5 minute read
Healthy & Haute
Healthy & Haute Cuisine
By Rita Calvert | Photography by Stephen Buchanan
n innovative restaurant concept has reached our shores… food that is designed for your health! True Food Kitchen is the 39th in the franchise, with menus developed in-line with famed doctor Andrew Weil’s “anti-inflammatory” diet. The menu takes a left-turn from the run-of-the-mill, instead focusing on abundant vegetables, soybeans, tofu, and Asian influences, along with sustainable proteins. Their story goes, “True Food Kitchen is the only restaurant fundamentally based on science, which ensures all of its craveable dishes and drinks work to increase the longevity of our people and planet.” With consciously-sourced food, the menu changes seasonally, featuring 100 percent grassfed beef and sustainably-sourced fin fish. For our visit this past autumn, the dinner menu highlighted butternut squash, Brussels sprouts, spaghetti squash, and hints of truffles.
Integrative medicine doctor Andrew Weil opened the first True Food Kitchen with restaurateur Sam Fox in Phoenix, Arizona in 2008. The idea was to promote Dr. Weil’s novel “anti-inflammatory” lifestyle with a restaurant to reach a wide audience. The menu still reflects Dr. Weil’s theory, and his books are sold in the bar area. There is a nudge toward food education for the customer with True Food Kitchen’s nutritional and allergen guide (viewable online at truefoodkitchen.com). In 2016, True Food Kitchen left Fox Restaurant Concepts and hired Starbucks vet Christine Barone (a native of Edgewater, Maryland) as CEO. Annapolis manager, Simon Brown, told me Barone emphasizes high quality on everything in True Food Kitchen. Perhaps True Food’s practice of using freshly-ground coffee beans for each brewed pot is Barone’s influence from her days as acting as CEO of Starbucks? Oprah is also one of the investors in the group.
The restaurants are casual, full-service venues open for lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch—an overall style the restaurant bills as “conscious casual” with covered patio dining or interior dining available. The decor is contemporary and earth-friendly from the outdoor planters of herbs at the entrance to an aisle of snake plants growing between hostess station and dining area, black or white chairs made from recycled bottles, and lots of light-colored, wood for tabletops.
True Food is designed for people-watching, with its large open dining, long wooden bar, and large windows for viewing the kitchen and the servers checking on orders. Past the kitchen, there’s an upscale, glass-enclosed private dining room that seats 10 (empty on our visit). Our table was an over-sized booth of bright, avocado-green leather…very comfy for watching diners dressed in trendy fashions and pleasant servers in cotton shirts carrying plates (no trays) of healthy food.
While studying the menu, we ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio Tangent (Edna Valley, CA). It is a proprietary label and proved a satisfyingly light and subtle choice. Craft cocktails come in six creative versions and a thirst-quenching menu of alcohol-free drinks is offered and termed “refreshers,” with housemate syrups, juices, and elements of botanicals and herbs.
A note to the diner, the menu uses symbols on each dish for special eaters: (V) Vegan, (VEG) Vegetarian, and (GF) Gluten Friendly (meaning gluten free). The menu online featured a
beautiful seasonal flatbread, Truffle Honey and Pear. We had to sample it as it looked so tempting with the essence of truffle! The oblong flatbread carried paper-thin slices of fresh pear, dots of goat cheese, a few walnuts, and bountiful piles of arugula. Our server told us the paste on the flatbread was butternut squash. We also shared an order of edamame dumplings, a True Food favorite. Five delicate-skinned dumplings were filled with edamame, mashed with Asian herbs, and white truffle oil, served in a dashi (seaweed) broth. Abundant chopped cilantro and edamame beans topped the dumplings. After devouring the last bite of dumpling, my guest used the large serving spoon to slurp up the irresistible tasty broth. We assumed it must be something about the white truffle!
With autumn in full swing, the menu pulled us to the two new, seasonally-fresh entrees. The Lasagna Bolognese featured a vibrant tomato-vegetable sauce base with fennel chicken sausage, spinach, and ricotta filling out the concoction. The menu did not specify if it contained noodles but upon inquiry were told it has gluten-free noodles. The lasagna arrived piping hot and the more it settled, the more infused the flavors became. The spinach was freshly wilted and amply sprinkled within the layers. The ricotta was like a hidden treasure appearing richly and randomly within the thick, meaty, mildly-seasoned sauce. Not a typical layer of lasagna, the noodles too, were spaced as little gems of True Food Kitchen design.
Pan Seared Sea Bass was the second entree we sampled. The golden filet of fin fish was highlighted as sustainable and came riding upon a bed of butternut squash farro risotto. Halves of roasted Brussels sprouts seemed to have a spicy Dijon mustard coating. The lemon half was also golden from roasting and gave a rich citrus essence when squeezed on the fish—a very nice touch. There were so many flavors in this one entree, it was difficult to find the fennel, golden beets, and cashews. The sounds of grinding coffee beans and milk frothing beckoned us to order decaffeinated coffee and a delectable cappuccino. The dessert menu is “brief,” featuring Squash Pie, Cookies & Ice Cream, Flourless Chocolate Cake, and Vanilla Ice Cream. We shared a fabulous dessert of Flourless Chocolate Cake, a petite dense fudge mound containing crunchy cocoa nibs atop a swirl of caramel and almonds. A neat scoop of what the menu said was vanilla ice cream turned out to be delicious coconut ice cream, worthy of dessert on its own.
