Juice Across America: Nine Fresh Juices Worth a Detour
These days you can't travel more than a few miles without running into a juice bar. They're even popping up at airports across America. But not all juices are created equal. Food Network squeezes out the competition with the nation's freshest ingenious health-boosting concoctions.
Trust owner Amanda Chantal Bacon with your juice — and your health. "What you put in your body equals your quality of life," says Bacon, who superfuels her juices by blending in medicinal doses of ingredients like maca (mood-enhancing), mucuna (stress-relieving) and colloidal silver (immune-boosting). A former chef for Suzanne Goin’s Lucques, you can be sure that her juices are balanced, too. Start with the cult favorite, Goodness Greens — an alkalizing, mood-lifting kale, dandelion, parsley, spinach and celery combo. Before you go, grab her liver-detoxing Golden Milk — house-pressed unpasteurized almond milk, turmeric juice, cinnamon, cardamom and raw wildflower honey.
Who wouldn’t be drawn to a juice with a name like Mother Earth, the definite bestseller here made with raw, cold-pressed kale, romaine, cucumber, parsley, spinach, celery, fennel, green apple, lemon and ginger. But, the real must-drink at this micro-juicery is the Desert Heat — a limited-edition cult fave with locally grown, fiber-rich, energy-boosting prickly pear, orange, granny smith apple, ginger, mint and cayenne.
The Greens Juice Sing (kale, apple, spinach lemon) may be the fan fave here, but co-owner Stephanie Waring offers this advice to juice seekers: Don’t be intimidated by her appropriately named concoction, Hot Stuff. "Many customers are initially scared of Hot Stuff — a blend of apple, lemon and cayenne. But once they taste the icy cold sweetness of apple with the slight heat from cayenne, they always fall in love!"
Regulars can’t get enough of the Ollie, a smoothie made with organic coconut milk, spinach, pineapple and cinnamon, but don’t go home without sipping on the Berry Green — filtered water, blueberries, raspberries, banana, spinach, almond butter — and its not-so-secret ingredient, cinnamon Puffins cereal. Inspired by an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (where Jerry Seinfeld and Tina Fey order Jerry's favorite orange smoothie with wheat cereal at Floridita, a Dominican restaurant in NYC), owner Sabrina Diaz first tasted the notorious combo, then re-engineered it to make her healthified version.
Seek out this locally sourced organic juice joint if only for the 5-Seed Smoothie — hemp, chia, flax, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, banana, strawberry, sprouted almond milk and blue-green algae. There’s a reason this first-ever blended smoothie is still a bestseller. It also happens to be a first-rate source of absorbable and digestible plant-based protein. While you’re there, taste their limited-run weekly juices like their antioxidant, phytonutrient-rich seasonal special with concord grapes, purslane, rainbow chard, carrot and apple.
No shocker that people line up for the house juice, Kale Yeah!, a minimalist green blend of kale, spinach, cucumber, apple and lemon. But, go ahead and take your chances on the Warrior and you won’t regret it. Spinach, banana, goji berries, maca powder, vanilla extract, flax seed, agave, spirulina and hemp milk deliver anti-inflammatory, immune-boosting benefits.
Sisters Caitlin, Jane, Julie, Jessie and Jenny James have crafted simple and nutritionally potent blends at their quickly expanding juice bar chain. With its smooth, creamy texture, their addictive Carrot/Kale combo — a pure vegetable juice naturally on the sweeter side — has been likened to vegan chocolate milk. You have to try it to believe it.
You'll want to drink the juiced-to-order Hero, a perky blend of tangy, sour and sweet from orange, kale, spinach, peppercress, ginger and mint — and you should. But don't walk away from experiencing the Strawberry Almond Cream, a luscious whip of house-made almond milk sweetened with Zahidi and Medjool dates and Bay Area honey served with fresh Albion strawberries.
For more reasons than one, you'll want to drink down The Fountain of Youth — a smoothie with possibly more fans than George Clooney. It's an antioxidant-packed blend of young Thai coconut water, banana, strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, agave, hemp protein and coconut oil. Feeling under the weather? The spicy cure-all, aptly named The Volcano, will jolt your immune system with its mighty blend of ginger, lime, cayenne, oil of oregano and filtered water.
