Green Blend / Balanced Food / 8th ave — Restaurant in New York

Onur Safak told us he opened Green Blend two months ago. Wow! Is he doing everything right!

We arrived at Penn Station at 7:30pm, hungry, tired and looking for someplace close with health food for me and red meat for my cowboy hubby. Well I would be hard pressed to think there could be anyplace more perfect for that tall order than Green Blend, at 29th St and 8th Ave.

Wow, again. I don't think there's anything worth eating they don't have. Name it: soup, salad, panini, smoothies, bowls, falafel, veggie burgers (my choice) chock full of carrots, mushroom, kale, tomato, quinoa, with an incredible sweet chili sauce) and the cowboy fav--the Big Bang burger with lots o toppings, and red meat "better than our hometown's Red Robin." The burgers are affordable and come with a side. And NO CANOLA in the French fryer. Yay!! You know me. My readers expect me to report on this.

We shall return! Maybe for breakfast with, again, everything you can imagine from eggs to bagels to oatmeal to breakfast bowls. Yum!

Our sever at the order counter, Eileen, was sweet and friendly.

Congratulations Onur. You have a winner.

Anyone anywhere close to Penn Station should make a first visit. It won't be your last. I would eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner here.

PS We actually did return for lunch and loved it again: The arugula salad with red and yellow beets, goat cheese and a sweet fig balsamic was amazing, and my quinoa-based Natural Bowl with kale, tomatoes, chick peas, avocado and roasted sweet potatoes and squash was a hit.

One other wonderful offering is their coffee--which, alone, is worth...

so happy that this place actually did açai bowls and also just plain smoothie bowls— I love this type of food, it’s my favorite, but sometimes I have a bit of a bad reaction with actual açai. I’m MILDLY allergic to like two fruits, neither of which are in these types of bowls but idk, there might be something in the base of most bowls that I’m unaware of— it’s just an itchy throat sort of reaction, nothing serious, just not fun at all.

SO with that being said I always wish I could just have a simpler sort of bowl like this and also maybe with a less frozen base— and this place finally had that!! I know it’s not everyone’s preference but I was so happy that the base was more of a simple strawberry-banana-coconut or oat milk blend and slightly less frozen than usual. But this is just a nice accommodation for people like me, who love this genre of food but are less exotic than we’d probably like to be, lol.

However, if you’re shaking your head at this and wanting an actual real açai bowl of course this is the largest menu in this genre that I’ve ever seen. It’s like a diner with açai/smoothie bowls, seriously, they also have like chicken wings and sandwiches or something. And just plain smoothies.

I also have been spending more time in Chelsea, especially in the 20th-30th streets, so I’m really happy to have...

I found this place on Google maps by searching Vegan near me and açaí bowls.

I really have been enjoying açai bowls lately, so I specifically wanted to go to a place that had that. They had a large list of açai bowls. I ended up getting the Gym bowl which I didn’t realize wasn’t vegan because it had whey protein in it and I didn’t realize that it wasn’t any açaí in it either! It was so it was delicious but as I continue to eat, I realized that I couldn’t finish. But Man was good! You can customize just about everything in there.

They had the açai bowl menu, salad, menu menu, smoothie menu, wrap menu, pasta menu… so many options! For someone like me that’s too much but I knew I went in there for açai bowl. I also ordered a hummus wrap which came jampacked with vegetables, lots of leafy greens, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, all fresh. The cabbage slaw inside was pickled, and it had a bunch of hummus in it, wrapped up in a flour tortilla that was so soft and stretchy.

If you go, tell them Miriam from @TheYearoftheVegan sent you! I heard the lentil soup was delicious too! And if you’re an avocado toast kinda person, they have that too! Oh, and fresh squeezed orange juice. This place is not far from Penn Station so if you’re just visiting perfect spot to get...