The Raw Food Diet

   
   There are several different ways to define the raw food diet, or "rawism." The most basic definition is the practice consuming uncooked, unprocessed and mostly organic foods as a part of daily life. Raw foodism can then be broken down into raw veganism, raw vegetarianism and the raw animal food diet.

 The past few years have brought about numerous celebrities such as Demi Moore and Alicia Silverstone claiming to follow this diet while promoting health and weight loss.

Due to an increased demand for raw food availability, a few restaurants have chosen to open up in the Los Angeles area and only serve food that caters to this particular diet. 

Here is where I come in. I have been rather curious about this specific lifestyle and always wondered what these restaurants would serve on the menu as well as how the food actually tastes. Thus, I will be reviewing a few raw food restaurants in Los Angeles based on taste, price and overall service.

The first restaurant I chose for dinner was Planet Raw, located in Santa Monica. It was a clean and cozy establishment with dimmed lights and a colorful interior. A friendly hostess sat us down by the window and an even friendlier waitress came over to take our drinks and food orders. We began our meal with Spring Rolls that contained avocado, kelp noodles, herbs, cabbage, Brazil nuts and were wrapped in a coconut wrapper. 

The appetizer was surprisingly delicious! The sauce it came with was perfect for dipping and the rolls were light and refreshing. We then ordered two entrees to split between my friend and I. One was the Medicinal Salad which contained organic herbs, seaweed, veggies, croutons and was tossed with a ranch (no dairy) and olive oil dressing. Another entree was the mushroom and kelp pasta dinner which was also tossed in a thick creamy sauce. 

                

The salad was also fairly tasty even though there was no way to tell what was what in it, but the mushroom kelp dish wasn't exactly what we had expected. The flavoring was too much as well as the "cheesy" sauce that accompanied it. That is definitely one dish I wouldn't recommend. 

Service at Planet Raw was very on point as the hostess and the waitress were extremely polite and always around when needed. My friend and I ordered vanilla and lemonade smoothies to go after which we took the check. It was rather pricy at $83.85 without tip and even without any alcohol, but I would still recommend this restaurant to others based on the health factor and the overall ambiance of the place. I guess while eating healthy may be good for your waistline it's definitely damaging to your wallet!