Our visit to Health Kitchen made us think of our travels around the world. It’s internationally-inspired menu is also where current food trends meet. And the dishes look so beautiful, you’ll surely want to Instagram your food before you dig in.
Health Kitchen’s owner, Christoph, has put the best culinary memories of his 12 years of travel into a healthy fast food restaurant. The result is a rich menu full of exciting dishes hailing from faraway places. But with the health factor playing at the core in the kitchen, all dishes are a healthier version of their originals – no hidden calories, flavor enhancers, or anything artificial. This clean food is made to be eaten guilt-free. It also feels clean going down.
The pictures of the dishes on the menu, like Singapore Laksa, Caribbean Jambalaya and Texan Chili sin Carne, are stuck on the wall behind the counter, just like in those Asian countries where you point at a picture of what you want in the menu, as you’ve got no hope in pronouncing their names. Some of them stay true to their names, while the kitchen gets creative with some fusions – take the Vietnamese summer rolls, for example – the chewy rice paper wraps up fillings like pulled beef, hummus and goat cheese, and each of them is accompanied by a surprising pairing sauce – the pulled beef roll comes with a light barbecue sauce, the hummus with a yoghurt dip and the goat cheese is to be dipped in sweet, sweet honey.
Health Kitchen is our absolute “bowl specialist” in Vienna, not only when it comes to taste, but foremost for the looks of the bowls they serve up. We choose two very different types of mains: one, the Singapore Laksa – a richly-flavoured coconut soup with shrimp and veggies, served up with glass noodles tied into little bows (which is a genius idea for us messy eaters – the tied bundles of noodles made it easier, and less messy to eat and also saved us from the slurpy sounds).
On the other side of the table, we wander to the opposite corner of the globe with a bowl full of vitamins – a New Zeeland Green Bowl in which spinach is combined with avocado, green asparagus and broccoli – all crunchy and fresh. In this bowl of green rhapsody, the only un-green things are some shy, roasted peanuts that look like they just crashed the biggest chlorophyll party in town. The dressing is simple, but flavoursome.
Vegetarians and vegans will love the tasty options available to them in this place.
With all of this healthiness floating around the room, we feel we need to cheat somehow as we feel ourselves slowly being sucked into some kind of health cult. And for those that get us with this, worry not, there are still a few re-tox (is that a thing?) options to choose from off the menu, like craft beer, regional wines and a mean looking cheesecake.
So if you’ve been promising yourself you’re going to undertake some major health reforms to your burger and beer, pizza and boxer short on the couch lifestyle, visit Health Kitchen – you’ll voluntarily come to the healthy side after you’ve had one of their bowls, as you’ll realize ‘healthy’ isn’t a dirty word.
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