There's a juice bar a couple doors down from where I work. Normally, such things as eating at juice bars are considered well below my standards of manly behavior. However, given that I've eaten everything w/in a couple blocks of my office that's suitable to my dietary needs and my unwillingness to trek across the loop in search of sweet, sweet pizza so today something new seemed good and thus began my decent into the health food inferno.

First, this bar is tucked away in the back of a crappy little health food shop so I had to peruse through there before venturing upstairs to the bar. As a rule, when I arrive at such a place I immediately start thinking about how I can turn that stuff into beer. They had a nice selection of honey, agave nectar, interesting dried fruits, some odd organic spices and teas--all of which are potentially useful if I'm willing to spend inflated loop healthfood store prices.

Of course, I can't eat beer ingredients for lunch so I had to venture upstairs to the juice bar. I could actually kind of tolerate the place. It looked much nicer than the dusty downstairs area
and there were tables to sit at where you could eat and converse over that crappy kind of jazz they play at places where people who fancy themselves as intellectuals congregate. The menu consisted of a spattering of typical vegetarian dishes, soups and a bunch of juice. I got one of the specials--veggie burrito, carrot juice and lentil soup.

The veggie burrito was somewhat frightening as they heated it in the microwave and then even more frightening when I saw the thing was on whole wheat tortillas. Who in their right mind used whole wheat tortillas? Seriously. That's just stupid. In the end though it was rather tasty for black beans and rice wrapped in a weird brown shell especially once I put the pico de gallo on there--which was nice because it was actually pico de gallo rather than some crappy-ass salsa. It needed some salt though.

The reason it needed salt, as I found out, is they don't use salt or pepper. I kinda understand no salt because of health concerns and such. But no pepper? Seriously. That's just stupid. I rounded up a cylinder of Morton's in the cupboard of my office and, I must say, once I dumped a half pound of salt in there, the soup was excellent as was the carrot juice. Not that I dumped salt in my carrot juice. Seriously. That's just stupid.

So that's my play at being a restaurant reviewer. Hopefully, the staff at the Reader will pick up on it.