Snap Kitchen

With Its Lime Green And Orange

décor and shelves stocked with color-coded plastic containers, Snap Kitchen at Preston Royal Village has a regimented feel.

It’s the latest of several shops in our neighborhood, along with My Fit Foods and Simply Fit Meals, offering healthy, take-home meals. Nearly every food lifestyle is represented — paleo, vegan, gluten-free, you name it. But it all falls under the umbrella of whole foods.

“We don’t like to be established as one or the other,” says Daniel Magoon, nutritionist for Snap Kitchen.

The Austin-based company recently began expanding to Dallas, opening in Preston Hollow this past fall. Popping a meal into the microwave for 30 seconds has its appeal; it’s a kind of modernized TV dinner, dreamed up by chef Matthew Reinhart.

The most popular item is a rendition of a conventionally heavy, high-fat dish: chicken and green chili enchiladas, which aren’t enchiladas at all. They’re savory, chickenfilled crepes topped with a creamy poblano sauce and pickled red onions. The deviled eggs (categorized in the snack section of the store) come filled with jalapeño hummus. The grass-fed bison quinoa is a hearty lunch dish with smashed kidney beans and cheddar cheese. The cold-pressed juices replace meals entirely with all four or five ingredients listed on the bottle.

Much of the mantra of Snap Kitchen involves losing weight, aside from just making healthier choices. People have dropped 10-12 pounds on its 21-day meal plan. Chances are you may walk into the store and have no clue which containers to choose.

“The idea is to have higher carbs during the day and higher protein at dinner,” Magoon says. And eat five times a day, because “when you aren’t starving, you’re more mindful of what you should eat.”

The Snap Kitchen menu changes with the seasons, and the shop sources locally as much as possible. For instance, it stopped carrying pork altogether because it couldn’t find a local producer it liked.