Business & Tech
On the Juice
In the spirit of New Year's resolutions, we surveyed Westport's juice bar offerings.
Robeks
This national chain is pretty much what you'd expect. With an extensive menu, there's just about every smoothie and juice combo imaginable. They've got light smoothies for the calorie conscious, shakes, freezes and frozen yogurt. (Contrary to their brand identity, their "Healthy Eats" menu includes decadent chocolate muffins, peanut butter cookies and apple cinnamon pretzels.) If you're trying to shed pounds, you might want to also pass up the 800 lb Gorilla Protein Shake, which is a blend of chocolate and peanut butter and has 434 calories in the 12-ounce serving, 1,157 in the 32-ouncer! Consider yourself forewarned.
It's not surprising that most of their smoothies and juices are sweet and dessert-like, since they've got generous servings of either sherbert or vanilla yogurt – occasionally both. But since they usually add a scoop of ice, many of the blended drinks taste a bit diluted and lack authentic fruit flavor. Robeks fruit, sourced from around the world, is all frozen and is not organic. The Raspberry Romance was compulsively drinkable, but sent me into a light sugar coma. The Acai Energizer (acai, strawberry, blueberry, pineapple yogurt, non-fat yogurt and supplements) balanced the sweet with a little tart but was a bit gritty – probably due to the soy protein powder. It might be 322 calories for the regular, but hey, it has the acai super-fruit. I'm probably still burning fat as I type.
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The carrot juice, however, was their weak link. Generally the simplest and most popular juice variety, the carrot at Robeks was unpleasantly bitter and had a dried ginger aftertaste. Maybe they forgot to clean out their juicer that afternoon? We'll never know. The organic carrot juices offered by the other two bars I visited put this one to shame. Still, the staffers are so friendly, I'll most likely give Robeks another try.
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398 Post Road East
203/221-0303
Hours:
Mon.-Fri.: 6:30 am – 9 pm
Sat.: 8 am – 9 pm
Sun.: 9 am – 7 pm
The Organic Market
Tucked in the back of this small grocery is an unassuming little juice bar with some tasty offerings. They've only got a basic menu, but what they juice up is top notch. The Organic Market's fruit shake comes in one flavor and can't be made to order since the blend of apple, pear, banana, orange, strawberry and pineapple juice is pre-mixed. Beside the fact that the fruits are all organic, I suspect the reason this smoothie was the richest and most intense was that and they don't add ice. Instead, they freeze the bananas and strawberries for a milkshake-like consistency. While it might not be the prettiest color, this fruit smoothie took top prize out of all three bars.
The Mixed Vegetable juice just might help you get all five of your daily servings of fruits and vegetables. The juice barrista making mine shoved handfuls of kale, parsley and spinach into the juicer along with carrot and beet. It looked like enough produce to feed a bunny colony for a week. If you're a novice and want to start out slow, they'll even throw in some pear for you to sweeten it up a bit. Either way, the Mixed Vegetable is surprisingly clean and pleasant for such an intimidating combo.
The Organic Market also serves a Green Juice (spinach, kale, parsley), not for the faint of heart and a Protein Shake (orange or pineapple juice with soy milk and protein.) In the summer, they add refreshing watermelon and cantaloupe juices to their menu.
A wheatgrass shot, though, might bring you to tears.
Mon.- Sat.: 9 am - 5 pm
Sun.: 11 am - 4:15 pm
Fountain of Youth
You've probably driven past Fountain of Youth a thousand times and never known it was there. It sits right across from Stop & Shop but is tucked in off Post Road. Primarily a vitamin and health food store, they've got a tiny juice bar in one corner. When you order, the friendly proprietor wanders over to the nearby produce aisle and picks out a few vegetables just for you. (Not everything is always available, like cucumbers, for instance, so he improvises.)
There are six juice blends on the menu, including Cholesterol Manager (carrot, ginger, parsley, and apple) and the unfortunately-named Liver Tonic (carrot, beet, apple, spinach and dandelion greens). They'll be happy to blend up whatever you'd like. Their Carrot Apple was fantastic as was Carrot Beet. Fountain of Youth's plain old Carrot juice was clearly made of nothing but the freshest, organic root vegetables. And when it comes to a juice bar, that's pretty much all you can ask for.
Fountain of Youth doesn't serve wheatgrass, but if they did I'm pretty confident it would also be, well, vile.
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1789 Post Road East
