Healthy eating in New York City

When it comes to food in the United States, anything goes. Yes, you’ll find the cheese orange and the portion sizes sometimes gargantuan, but you’ll also spot restaurants devoted to serving clean, organic and whole food meals that can be just the dose when you’re on the road. So when you’ve sampled enough of the pizza and put away your last rack of dry-rub ribs, treat your body to a smorgasbord of New York’s plentiful healthy eateries.

Hu Kitchen

Hu Kitchen’s philosophy is all about making food for humans. Recognising the shortcomings of a diet rich in processed food, it offers up the opposite by the ladleful. While the meals are based on a ‘pre-industrial’ way of eating, the core pillars focus on unprocessed, nourishing, veggie-rich, wholegrain-filled, naturally sweetened and clean food. Fats served are of the good kind and meat is the organic, grass-fed variety. They’ve got juices and smoothies by the bucketful, loads of salads including an organic Thai chicken and wild line-caught tuna and a mashbar – serving up bowls of chia pudding and banana cashew cream. A ‘Grandmaster Veg’ lasagna is a wholesome take on the traditional variety and their organic chicken and quinoa soup will revive the weariest of travellers.

78 Fifth Avenue, NYC
hukitchen.com

Bareburger

It’s New York City and a burger is a must-have, but how about trying one of the organic variety? With seventeen locations across New York and New Jersey alone, Bareburger is doing something deliciously right. They offer a huge variety of grass-fed meats including beef and bison, along with hormone-free, pasture-raised ostrich, elk and wild boar. For the non-meat lovers out there, they have quinoa veggie burgers, mushroom burgers or black bean burgers. For alternatives to their buns they have lettuce or wheat flour wraps and tapioca rice buns and all their sauces are gluten free. They also make up batches of salads, snacks, sandwiches and sweets – but don’t past the burgers!

bareburger.com

ABC Kitchen

With its rustic dining room radiating elements of the earth, it’s a holistic experience at famous organic eatery ABC Kitchen. Aligned with the farm-to-table movement, its dishes celebrate community with many ingredients sourced from regional farmers and fair trade co-ops. Its mouth-watering menu, like so many restaurants in the US, offers an overwhelming array of dishes that span brunch, lunch and dinner. Highlights include roasted beets with homemade yoghurt, kabocha squash toast with fresh ricotta and apple cider vinegar and lentil soup with celery root.

35 East 18th Street, NYC

Dig Inn Seasonal Market

After a serious morning pounding the pavements of NYC, a stop off at one of Dig Inn Seasonal Market’s six locations across the city makes for a tasty, restorative lunch. Determined to challenge the idea that healthy food is a series of omissions - fat-free, sodium-free, joy-free - Dig Inn offers real food rich in taste and ripe with the season. Pick from meats like braised beef or spicy meatballs, add nutritious sides like faro and cucumber salad, red lentil and edamame salad or roasted Brussels sprouts and top with grains like veggie rice or brown rice. They even serve pita or sweet potato fries and cold pressed juices or shakes.

Foragers City Table

Grown out of a passion for providing their Dumbo neighbourhood with fresh, local produce, husband-and-wife duo Richard Lamb and Anna Castellani went one step further and established Foragers City Table in Chelsea. With much of their produce and pastured eggs coming from their own farm in Canaan, New York, they live and breath the farm-to-table concept and the meals speak for themselves. Toasted quinoa, wild mushrooms, wok greens, heirlooms veggies and radish is one of their featured dishes, devilled Foragers Farm eggs with Dijon mustard and sherry vinegar is another. Fresh, wholesome and nutritious, it’s a clean dining experience at Foragers.

300 West 22nd Street, NYC
foragerscitygrocer.com