Layover Saviour: Live Organic Food Bar, Toronto

I should have entitled this post "The Kale Chips that Never Were." Last night, I got really excited to make a bloggable kale chip recipe made from one bunch of kale, EVOO, balsamic, tahini, and sea salt. After massaging all those lovely things together, one-third of the batch mysteriously disappeared. After about an hour in the dehydrator, another third evaporated into thin air... and then, well, I figured it was silly to dehydrated 1/3 of batch of kale chips, so I figured I might as well eat them too. (p.s. half dehydrated kale is delicious)

So with that off the table and in my tummy, I wanted to give a shout out to Toronto's Live Organic Food Bar instead. Last weekend, we took another quick trip to London for Andrew's mom's annual spa day. The deal: she invites all the women of the family including sisters, spouses, and nieces to get pampered for a day because she's awesome like that. The upside: Umm, who would complain? The downside: an 8 hour bus ride (oh wait, that's a complaint).

Side benefit: a 2 hour stopover in Toronto allowed us to hop onto the subway and check out Live. As we started approaching the GTA, Andrew heroically agreed to take the bullet and be the anti-social guy talking on the phone while on public transportation to place our take-out order. Since moving back here, the two raw restaurants I've been wanting to check out in T-dot have been Live and Rawlicious. Conveniently, our choice was made for us since Live was the one we could get to in time.

I only have a couple crappy iPhone pictures to show for it, but this ended up being our stash:

I had been dreaming of raw collard rolls for a while so opted for their Spring Rolls: a glory of kelp noodles, carrots, cukes, celery, and sprouts dipped in a fantastic almond chili sauce with black sesame seeds, and a killer red cabbage slaw salad. These were not photographed because they were scarfed down at a polluted downtown bus stop, after our 2 hour layover became a 3 hour layover (curse you, Greyhound) because they oversold seats. They were amazing though and definitely made that extra hour go by in a breeze, because I was filled with happy.

Andrew picked the Reuben sandwich, a sesame kale carob bread with a walnut sunflower patty, guacamole, more of that awesome red cabbage slaw, and a sesame hemp aioli. It also came with dill pickles and root veggie chips, which were pretty fantastic. The sandwich was tasty, I'm not quite sure what made it a "reuben," but who cares.

Raw falafels were also purchased for Andrew to eat the next day while I was to be off spa-ing , but I never got a real taste of them. The tiny bite I did sneak in that night left me pretty non-plussed, so I don't think it was that huge a loss.

We also found another raw chocolate bar, Giddy Yoyo, which we picked up in orange flavour. I just checked out their website, and am even more psyched to find out that our chocolate was made by what appears to be a beautiful, healthy, and thriving couple of happy wood elves (Andrew's expression, not mine). I have to say, I generally just prefer really dark non-raw chocolate, but this one was great. I've always really enjoyed the grittiness of raw chocolates... and I think they may have converted me. (Also, what is it about happy-looking Canadian couples and the desire to open up a raw chocolate business? Giddy Yoyo aside, Living Libations is pretty faboo too... the difference being, instead of a smooth chocolate bar, they make hardcore awesome raw jungle chocolate of foodgasm).

Finally, Andrew also picked up a couple raw cookies/bar treat things, which I wasn't a huge fan of. In all fairness, I'm rarely a fan of raw desserts (arrogantly enough, I like the ones I make, but maybe I have a picky raw dessert palate?) I found them a little texture and taste bland. Andrew seemed to be entertained by them though.

The restaurant itself was super cute though, and I would have loved to actually sit down and have our meal there. As I mentioned though, we were really pressed for time (or so we thought.) I definitely give them 2 thumbs way up, and we'll be back for sure whenever we're in the city!