Keto, vegan, low-carb—no matter faculty of thought you subscribe to, there are extra choices than ever earlier than relating to maintaining a healthy diet in Kansas Metropolis, with out sacrificing taste or selection. We talked to the house owners behind 4 health-oriented eating ideas about what’s on the menu and what maintaining a healthy diet means to them.
Staci Cross | Take pleasure in: Pure Meals + Drink
Staci Cross was an entrepreneur attempting to steadiness touring across the nation, elevating two children and consuming a vegan food plan when she first dreamt up Enjoy: Pure Food + Drink.
“It was practically unimaginable to seek out respectable meals wherever—meals that even tasted good, a lot much less that was wholesome,” Cross explains, including that she typically discovered herself placing collectively a meal at Complete Meals. “I simply thought, ‘This isn’t the way in which folks ought to have entry to more healthy meals. There must be a larger consciousness of more healthy meals and what that basically seems like: natural meals with out all of the chemical compounds, and actually wholesome issues that style good.’”
Her reply was Take pleasure in, which opened in April 2016 in Leawood’s Mission Farms serving up cold-pressed juices and smoothies made with natural produce, in addition to a lineup of breakfast, lunch, and dinner dishes that includes lean proteins, entire grains, and plenty of veggies. Working example: The restaurant’s bestselling Tackle the World bowl, which incorporates quinoa, kale, beets, broccoli, hemp seeds, almonds, avocado, and a ginger miso dressing.
Though Take pleasure in makes some extent to supply vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free and dairy-free choices, the menu doesn’t cater to any particular food plan—reasonably, it goals to include components that assist folks get the steadiness of meals they should really feel their finest.
“Individuals actually aren’t involved with weight as a lot as they was by way of energy and meals and all of that,” Cross defined. “They simply wish to know that what they’re consuming is wholesome. It’s not loaded with fats, however has wholesome fat, like avocados and almonds.”
Kansas Metropolis has an urge for food for the idea—Take pleasure in expanded its area in February 2019, and Cross plans to open one other metro location this summer season earlier than ultimately franchising the idea to make nutrient-rich meals extra broadly accessible.
Kerry Goebel | Cultivare Greens & Grains
For Kerry Goebel, wholesome meals has to style good.
Goebel opened Overland Park’s Cultivare Greens & Grains along with his brother Kevin in summer season 2020, and he boils down the restaurant’s method to a couple easy factors: “Is it balanced? Is it good for you, and does it style so good that you simply wish to come again and eat it tomorrow?”
Cultivare goals to test all these bins by serving up an ar
ray of salads, grain bowls, soups and paninis which might be crave-able and satisfying. The menu contains dishes just like the ahi tuna poke bowl with avocado, mango, and cucumber; savory diced-chicken thigh lettuce wraps; and Goebel’s private favourite, the steak and gorgonzola salad, which is made with petite beef tenderloin and a black-pepper horseradish dressing. (Cultivare’s dressings and sauces are a specific level of delight for Goebel.)
The brothers have owned pizza ideas in KC for a decade however determined to department out and open a extra health-minded restaurant primarily based on what they wished to see as native diners and the rising reputation of comparable ideas across the nation.
“I really feel like quite a lot of adults now who haven’t intentionally frolicked studying about vitamin and the science behind a more healthy food plan have kind of this very elementary concept of what wholesome consuming is that goes again to this pyramid all of us noticed in grade faculty,” Goebel says, including, “Ten years in the past, I don’t assume folks had been very acutely aware of their consuming.”
The renewed consideration isn’t solely altering the way in which folks eat—it’s holding grocery shops and eating places to the next normal and altering how they supply meals, he explains. Cultivare diners are already benefiting from the shift, as extra regionally produced components make their means onto plates due to growing demand and extra widespread distribution. One instance? Salads made with leafy greens from Crossroads-based Lacking Ingredient, an city farm with a hyperlocal footprint.
“In that situation, everyone wins,” Goebel says.
Gigi Jones | Gigi’s Vegan + Wellness Café
Adopting a plant-based way of life wasn’t simply life-changing for Gigi Jones—it was lifesaving. In 2015, she was identified with colon most cancers. By food plan and way of life adjustments, Jones says she was capable of beat most cancers with out surgical procedure or chemotherapy, though she emphasizes the significance of listening to docs and following their recommendation.
“As soon as my eyes had been opened and my journey began, I used to be tremendous excited,” she remembers. “My vitality ranges went up, I appeared ten years youthful, I felt ten years youthful. I’m turning flips with my grandchildren—I’m so excited. I assumed, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve to return and educate the neighborhood. That is one thing new, that is one thing that they should know. That is how we heal.’”
Jones, an authorized dietitian, nutritionist, and well being and wellness coach, based the MidWest Soul VegFest, an academic occasion that includes nationwide and native audio system, workshops, plant-based cooking demos, and naturally, vegan meals. And in July 2020, she opened Gigi’s Vegan + Wellness Café alongside Westport Highway.
“We’re not only a restaurant,” Jones explains. “We don’t even name ourselves that—we’re a wellness cafe.”
The café provides natural cold-pressed juices and smoothies, wellness pictures, and vegan breakfast, lunch, and dinner choices, just like the customer-favorite Westport Burger, a veggie burger nestled inside lettuce served with avocado mash. No sugars, salt or oils are added to Gigi’s meals, and Jones works with farmers and suppliers in Kansas Metropolis and grows some components in a backyard behind the café.
Past serving up meals, Gigi’s provides assist on going vegan, develops meal plans and gives meal prep companies, hosts well being and wellness lessons, and even has an on-site infrared sauna. A medical physician might be becoming a member of the group this yr to serve much more folks.
“We simply wish to be that useful resource in the neighborhood, and imagine that we’re changing into that,” Jones says.
Robin Krause | Unbakery & Juicery and Billie’s Grocery
After promoting 5 companies and combating feeling worn out, Robin Krause determined to press pause.
“I took a yr off to review well being teaching,” she says. “I did an natural apprenticeship; I did a yoga instructor coaching simply to try to discover that subsequent path —‘What is definitely wholesome? What’s well being?’”
It’s a giant query, and one which she explores at Unbakery & Juicery, her East Brookside grab-and-go spot in addition to at Billie’s Grocery, a vivid and breezy midtown restaurant that serves up filling, nutrient-dense fare. Each function meals and drinks that nourish the physique, assist detox methods, and supply loads of choices for folks with dietary restrictions, together with baked items and candy treats.
Unbakery opened in 2016 and allowed Krause to experiment with serving Kansas Citians issues they won’t have been acquainted with on the time, like chia-seed puddings and sauces with out dairy or sugar. When the idea took off, Krause determined to go to dietary remedy faculty and graduated as a practitioner in 2018. She brings that understanding of vitamin to prospects inquisitive about the advantages of what they’re consuming and ingesting at Unbakery, in addition to Billie’s, which opened in summer season 2020. Krause says the restaurant serves wholesome fat, proteins, natural veggies, and carbs, however executed otherwise than you may count on.
“It has somewhat little bit of one thing for everyone, and that was my aim, simply to carry everyone collectively,” Krause says, noting that visitors can get pleasure from the whole lot from a vegan soup to Billie’s deli-style Reuben with house-fermented purple kraut and fries cooked in rice oil.
“Right here, we don’t do any fat-free,” she explains. “Each cell wants fat in your physique. We do have fats, we do have dairy, we do have oils—they’re just a bit higher.”
