Is This Sydney’s Best Raw Food Café?
Raw food has become something of a health phenomenon in recent years, as eateries have popped up all over Australia to offer a variety of uncooked plant-based delights.
Even Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium ditched Cadbury in favour of popular raw brand Pana Chocolate.
If you’re more of a “hot chips and burgers” kind of person who avoids salad at all costs, you might be forgiven for thinking that raw food wouldn’t float your boat.
To that, we say: you haven’t been to oFarm.
Tucked away in a corner of the Westfield shopping centre in Warringah, near Manly, this unassuming little café-cum–health-food store looks pretty standard on first inspection.
But order even the simplest of smoothies, and the explosion of your taste buds alerts you to the fact that this is not ordinary shopping centre café fare.
The secret? Head chef Juan Carlos Miranda. Not necessarily someone you might expect to find working in a café in Westfield, he’s an international chef with over 20 years of experience, and he made the decision to go vegan in 2012 after experiencing terrific health benefits from eating raw food.
The aim in creating oFarm’s menu, which draws on Peruvian tradition, was to produce food that is “raw, wholesome, nutritious, colorful, vibrant and exploding with fresh amazing organic seasonal ingredients that dazzle on the plate and dance in the mouth”.
Sounds good, right? It is.
The completely vegan and gluten-free menu includes such delights as banana bread with eggplant “bacon”, nacho salad with warm black beans, salted caramel and mocha slice, and delicious smoothies such as cashew chai and chia chocolate.
Banana bread with eggplant “bacon”.
Everything is prepared right in front of customers, and surprisingly, despite being “raw”, many dishes are warm and hearty – and sure to leave you more than satisfied. Pizza, burgers, and noodles are just as at home on the menu as salads and smoothies.
And the best part about this – and any raw vegan restaurant – is that no animals have to suffer for a meal. Delicious, healthy food and no animal suffering? Sounds good to us!
