal, I opted to pick up Melngailis and Kenney’s Raw Food/Real World cookbook around the corner at One Lucky Duck, their takeaway shop, which just opened a new location in Chelsea Market, and see what I could do at home. The authors are realistic—most people can only eat raw a percentage of the time. Increasing my raw repertoire will require investing in a dehydrator. No matter, my breakfast has gone from a piece of toast with cottage cheese to a cut up banana and almonds drizzled with honey. How hard is that to do? And it’s so very good and makes you feel as good as it tastes. —Denise Shoukas 

Denise Shoukas is a regular foodspring.com contributor
and is the author of foodspring’s food forager blog.

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