Made a resolution to eat healthier this year? One of the hottest eating crazes right now (just don’t call it a diet) is Whole30, and you can try a typical meal for free at the pop-up Clean Slate Café this month.
Opening for three days in SoHo at 446 Broadway, the Clean Slate Café is the first official Whole30 restaurant, serving only foods approved as part of the 30-day “nutritional reset.” The menu includes burgers and hot dogs, bowls with cauliflower rice or kale, collard wraps and chilim with each visitor entitled to one free dish of their choice.
The Clean Slate Café is a production of Applegate Farms, the organic meat company that started producing Whole30-friendly products in January 2018 and now has 35 items on shelves. Other featured brands include Spindrift sparkling water, Kettle & Fire bone broth, Primal Kitchen condiments and dressings, Chomps meat sticks and Vital Farms eggs from pasture-raised hens. Diners will receive coupons for the products and can take home recipes to try.
The Clean Slate Café will be open from Jan. 23-25 from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 4:30-6:30 p.m. To get your free meal, RSVP by making a reservation at Eventbrite.
What is Whole30 and does it work?
The Whole30 method was created in 2009 by certified sports nutritionist Melissa Hartwig as an experiment, eliminating added sugar, grains, legumes, alcohol and dairy for 30 days. There are no weigh-ins, no calorie-counting and no limits on how much you can eat, so you’ll need some serious discipline to try it.
If you’re willing to stick with it though, Whole30 claims to help you lose weight, cut cravings, raise energy levels, and improve digestion and sleep. People find it fairly easy to stick to minus missing favorite foods, especially cheese and cocktails, and the adjustment period over the first two weeks. Science, however, is still out on whether low-carb or low-fat diets lead to more weight loss.
