I was once taken to one in Baltimore that was very impressive. It had raw veggies.
Also, Andy’s in Rye is what livingthecrway person often visits
An issue is that when restaurants (or EA events, or the dining halls of elite private universities) often fry their vegetables and make them delicious. It’s unclear how bad fried vegetables are on net, and because I repress my diet in so many other ways, I unload my repression on fried vegetables and nuts, if readily available… (even if raw vegetables are also alternatives)
[that said, the dining halls of elite private universities are the easiest b/c they have so much healthy vegetables and spices]
John dela Parre swears by Kalustyan’s for spice racks (though this is a spicemart and not a restaurant)
Here in Hong Kong, dim sum is incredibly popular for family weekend get togethers. This is prepared mostly by steaming the food. Also, there are a lot of vegetables but they usually are cooked lightly in oil and dipped in soy sauce. Plus a lot of tea. We do have the highest longevity in the world.
I’d recommend some good dim sum restaurants, but I am not sure they’d be of use…
I don’t think there are restaurants in the States that serve a variety of steamed veggies, at least I don’t know any. For that reason, I don’t have favorite restaurants. Home made food is my favorite. It does take a lot of time to cook though.
I have traveled on business for over thirty years and eaten a lot of restaurant meals. Few were anything close to healthy. The best I have found is steakhouses. If I am really lucky the place has a salad bar. I can usually order grilled salmon instead of steak, get a plain baked sweet potato, and steamed broccoli. If there is no salad bar I might order two entrees since the portion size for grilled salmon is usually small. I avoid the salad dressings, and just drink tap water. This meal choice gets boring.
Years ago (decades actually because it was way before youtube) I read a book written by a woman that was a gardener and she had decided to stop cooking anything. I forget how long she spent eating only raw veggies from her garden. It was in years, not days like it would be for me.
Also she had tried to get somebody to come and till her garden and they kept putting her off so she planted without and when the weeds came she covered them up with mulch. She ended up no-till, for years as well. It really was a brilliant system, which most people would not be able to do.
Here’s the kicker, she was 83 years old. Wrote a book and survived without help. Came up with a very efficient way to live. I was inspired.
I don’t think that book is still around here or I’d plug it.
While not perfect, and I can’t speak to their oils used, Butcher’s Daughter in LA and NYC is a very veggie forward restaurant that I think most vegans or meat eaters would enjoy.
@DeStrider I’ve only been to one dim sum restaurant that was in SF and it was excellent!!!
If I’m in a place with no seemingly great places to eat, if I see the True Food chain, I’ll often eat there because I know I can get some veggies.
Long-Term Consumption of a Raw Food Diet Is Associated with Favorable Serum LDL Cholesterol and Triglycerides but Also with Elevated Plasma Homocysteine and Low Serum HDL Cholesterol in Humans
Study design and subjects
The study had a cross-sectional design. Dieters living in Germany who followed a raw food diet were recruited by advertisements in magazines, at congresses, and lectures as well as via self-help groups within the Natural Hygiene and raw food movement. Subjects were eligible if they were between 25 and 64 y of age, consumed at least 70% of total food intake as raw food, and had adhered to the raw food diet for at least 24 mo at the time of blood sampling. Smokers and subjects suffering from gastrointestinal diseases were excluded. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Division of Human Medicine, University of Giessen, Germany. All participants gave written informed consent.
In conclusion, the present study indicates that a strict raw food diet may result in remarkably low serum total cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations. However, the elevated tHcy as well as the low HDL cholesterol concentrations in participants in this study could provide a mechanistic explanation of the higher mortality from coronary heart disease in vegans compared with ovo-lacto-vegetarians, which was reported in a recent meta-analysis of prospective studies (16). A high tHcy concentration accompanied by a low HDL level may result in endothelial dysfunction via impaired bioavailability of NO. In contrast, studies of moderate ovo-lacto-vegetarian diets suggest that well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life-cycle including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence and reduce risk for diseases (49). Changing the ratio of raw food intake toward an extreme regimen with a very low intake of vitamin B-12 may be harmful in the prevention of coronary heart disease rather than providing additional benefits as occurs with milder dietary regimens.
Mortality from ischemic heart disease was 24% lower in vegetarians than in nonvegetarians (death rate ratio: 0.76; 95% CI: 0.62, 0.94; P < 0.01). The lower mortality from ischemic heart disease among vegetarians was greater at younger ages and was restricted to those who had followed their
current diet for > 5 y/
Further categorization of diets showed that, in comparison with regular meat eaters, mortality from
ischemic heart disease was 20% lower in occasional meat eaters, 34% lower in people who ate fish but not meat, 34% lower in lactoovovegetarians, and 26% lower in vegans.
