Monday, July 1, 2013

Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop Starts Juicing

Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop has been a popular destination for salad and other healthy breakfast and lunch options, with more locations slowly popping up. Recently, they've also started offering juices to meet their customers' demands. Their executive chef, Kristi Ritchey, explains that there are two types of juicers The centrifugal juicers are high speed and create heat. This type of juicer separates juice from the pulp. On the other hand, Greenleaf uses a slow speed juicer which extracts more fiber from the ingredients. I came in to taste the juices on my own.

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Red grape juice
Greenleaf sells pure juices including carrot and tomato ($5.95), orange, grapefruit, green apple, and red grape pure juices ($6.95). If those prices seem high, keep in mind that these are all 20oz servings and use higher priced ingredients. Even though red apple is cheaper, Kristi decides to use Granny Smith apple for the juice because it gives a crisper flavor. They also use red grapes instead of the cheaper green grapes because the green ones have a metallic aftertaste.

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You can also build your own juice for $6.95, for which you can select three main ingredients like kale, apple, pineapple, cucumber, etc and add one accent like ginger, celery, jalapeno, mint, or parsley. All the juices can be sold in a sealed bottle to take home (they do suggest consuming anything with ginger within a day, though).
If you're baffled by the choices, just go with one of their signature juices.


My favorite was Pine-Kale-Ada (kale, grilled pineapple, lemon, and apple - $7.25)
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The pineapple is grilled before getting juiced, which adds smokiness yet brings out the sweetness. This green juice is easy to drink, think of it as an intro to green juice.
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Their orange juicer
Bloody Mary lovers would love the spicy Virgin’s Mary Garden (tomato, carrot, jalapeno, celery, lime, basil, and salt - $6.95). Another spicy option is the Hawaiian Kick (pineapple, grapefruit, orange, and jalapeno -$6.95). Cool down this summer with the Western Standard (cucumber, mint, agave, lime - $7.25).
The Sangria-licious ($7.90) is a play on their anti oxidant salad, with apple, grape, celery, mint, lemon, and cucumber.

Juices are indeed expensive no matter where you buy them, but we saw the waste container of the juicer after tasting a couple and realized how much fruits and vegetables actually go in one bottle. The prices start to make sense. A whole bowl of kale only makes a couple of ounces of juice.

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Yep, that's just the pulp from your juice!
Luckily, Greenleaf is not the most expensive ones in town, so grab one to try either along with your salad or just on its own. They don't have any juice cleanse yet but it is under consideration.

Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop
Multiple locations
www.greenleafchopshop.com/

1 comments:

Unknown

Yes!! green juice is easy to drink, think of it as an intro to green juice. I like noni juice. It is very tasty and healthy.

Regards,
Tahitian Noni Juice

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