This dining and wellness restaurant combines health benefits with a flavorful menu. Plus, late night dance parties.
I don’t know if it’s the power of suggestion or not, but after my first meal with soft medicine, I felt so much better. Downtown Sebastopol’s cafe, tea house, and yoga studio focuses on organic wellness and shares its “food-as-medicine” philosophy with vegan cuisine and soothing kavasu, cacao, matcha drinks, herbal teas, elixirs, and more I’m doing it.
I had just finished polishing off my grain bowl, and although I felt pleasantly full, I still felt light as a feather and I have to admit I was feeling a little smug about my earth- and body-friendly food choices. The large, colorful creation is heaped with rice, mung beans, greens, kraut, peppery winter greens, and a lake of bright green pesto bound with Ayurvedic spices ($18). I knew these spices had a lot of therapeutic properties, including aiding digestion, boosting immunity, and adding flavor to pilaf grains.
Afterwards, as I went about my day, I thought, wow, I suddenly felt smarter. Am I taller? Does it look better? (That thought quickly disappeared, but I had to go back for another meal).
Satisfying “superfood”
The concept makes perfect sense for Sebastopol, which proudly calls itself a bohemian community, or, as Soft Medicine co-owner Jonathan Pinkston cheerfully puts it, “a hippie town.” But increasingly, health-consciousness seems like the obvious choice for diners. Superfoods are the equivalent of superpowers, and many of us are taking better care of our bodies by paying more attention to plant-based diets, whole grains, and clean ingredients.
For Pinkston, an Ayurvedic practitioner and acupuncturist who has embraced the Ayurvedic lifestyle for years, the American trend is interesting.
“Ayurvedic diets and natural health remedies have been used for thousands of years around the world,” he said. “I think we forget that for the majority of the world, this is not some alternative ‘woo-woo’ thing, it’s much more normal than Western medicine. If you go to a small country town, let’s say anywhere in Europe, and you go to that convenient pharmacy, it’s a pharmacy, and half of the medicines are herbs. ”
Equally important, this food is satisfying. The small kitchen is simple and offers everything from snacks of nuts and dried fruit ($3 each) to “fine toast” ($14) of local sourdough or gluten-free bread embedded in garden vegetables, avocado or pesto, and tangy kraut. ), there are a variety of dishes available.
Still, there’s enough flavor and texture to intrigue me. For example, the taco ($17) comes with two corn tortillas stuffed with avocado, al dente roasted vegetables, greens, bean sprouts, vegan cheese and spicy kimchi. It is rich in antioxidants, rich in vitamins and known for its great taste.
The Kitcharito is even better in my book, with generously seasoned locally sourced rice, beans, cheese, avocado, crunchy sprouts, tart kraut, salsa and a saucy finish of vegan spicy mayonnaise, made with either wheat or gluten-free A hearty burrito with fluffy tortillas ($18).
Our delicious bundles are near-perfect food because our kitchen team soaks all of our grains for 24 hours to make them easier to digest. Then there’s kraut, a magical microbial delight that’s salty and sour and rich in vitamin C and beneficial bacteria. It turns out that the fermentation process allows the nutrients in the food to be absorbed more easily because the bacteria essentially pre-digests the food (way to go, humble little cabbage).
food as medicine
When Pinkston and his group of investors opened their business in 2022, they had a solid plan. We source over 80% of our produce from within 200 miles of our cafe and use only local grains and olive oil, never seed oils. Fillers, refined sugars, and GMO products.
“If you go to see a naturopathic doctor and they say you should have this ideal, locally sourced diet, that’s what we provide and what you get as a prescription.” said Pinkston. “We want to preserve and expand the hippie culture that has been here (in Sebastopol) since the ’60s, the beautiful parts of it: the generosity, the connection, the plant medicine side.”
But let’s be real: We didn’t want to alienate diners so our guests could customize their dishes to suit their vegetarian or carnivore preferences. So if your soup of the day is lentils, you’re guaranteed to hit the spot. A fragrant vegetable soup ($11) packed with tender onions, tomatoes, fragrant fresh herbs, and vegetables. Still, I cheat and add a flavorful, indulgent option: ghee ($1) and a 4-ounce miso shot or beef bone soup with curry ($4).
The white bean hummus drizzled with olive oil is also simple, with a platter dotted with olives, cheese and assorted pickled vegetables, and served with sourdough or gluten-free toast ($20). But you can also choose cheese. Great dairy-free cheeses and tangy goat milk. And I like to order the piping hot, comforting beef soup ($11 a cup).