While I’m not on a raw food diet, I do believe there could be something there. I only base this on seeing how a raw food (granted, it was meat) saved my cats life (granted, it was not a human) who could not handle anything else as a kitten. I then realized food is medicine. The reason I was given as why raw can be healing for cats is heat not killing the enzymes.
At the time, I lived in Austin and would frequently buy from Whole Foods raw bar. That location is the Whole Foods mothership and had things other locations would never see. I didn’t notice any difference, but much of my diet was indeed cooked, so an unfair observation!
B12 deficiency among vegans? Tempeh to the rescue.
The Vitamin B12 contents of soybeans are low or undetectable. However, a fermented soybean-based food called tempe contains a considerable amount of Vitamin B12 (0.7–8.0 μg/100 g) [40].
Indochine vegan Mission in SF
Grasshopper in Boston
Life alive dishes are rarely 100% healthy on their own, but they are usually good about doing double substitutions (substituting for both dairy and grain, or dairy and corn)
But you can never be fully certain the food is clean (as even sweetgreen has lots of plasticizers, and sweetgreen doesn’t even use end-user plastics [though they use plastic tubs to STORE veggies upstream]
I placed an order at life alive (had an emergency) and they’re usually good with special requests IN PERSON at the store [Clover and Veggie Galaxy are not and both suggested I try Life Alive] but not on UberEats…
Below is a workflow that has been working for my own (annoyingly grain-sensitive) orders from the same Cambridge cafés—feel free to cherry-pick what helps.
1 Why quinoa showed up
On Uber Eats the “No Brown Rice → SUB Brown Rice & Quinoa” line is treated as a swap, not a deletion.
If you tick it, the app thinks you want the brown-rice-and-quinoa blendinstead of plain brown rice, so the kitchen dutifully scoops in quinoa.
2 Building a truly grain-free bowl in the Uber Eats flow
Pick your item Salads are the path-of-least-resistance (they’re already grain-free—see carb table in §4). Warm-grain bowls work too if you strip the base.
Tap “Customize” → “Edit”
On most Life Alive bowls you’ll see two modifier sections:
Adds & Subs: “Sub Extra Broccoli”, “Sub Extra Greens”, etc.
**Turn the base off
If there is a checkbox next to Brown Rice / Quinoa un-check it.
If the app insists on some base, pick “Extra Greens” or any veggie sub.
Add a plain-English note
Scroll to “Special instructions” and type something blunt, e.g.:
PLEASE OMIT ALL GRAINS (NO RICE, NO QUINOA).
Extra greens or veggies are great. Insulin-resistant customer.
Bartenders see that note on their screen; it overrides pre-set mods.
Mark an “allergy” if you want insurance
You can toggle “Other Allergy” and type “grains” or “quinoa”. Kitchens tend to take allergy tags more seriously than preferences.
Confirm in real time (optional but bomb-proof)
After you place the order, tap “Help” → “Contact restaurant” and send the same “no grains” message.
After you receive a corrected bowl, tap “Reorder” on the receipt next time—Uber remembers your mods and notes.
Low-carb “template” bowl
Warm bowl → untick grain base → “Sub Extra Broccoli” + “Add Avocado”. Save as “My Grain-Free” in Favorites.
Alternative platform
Life Alive’s own site (order.lifealive.com) or DoorDash expose a “No Base”/“Greens instead of Grain” toggle the Uber integration sometimes hides.
4 Low-carb picks that need zero surgery
Menu Item (Cambridge)
Net carbs*
Broccoli Pesto Salad
26 g
Avocado Greens Salad
34 g
Cashew Cauliflower Soup (16 oz)
12 g
Edamame side
8 g
*Values from Life Alive’s January 2024 nutrition sheet. Grain-based bowls run 65-101 g carbs (e.g. Buddha 70 g, Green Goddess 65 g) mainly because of the rice-quinoa base. (LifeAlive_NutritionInfo_1.29.24.indd)
5 Why cauliflower (or just more veg) beats quinoa for IR
A cup of cooked quinoa clocks ~35 g net carbs, vs. ~5 g for the same volume of cauliflower rice, while keeping fiber high—exactly what you want for flattening post-meal glucose. (How to Make Paleo Rice Substitute From Any Vegetable) If the café ever adds a cauliflower-rice base (they’ve tested it before), that’s the one to click.
TL;DR
Don’t tick “SUB Brown Rice & Quinoa”. Untick the grain base entirely and write a clear “no grains at all” note.
Salads or soup sides need no tinkering and keep carbs ≤ 35 g.
Use Favorites / Reorder to lock in the grain-free version once it works.
Give it a shot and let me know if the quinoa finally stops haunting your bowls!
Ok, placed one more life alive on UberEats (do NOT use the substitute option) for no rice, no quinoa and I DID get a rice/quinoa-free order!
the volume is also slightly lower.
un-check it.
617-354-5433, Harvard Sq