rawlicious

rawlicious

Everyone has that one friend that is always pitching their favorite place to eat, only to get ruled out by everyone else's favorite pizza joint or burger spot. This friend for us is a girl named Vashite and she's always singing the praises of her favorite spot Rawlicious. Get this, the food is all organic, vegan, and raw, so as you can imagine this place gets overlooked every time. But that all changed yesterday, and man, are we stoked that it did.

We have to start by saying that us NYLON Guys are totally in for organic, vegetarian, macrobiotic, food fusion type adventures, but the few times we've tried eating specifically raw cuisine, it was expensive and it just didn't live up to what we were looking for. That's why we were totally surprised to start our meal with a selection of smoothies and little shared pizza that honestly had us signed up immediately. The tropical green smoothie was pretty good, but definitely healthy[,]while the strawberry milkshake (which somehow involves avacado) was good and the cacao power was so good we actually ended ordering one for dessert. Have you ever had a pecan on a pizza? If the answer is no, you need to try it because this little flax-crusted wonder was insane!

For the main dish we chose the portobello bacon sandwich (pictured above). The portobello bacon (yes, it's like bacon but made of a mushroom) was off-the-charts good-while we typically hate onions, the onion and flax bread kind of changed our mind about the vegetable altogether. The cashew cheese and sprouts-to-cucumber ratio were just right, and as a total dish we would strongly suggest this for a first time raw meal. The overall surprise was not only how much tastier everything was that we expected, but how full we ended up being.

We were so full that a dessert wasn't necessary--but in all honesty, who's going to say no to organic, raw, vegan, cheesecake? Not our friend Vashtie. Here's the truth, the cheesecake was ridiculously good. Once again the chef employed the use of pecans in the this dish (which is out our new favorite thing) and the almond crust was perfect. As we mentioned before, yes a full sized Cacao Power was ordered and yes it only took about two and a half minutes to completely destroy that. The official statement is that we could definitely live on Cacao power smoothies alone.

Here's what we learned, friends. A raw menu means that the dishes are not heated above a their natural state which is 118F and preparing them this way ensures that all of their vitamins, minerals and enzymes are left in tact. The folks at Rawlicious state right on the front of their website that they don't believe you need to eat raw 100% of the time and that's fully the vibe that we got there. The atmosphere was super copacetic and there was no feel of culinary hierarchy, even though Christian "The Intern" was a little unsure at first. This place boasts a gluten-free, meat-free, dairy-free menu void of refined sugar, and most importantly, everything we tasted popped off with flavor. These folks straight up encourage the invitation of skeptics and ultimately we can totally see why.

In the end, this is the best new place we've eaten at all summer. The next time our pal Vashtie suggests Rawlicious to a hungry crowd of friends, we'll definitely make sure the group ends up at 249 Centere Street. We strongly urge you to visit their site HERE and let us know when you're headed over...we'll meet you there!