Downtown Natural Market — Restaurant in New York

Wish it was a 0 stars option. Make sure the smoothie cafe person is wearing TWO gloves whenever preparing anything for you. Not only did he only wear 1 glove preparing my smoothie, but he used the hand wearing NO glove to scoop protein powder out of the container, which apparently was way down at the bottom of the continent, so his whole arm was in it.

Once I brought it to his attention, he not only argued with me about it, but then the manager/owner argued with me, both stating he didn't have to use a glove to dip his arm and hand way down into a protein powder.

Not only is uncovered hands that ALSO handles money already gross enough to handle food items, but when I asked the manager what if his arm hairs shed into the powder, he said the other man doesn't have arm hairs. So weird 🙄

He probably doesn't look like a cave man covered in thick hair, but he definitely has hairs on his arms AND head by the way. I didn't even mention the fact that he didn't have on a hair net, yet preparing food and drinks for people. Either they don't have food handler's licencing or they just didn't pay attention and don't care.

If more people could just practice a little more decency in business, common sense, and better basic hygiene, there would be less spread of illnesses. He had the cheapest and thinnest version of plastic gloves, so I'm sure they're not a major cost to a business like that. The cost of one smoothie can probably buy them many boxes of those cheap gloves. Why argue with customers about it?

I left without purchasing anything, and because of their behavior that'll be my last time there.

I'm also going to make a report to the DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH as well as if necessary I'll send DOH the audio recording of them arguing with me, because I'm pretty sure they're also the type of people that will lie. My phone was already recording for something else, but I'm really glad it was STILL recording. Unfortunately these days we have to record so much. We definitely shouldn't HAVE to have so...

This Market has a Large variety of products. I went with list shopping list from my doctor in hand. I was ready to spend some money. The cashier/sales person was horrible. This is not the way I remember the downtown natural market. Maybe I came at a bad time. But there was only one other customer in the store. The cashier/ sales person at the time was not knowledgeable about the products. She coul not answer my questions. I had to call my doctor. I use to frequent this place years ago. The sales person(s) were very informative. They made you feel welcomed, and you trusted their suggestions. They were knowledgeable of the products. I walked out knowing what I needed was right there but the customer service was not. If I were making a re purchase and knew the exact brand and mcg's, or ingredients this would have been okay. I think my shopping required more attention than she was willing to give. And again there was only one other customer who arrived after me. She paid for her drink and was out. I saw no one else up front for me to turn to. I gave her the details in full as my doctor instructed me over the phone. She gave me substitutes for what I asked for. Twice I spied the exact product my doctor mentioned as she handed me other stuff. She wasn't willing to take the time to look. There were no other customers. I was over it and bid her a good day. Between Amazon and the Vitamin Shop I got...

Came here because I saw they had some vegan foods, I tried the ackee, vegan beef, callaloo, and vegan fish patty, all were very tasty, although would have liked a bit more filling. Also tried the regular soy, which surprisingly was my favorite, so tasty. The split pea I had to throw out, the filling had this weird fishy/vinegar/off taste. The bread patty part of the vegan fish was less tasty, but seemed whole wheat, probably a healthier version. Was told all the patty crusts were vegan, and most of the fillings available were too.

Place had a good amount of plant based meats, but not a ton of plant based dairy...