True Food Kitchen, the long-awaited local outpost of the restaurant chain inspired by Dr. Andrew Weil’s anti-inflammatory diet, officially opens today, July 29, in Phase II of BLVD Place at San Felipe and Post Oak Blvd. The menu offers mostly vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free dishes, and all of the ingredients, when possible, are from local farms.
Sam Fox of Fox Restaurant Concepts and Weil teamed up and created the first True Food Kitchen location in Phoenix in 2008. Today’s opening marks the second Texas location and the ninth nationally.
My Table magazine was invited to sample a typical lunch over the weekend while TFK showcased their eclectic menu to the media and practiced their service.
The vegetable crudités appetizer (photo above, $13) will please raw-food lovers and turn many who doubt just how satisfying fresh raw vegetables can be into advocates. The tzatziki sauce and black olive dip complemented the vegetables with big Mediterranean flavors, and the colorful riot of corn, peppers, radishes, lettuce, cucumbers, carrots and tomatoes generated lots of curious looks. Several people stopped to admire the bowl as they passed our table.
I ordered the red chili shrimp (photo below, $16) as my entree. This dish is among the few items on the menu that is not vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free, but the option to replace the sesame noodles with gluten-free shirataki noodles is available. I enjoyed the spicy, tender shrimp, but after the stunning freshness of the vegetable crudités I would have preferred to continue eating raw fresh produce for my meal as well. Crazy, no?
Round three, the flourless chocolate cake (photo below, $7), was perhaps the best chocolate cake I’ve had, and it arrived topped with vanilla ice cream on top of a sea of caramel. The portion size was perfect — no sharing required.
I am not used to a three-course lunch, but even with the amount I ate, I left feeling better than when I arrived. True Food Kitchen will be a fun adventure for those who are dieting, whether it be for vanity or for serious health concerns. At the same time, the menu is diverse enough — it includes pizzas, seafood, soups, wraps and sandwiches as well as a wine, beer and cocktail menu — so that anybody should be able to find something to enjoy. There’s even a kid’s menu.
True Food Kitchen, 1700 Post Oak Blvd, truefoodkitchen.com