Whole Life Times: Jade Café

November 2005 | Tastebuds

Jade Café

Raw alchemy in Silverlake

by Eliza Thomas

Jade Café has all the requisite hipster hallmarks: Sleekly understated, ambiguously Asian décor. Fusion cuisine combining Mexican, Thai and Italian flavors. Brazilian downtempo on the stereo and a Silverlake address. But that doesn’t mean the less than three-month-old eatery doesn’t dish up any surprises. The menu is strictly raw. The shocker? It’s exquisitely delicious.

“Our goal, from the very beginning, was to create an experience that would have a broader appeal,” avers Natally Raisin, café co-owner. “This isn’t just about raw food—it’s about delicious food for everybody.”

Countless LA restaurateurs have attempted to bring high-concept health fare to the masses—with varying success. But considering that Jade’s intimate dining space seats just under 30, it’s unlikely “the masses” are Raisin’s target audience, at least as the fledging restaurant finds its footing. Judging by the inventive menu, Jade Café is most interested in changing perceptions of the raw food experience, diner by diner.

“People make the mistake of thinking all raw food is the same,” says Lesa Carlson, co-owner of the café and creator of its cutting edge cuisine. “You wouldn’t say all Italian restaurants are the same, just because they all serve Italian food. There are as many different ways to do raw food as there are to do any other kind of food.”

Carlson’s confidence in the creativity of her menu comes from experience. While Jade Café is her first restaurant project, she’s already an eminent living foods chef, with two packaged raw food lines (Foodology and SAVA) available in area natural foods stores, and a history of catering $100-a-plate dinners throughout the LA area for the likes of the usual celebrity raw foods suspects (Alicia Silverstone, Woody Harrelson, Daryl Hannah, et al). She’s also a former Miss Idaho and a celebrated neo-jazz singer with her band, Lesa Carlson Off Blue. Plans for a cookbook, a raw dressing line and a new album keep Carlson mostly out of the kitchen; “I call myself ‘product/concept designer’—I conceived the menu but I’m not actually preparing the plates,” she explains.

But Carlson’s artistry lives in every dish. Appetizers like garlic jicama bruchetta or squash blossoms drizzled with sweet chili glaze and stuffed with fresh dill cream cheese sing with bright flavors subtly paired and delicately presented ($6 each). Sweet pea and carrot spring rolls arrive ingeniously wrapped in moist baby coconut paper, accompanied by tangy plum dipping sauce ($7). Alchemically concocted herbal tonics and elixirs are pungent with raw coconut kefir, “for stunning and life promoting results.” Try the “Diamond Mind,” designed to “improve concentration, focus, memory and mental energy” with a heady herbal mix of ginkgo, Siberian ginseng and schizandra ($6). Entrees are equally painstakingly formulated. Ginger Coconut Noodles ($12) is a satisfyingly spicy, creamy tangle of flat noodles, carrots, green onion, Napa cabbage and cilantro cut with the crunch of slivered raw almonds, while the popular Squash Hashbrown Stacks ($16) arrive on a mountain of baby greens, accompanied by a juicy, peppered Portobello. Finish with a light and sweet desert like the Almond-Joy-esque Coconut Cream Pie ($8), and laud yourself for discovering a restaurant that delivers on the true meaning of the word: to restore.

Jade Café, 1521 Griffith Park Blvd., LA, 323.667.1551, jadecafe.org

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