Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop Starts Juicing

Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop has been a popular destination for salad and other healthy breakfast and lunch options, with more locations slowly popping up. Recently, they've also started offering juices to meet their customers' demands. Their executive chef, Kristi Ritchey, explains that there are two types of juicers The centrifugal juicers are high speed and create heat. This type of juicer separates juice from the pulp. On the other hand, Greenleaf uses a slow speed juicer which extracts more fiber from the ingredients. I came in to taste the juices on my own.

Red grape juice

Greenleaf sells pure juices including carrot and tomato ($5.95), orange, grapefruit, green apple, and red grape pure juices ($6.95). If those prices seem high, keep in mind that these are all 20oz servings and use higher priced ingredients. Even though red apple is cheaper, Kristi decides to use Granny Smith apple for the juice because it gives a crisper flavor. They also use red grapes instead of the cheaper green grapes because the green ones have a metallic aftertaste.


You can also build your own juice for $6.95, for which you can select three main ingredients like kale, apple, pineapple, cucumber, etc and add one accent like ginger, celery, jalapeno, mint, or parsley. All the juices can be sold in a sealed bottle to take home (they do suggest consuming anything with ginger within a day, though).
If you're baffled by the choices, just go with one of their signature juices.

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Seasons 52, Now Serving Delicious Low Calorie Food at Westfield CenturyCity

When you want something healthy but still tastes good while shopping at the Westfield Century City, head over to the newly opened Seasons 52. Everything on the menu is under 500 calories and they use no butter and no fryer. They also have one hundred wines on their list, 62 of them available by the glass.

I was recently invited to a preview tasting in one of their private dining rooms.

Our visit started on the patio with a glass of Chartogne-Taillet Cuvee Sainte Anne, a small grower champagne, and a lemon verbena mojito.

So the verbena used in the mojito, along with a bunch of other herbs used in different dishes come from plants grown on site. There are some herbs on the side of the patios and there is a small "Chef's Garden" room near the entrance, and you can peer in through the glass door as the chefs harvest the herbs throughout the day.

There's a large patio area and it was surprisingly quiet for being next to Santa Monica Blvd.

We started with a crispy Chipotle shrimp flatbread with roasted poblano, grilled pineapple and feta cheese

Then we went into the dining room for our tasting. For an amuse bouche, we had dungeness crab and Haas avocado, pico de gallo, finger lime. This was paired with Aveleda Vinho Verde, Portugal 2011

I think this was my first time having finger lime, which was very tart, but all the components worked well together. The vinho verde is made with half a dozen native Portuguese varieties and is crisp and clean.

Next is a course I've had at the Costa Mesa Seasons 52:
Organic salmon on cedar plank, lemongrass skewered sea scallop, farmers market vegetables

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Salads and Wines at Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop

After multi-course tastings all week, a dinner composed of salads is most definitely a nice change. That's why I happily accepted an invitation for dinner at Greenleaf Gourmet Chopshop in Century City. This location usually closes at 4pm and only open on the weekdays, so on a normal day, I would not be able to try it.

Antioxidant Orchard Salad

The ones responsible for Greenleaf are owner Jonathan Rollo and Corporate Chef Kristi Ritchey, who met when they were both working for the Patina Group. Chef Kristi's reason for joining Greenleaf is an interesting history. After being hospitalized during her tenure at Patina group, Kristi made a drastic change in eating habits and participated in bootcamps. She lost over 100 lbs but she started having difficulty maintaining her new lifestyle while making risotto fries and cheesecakes at work.

Even though the Beverly Hills location has had alcohol license for a while, the Century City location finally obtained theirs only recently. To celebrate, and also to celebrate the National Salad Month, during the month of May customers can get a free taste of paired wine with their salad purchase (w/ min $10 salad purchase). Want to know what they're pairing with what? Keep reading.

Before starting with the salads, we had the Wild Mushroom and Truffle "Pizza" ($9.95)

The "pizza" is made using whole wheat tortilla made especially for Greenleaf. They worked with a tortilla maker to get a low calorie whole wheat tortilla that tastes good. The tortilla has 110 calories and the whole pizza is about 400 calories.

Afterwards, we had a sampling of their signature salads. At Greenleaf, you can build your own salads, which starts at $7.95, or you can order one of their signature salads. The signature salads are $10 each. It may at first seem expensive but the portions are big, and filled with meat and various ingredients. Compared to this, I paid $5 for a bit of grilled vegetables at my school's salad bar.

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