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We were in Barcelona for about a week and a half and went to Flax & Kale restaurant just about every day for healthy raw and vegan food. I previously posted about their amazing juices, which are available to take away as well as in the restaurant. This eatery also puts out some really interesting and delicious food with a health-oriented focus.
Being a flexitarian establishment they have something for everybody so this is a good place to take your friends if they are hesitant to visit a purely vegan restaurant. The menu is 80 percent plant-based and most of the other dishes include oily fish, with a couple of plates containing egg and cheese. The menu clearly identifies which of the meals are raw, plant-based, and gluten-free so it makes it easy to select dishes based on your personal dietary preferences.
We ate both raw and cooked vegan meals there and overall were really happy with the quality of the food. It isn’t easy to find healthy vegetarian food in Barcelona so we were grateful to discover Flax & Kale just a couple of minutes away from our apartment.
The restaurant has a wide-open space with lots of natural light and a cool California vibe. Like most of Europe, the service is not as friendly or as fast as you might expect in the states. In Spain tipping is not really a part of the culture and most locals don’t tip at all. So the serving staff doesn’t have as much of an incentive to go out of their way to please. However, after a few days, they did start warming up to us and several members of the staff were especially open and friendly.
Flax & Kale is open for breakfast on weekdays from 9.30 am and for brunch on the weekends from 10 am onwards. On weekdays lunch starts at 12 noon and dinner is from 7 pm every night.
One of the first dishes that got my attention on the breakfast and brunch menu was Teresa’s Apple Green Amazonia Bowl. I’m really not sure what connection – if any – the ingredients have with the Amazon. Nevertheless, this was a pretty delicious combination of fruits and superfoods.
The green base was frozen bananas with almond milk, almond butter, honey, spirulina, and chlorella. You could certainly taste the green but it wasn’t overwhelming. Added to this were chunks of raw green apple, sliced banana, cashews, goji berries, and bee pollen.
It actually was a lot like raw vanilla ice cream and while it was delicious it was a little too much like dessert for me. This is the kind of meal I used to make when I started eating raw and have since progressed to much simpler combinations. But if you like the idea of eating ice cream for breakfast you will love it. They also had an Acai Bowl, which looked great but I didn’t get a chance to try.
It’s been a long time since I had a kale salad so I decided to sample this quintessential raw vegan dish. The dressing was very good and contained olive oil, lime, agave, garlic, onion powder, cayenne, and chipotle. It was sumptuous and a little sweet with just the right amount of heat.
I couldn’t eat the whole thing because for me the dressing was too rich but it was great as a side salad.
Another salad we tried, which is not 100 percent raw was the Roasted Carrot & Avocado Salad. The roasted carrots were sweet, a little bit spicy, well-seasoned, and very satisfying. It came with a generous amount of avocado, which I think is essential to make this type of dish a complete meal.
It also had a scoop of tofu cheese, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and a lemon-orange dressing. Overall a light but nourishing dish if you are not eating fully raw.
My favorite raw dish at Flax & Kale was the Raw Zucchini Blossoms. Traditionally zucchini flowers are stuffed with ricotta cheese, dipped in batter, and deep-fried. This version kept it light by filling the raw zucchini flowers with a cashew macadamia cream. It also came with guacamole, pico de gallo, green peas, green beans, carrot, corn, sprouts, and leafy greens.
The base was salmorejo – a traditional Spanish recipe containing pureed tomato – similar to Gazpacho. It was topped with goji berries, which provided a textural contrast and a sweet accent to the dish.
I would like to try all of the raw dishes at Flax & Kale. They had a Raw Lasagna and Raw Pizza that both looked really great. We also ate quite a few cooked vegan meals here, which I will write about in a future post.
If you are looking for raw food in Barcelona I definitely recommend you give this place a try. It is probably the best restaurant in the city to eat truly healthy and nourishing vegetarian food.
These plates are beautiful. I especially like the last one. Are the squash flowers eaten raw, Mizpah?
Yes the flowers were raw. Everything in that dish was raw except the peas and beans, which were lightly blanched.
What a lovely find, especially in an area where most restaurants are concentrated on meat and dairy dishes. The roasted carrots and avocado has me wondering if I could make it at home, it sounds so good.
For sure ham and cheese reigns supreme in Spain!
Roasted carrots are surprisingly good. I like them with coconut oil and Himalayan salt.