Battery Park City’s Getting a True Food Kitchen

West Coast healthy dining pioneer True Food Kitchen is slated to open its first New York City restaurant in early fall 2016. And it's something out of a wellness lover’s dream: a menu studded with delicious organic and local foods, feel-good mantras painted on the walls, and athleisure-clad diners. It’s the brainchild of restaurateur Sam Fox (co-author of New York Times bestselling cookbook True Food: Seasonal, Sustainable, Simple, Pure) who came up with the True Food concept after dining with integrative physician Andrew Weil, MD (pictured below with famous grey beard).

While you’ll find chia, quinoa, and kale galore on the menu, True Food Kitchen’s philosophy is more than just serving trendy health food staples. The seasonal menu is based on Dr. Weil’s anti-inflammatory diet, combining high quality organic produce to counteract inflammation in the body (thanks very much, stress).

“We incorporate unusual ingredients that have more antioxidant properties,” says Anita Walker, vice president of marketing for Fox Restaurant Concepts. “It’s a way of eating to prevent illness.”

The restaurant will occupy a huge two-story space in Battery Park City, including an outdoor patio where you can sip your juices, inhale guacamole (or that's just us), and bring all manner of your friends. This is a place where vegetarians, vegans, and Paleo eaters can all order off the menu, and live in culinary harmony.

Favorite dishes of the restaurant, which is nearing locations in 20 cities, include the inside-out quinoa burger, gluten-free turkey lasagna with spinach and ricotta, and street tacos with or without grass-fed steak or sustainable fish.

There's also a very popular (gut-friendly!) pizza—made with a spelt and flax dough crust and topped with tasty items like butternut squash with walnut, smoked mozzarella, sweet onion and arugula or wild mushroom with roasted garlic and taleggio.

And for dessert, how about squash pie? With a graham sesame crust and coconut whipped cream, it is, according to Walker, better than any old pumpkin.

Of course, this is New York, so, yes, they’ll do takeout, too. —Christine Yu

Can't wait til the fall? Dimes' Chinatown outpost, Dimes Deli, is a healthy hotspot for the downtown crowd...

(Photos: True Food Kitchen)