Un-Granola

My favorite raw food restaurants are in NYC, LA, and OKC. That’s right, OKC. Matthew Kenney is in a sleek retail outpost and looks a little like a spaceship, one with a really advanced farming system, sufficient to supply a juice bar. I love the glass front, cement floors, and open kitchen.  Matthew Kenney has beer, wine, and cocktails, but I can never resist their juice options. Below are the pineapple/apple/strawberry juice and the celery/parsley/lime with pink salt one: Both were refreshing – I love drinking my vegetables.

We started off with an arugala salad (fine) and our favorite dish of the night, kelp noodles:

So delicious! The kelp noodles tasted just like rice noodles (though with a firmer texture), and the tamari and spice broth was so good my friend asked for a soup spoon.

Our entrees arrived soon after:

Both of them featured local vegetables: tamales with wild mushroom and beet gnocchi with braised cauliflower.

The tamales were served in corn husk (fun to pull apart) and contained a pudding-like corn dish with earthy mushrooms. My friend loved this dish and said she’d happily order it again.

My beet gnocchi were tasty and light – a texture that’s hard enough to achieve with potatoes, never mind beets. The hazlenut-parsley pesto cut through the sweetness of the beets.

The braised cauliflower was the only dish of the evening that tasted raw. Their al dente texture reminded me that I was in a raw food restaurant. Everything else we had could be served anywhere, with no explanatory note on the benefits of raw food.

Pureed and flavored nuts seem to be the key to many of the creamy sauces and raw cheeses. Both the tamales and the lasagne, which I’ve had before, had a lot of nuts. The very helpful waitstaff will help those with nut allergies find other options, but many of the “how can this be raw” dishes may not be available to you.

I was pretty full, but my friend insisted that we try the pistachio nougatine:

The combination of pistachio and rosewater made this a kind of halva – one covered with chocolate and shaped like a candy bar. Tasty. It was very rich, in contrast to the other dishes we’d had that evening.

There’s a small shop that sells kale chips, raw cheese, cookbooks, and other goodies. You should buy a bag of kale chips after your meal, or order them as a starter. They are insanely good – just like the overall experience at this elegant raw food outpost in OKC.

Tags: braised cauliflower, juice, kelp noodles, OKC vegan, OKC vegetarian, pistachio nougatine, raw beet gnocchi, wild mushroom