This juice bar sells burgers (yes, they’re vegan)
Still focusing on fresh organic ingredients, Verde expands beyond juice at San Mateo Cafe
Man cannot live on juice alone. He can for a week, perhaps — the popularity of juice cleanses has propelled Santa Fe juice haven Verde into a plantpacked powerhouse with a downtown satellite location and faithful followers who pick up suites of juices on subscription. This month, Verde totally revamped its flagship location on West San Mateo Road into a full-fledged lunch and dinner cafe, giving longtime patrons something to actually chew on.
The new menu at Verde’s San Mateo Cafe is available all day, crafted by chef Aja Marsh, a longtime private chef and vegan who is accustomed to catering to people (and Muppets — according to Verde owner Kelly Egolf, Marsh “got to do the cookie recipe for Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster”) with specific nutritional needs. She is backed up by Ingrid McDonald, formerly chef of the recently closed Rasa Juice.
Much of its menu is vegan, but Verde does serve some meats — Egolf emphasizes balanced and holistic nutrition over adherence to specific dietary restrictions. The Chipotle Barbecue Chicken Sandwich, for example, is made with organic, free-range chicken and comes with avocado and sunflower slaw, and the Smoky BBQ Chicken Bowl is served over protein-rich black forbidden rice and steamed greens and tossed with Verde’s barbecue sauce (made with spicy beet ketchup.) There also is a daily frittata special and an herbed egg salad sandwich.
But even with the meat options, Egolf tries to pack in as much healthy produce as possible. She refers to the ethos of the menu as “plantforward.” The Curry Chicken and Roasted Cauliflower Sandwich/Wrap is packed with local pecans and currants, and she actually replaced some of the chicken in the chicken salad with cauliflower.
There are mealsized salads, of course, like the Kale Quinoa Cherry Salad with dried tart cherries, toasted almonds and cashew butter, or the Mexican-tinged Sin Fronteras Salad with beans, roasted sweet potatoes, pico de gallo and pepitas. Hot foods include “green bowls,” savory veggie-and-protein one-dish meals. One is the vaguely Moroccan harissa-spiced Tahini Lentils and Quinoa Bowl, which is made of roasted vegetables, olives and almonds served over fresh greens. Another is the East By Southwest Bowl, which is spiced with kimchi and red chile tahini and contains roasted sweet potatoes, kale, beans and quinoa.
The suite of decadent-tasting sandwiches and wraps (all fillings can be encased in either bread or a wrap) includes the Big Green, full of greens, avocado and green apples tossed in almond-lemon-parsley pesto and served on whole wheat sourdough bread from Sage Bakehouse. Or there’s the Golden Lentil made with sautéed peppers and onions, greens, tomatoes and cashew tzatziki. Egolf does try to avoid dairy as much as possible, so much of the dairy products are replaced by house-made dairy alternatives. The Greens Pie is a very verde quiche made with greens and herbs baked in chickpea custard and served with the same cashew tzatziki and Moroccan harissa.
“It’s the equivalent of a really lovely savory quiche, except that it’s vegan,” says Egolf. “It’s super nutritious, packed with kale and collards. It just blows you away that it’s vegan.”
The greens pie is also gluten-free, as the crust is made with sweet potatoes. Egolf tries to be judicious with her gluten-free options, making sure they include high-quality ingredients
“We’ve been getting a lot of requests for more and more gluten-free things, but so many gluten-free alternatives are just filler foods that don’t focus on nutrition,” she says. “We don’t want to be serving people bread made from potato starch.” Verde does produce some baked goods and pastries,
many of which are gluten-free, including savory tarts and banana-nut muffins. Verde’s juices power not only Verde’s clients but Verde itself, as Egolf buys high-quality organic produce in bulk. “All our food is organic,” says Egolf. “We can get away with doing that because we juice, so when we buy our organic fruits and vegetables we buy it by the pallet-load. Sometimes we get an entire pallet of just organic apples to keep up with juice production.” Plus, all that juice generates mountains of a delicious, vitamin-rich byproduct: pulp, which Verde, in a bid to live up to its name, uses in its solid foods to both get the most out of the fruits and veggies and bump up the vitamin content. The hummus contains coconut pulp (a byproduct of Verde’s in-house coconut milk); the chimichurri sauce is made with juice pulp, as is the beet ketchup; and the “roots bread” is made with carrot, ginger and turmeric root pulp. Even the aptly named Juice Burger contains juice pulp in addition to black beans and sweet potatoes. “It’s completely vegan,” says Egolf. “We even have gluten-free vegan bread to go with it, if you want.” You can get it kicked up into the Juice Burger Deluxe with the addition of avocado, green chile and crispy onions. “Everything we do comes from the approach of nutrition,” says Egolf. “Nothing is fried. We dehydrate the crispy onions. They get tossed with a little nutritional yeast and some olive oil, and you can’t tell the difference between that and a fried onion.”