Chicagoist (Belatedly) Salutes National Vegan Month: Karyn’s Raw
By Anthony Todd in Food on Dec 4, 2008 3:25PM
In order to honor the spirit of (then-ending) National Vegan Month, we decided to go all-out: Raw Food. Raw foodists believe that important, life-sustaining enzymes present in our food are destroyed by cooking, and so food must be processed in alternative ways. The Raw Food movement has gotten a lot of play in the food press over the last five years, raving about freshness and health benefits . So, with an open mind and an inquiring palate, we headed to Karyn’s Raw.
Karyn Calabrese, the proprietor of Karyn’s Raw and the attached Vegan/Raw Food lifestyle store and spa, has appeared on Oprah and the Jenny Jones Show. According to her web site, “She believes it is not enough to simply eat live foods but to cleanse the body of the strong, negative, anti-life foods still in the body.” Karyn’s raw is the only restaurant we’ve ever seen with a side dish of “enzymes.” However, despite her fame and philosophy, the most charitable word we can use to describe Karyn’s Raw is … interesting.
The restaurant serves a wide variety of juice cocktails and smoothies. Many of them contain an unidentified something called “Rejuvelac” ( we learned it's a health supplement made from fermented wheat berries). Despite this we enjoyed our two drinks, the “Blood” made with apple, beet, lemon and ginger and the “Really Rare and Raw” made with nut milk, dates, banana, vanilla. The appetizers, while somewhat small for their price, were delicious snacks that showed off some of the interesting methods of the Raw Food technique. For instance, a side of “Garlic Breadsticks” or “Guacamole and Chips” consists of a variety of nuts, vegetables and seeds that have been ground, processed and dehydrated into either chips or breadsticks. While this sounds torturous, they were actually quite tasty.
The problem came with the entrées. Despite the purported health benefits, we couldn’t get used to the idea of eating a full meal that felt like it just came out of a refrigerator. The stuffed pepper we ordered was filled with rice, barley, shitake mushrooms and herbs – a tasty sounding combination in a cooked dish. Unfortunately, in addition to the awkwardness inherent in slicing and eating a whole raw stuffed pepper, the filling tasted cold and somewhat slimy. It was also a very strange combination of very chewy ingredients, but completely unfilling. The Basil-Scented Ravioli (made from thinly sliced turnips) was tastier at first, but as our dining companion remarked after consuming about 1/3 of the dish, “I just don’t want to eat any more of this.” Neither did we.
At the end of the day, we aren’t raw food converts yet. We’d go back to Karyn’s Raw for juice drinks and appetizers, and we’d give other raw food restaurants a chance, but for the moment, we’ll stick to cooking our food.
Karyn's Raw Cafe is located at 1901 N. Halsted Avenue.