Posted: January 31, 2010 | Author: Kate | Filed under: Restaurants |
* I love me some alliteration, can you tell?
Hey guys,
Hope you’re enjoying your weekend. I’m doing a late Sunday night post since tomorrow is a public holiday. Very excited for a three day weekend. You might have noticed I’ve been playing with the blog layout. I’m not sure I’ve cracked it yet, so bear with me…
So, as I’ve said before, there are very few places in Auckland city to get raw vegan food. And in the Auckland CBD, where I work, there are two: Saladworks and Revive.
As a consequence, I usually bring my lunch to work. But occasionally I’m too busy to prepare it or forget to bring it to work (happens more often than I’d like to admit). I was a Saladworks girl for a while, but lately on those occasions, you’ll find me back at Revive, my true veg-restaurant love.
Like it says on their website, Revive cafes “are vegetarian and semi-organic. There are many low-fat, allergy free and animal free dishes”. Every day they have a hotpot, which is served with brown rice, a couple of “cabinet options” like a frittata or burrito and a bunch of delicious salads. I usually pick four choices of salad.
My salad. Totally vegan, but not 100% Raw. Sometimes a girl in transition need potatoes…
They’re also really reasonably priced. So many Auckland cafes charge $16 for a few wilted leaves. Revive charges $12 for the 4 choice salad and it’s HUGE. (I’ve given you a few different angles in this post so you can see for yourself) In fact, in the time I’ve been going to Revive, they have REDUCED their prices. I’ve never heard of that happening anywhere before. The owners obviously care about their customers and the quality of the food they produce and it shows in everything they do.
Revive has a great loyalty program as well. If you sign up to their email newsletter, they will send you discount vouchers every week. Plus you can become a secret shopper and receive the occasional meal voucher in return for giving feedback. They also run in store competitions to win free things regularly. I’ve probably had more than 10 free lunches in the year and a half I’ve been going to Revive. And since they don’t over charge you in the first place, it’s a great system!
Seriously, their portions are so generous. I dare you to find somewhere else in Auckland where you can get this for $12 (less the 15% discount from my voucher.)
Overall, I cannot recommend Revive highly enough, it’s a great cafe run with integrity and is really, really tasty. I was coming here for more than a year before I was vegan and was completely obsessed. So having it be my predominant option for weekday lunch is no hardship!
And the final reason I recommend Revive: They sell Vegan Truffles! They call them Frooze balls, but they’re still combinations of Cashew, Cocoa, Coconut and Date, just like the ones I recently posted.
Surely that’s reason enough to visit! Let me know if you give Revive a try.
Posted: December 15, 2009 | Author: Kate | Filed under: Restaurants |
There aren’t many truly healthy places to buy lunch around the Auckland CBD. With all the things I don’t eat, whether by choice or necessity, it’s almost impossible to find somewhere I can eat with friends. If you want something fresh and unprocessed, you’re options are pretty much
Saladworks or
Revive.
Saladworks wins my business 9 times out of 10. It’s a great little salad bar, with lots of different options for toppings and freshly made preservative free dressings, including my usual, Fresh Lemon and Olive Oil. The produce isn’t organic, but beggars can’t be choosers in the CBD, and at least I can walk away from a lunch at Saladworks knowing I’ve put something healthy into my body, instead of something greasy and processed.
The beauty of Saladworks is that you can choose any combination, so anyone is happy to eat there. Which is why I had lunch there today with a friend, which worked out perfectly since I didn’t manage to buy lunch things for today either! I’ve managed to convert 7 friends, at last count, into Saladworks addicts.
And next time, I’ll actually remember to take a picture of the yummy salad. This taking shots for the blog will take some getting used to!
I manged to be less health savvy in my stressy afternoon by raiding the floor Christmas Tree for mini Candy Canes THREE times.
#3, halfway to annihilation.
I did raid the fruit bowl first.I had an apple, kiwi fruit and nectarine. And I still couldn’t resist. So now I’m after strategies to keep me away from the sugar. Maybe going for a walk? Tea? Dried fruit? Learning the meaning of willpower? Feel free to leave suggestions.
Yum! So glad Nectarines are in season now.
