NYC Restaurant Rec for Raw Foodies and the Daring

Two birthday’s ago my twin friends sent me a gift certificate to Pure Food and Wine in Manhattan and after checking out the menu online I decided to promptly file the certificate away under hell no I’m not eating there.  Despite initially appearing to offer dishes that were right up my alley, I quickly noticed the “raw” disclaimer at the bottom of the homepage and realized that my lasagna would be served cold… and without noodles.

Two years later I’ve come a long way and recently had my mind forced wide open to raw food by my future mother-in-law, Peggy.  As a guest in her home, I was gently forced to eat, not one, but three raw meals and by dinner I had tossed my skepticism right out the window. Not only was raw food excellent for me and gentle on the tum tum, it also happened to be completely edible… we’re talkin’ delish city.

SO, I dug that shiny gift certificate out of the filing cabinet and hit up Pure Food and Wine with Justin while we were in New York last week.  The atmosphere is totally modish and relaxed. By nature of the cuisine, the clientele was mostly hippy-chic with a handful of daring first timers who could be overheard asking what the heck they just ordered.  We made small talk with a novice-meets-expert couple sitting beside us as our waitress opened a beautiful bottle of organic vino and giggled in anticipation of seeing the novice half of this duo experiencing raw for the first time.

As an appetizer, we split a “cheese” plate with pistachio chips that were so tasty that I’m ordering a dehydrator of my own.  Then, true to my initial craving, I ordered the lasagna.  Tell you what; I didn’t miss those noodles one bit.  Thinly sliced organic zucchinis did the job just fine, and the myriad of other organic veggies layered with pignoli ricotta made this lasagna near perfect.

Dessert is my thing, so despite having a three short months to fit into my wedding dress, I forced Justin to split a piece of pumpkin cheesecake with me.  SO glad I did.  The day we got home I jumped online and ordered the restaurant’s “Raw Food/Real World” cookbook entirely for that one cheesecake recipe.

I certainly could never give up hot food altogether, but there’s something to this thing called raw.