With everyone on campus sniffling and sneezing these days, I figured I should do my body a favor and go for a healthier option this week. Enter Simply Juiced, a juice and smoothie bar on First Street between Park and Willow, which was founded by “passionate individuals committed to providing wholesome and nutritious foods that are ethically sourced.”
This place screams “green,” from their biodegradable cleaning products to their in-house water distiller and composting of food scraps, the yuppies of Hoboken eat, or rather drink, this stuff up. Despite having just opened last year, they were already voted the best juice bar in Hoboken, so I decided to give them a try. Feeling particularly lazy and not terribly worried about burning off the calories (I wanted to be healthy but not that healthy), I decided to test out how this juice bar worked with the online delivery service GrubHub. Now, I knew that all organic health food is not exactly cheap, I just didn’t expect a dinky little smoothie to cost $8. I was a little taken aback but figured I couldn’t put a price on my health.
My order arrived exactly when the estimate said that it would, no problems there. First up was the Green Dream smoothie composed banana, kale, Brazil nut butter, vanilla extract, dates, rice protein, and almond milk. Yum. This dream was smooth and nutty without that yucky green taste that some health smoothies have. If you’re into the whole health foods thing and willing to spend the money, I would recommend this treat.
I also ordered the Ginger Zinger smoothie, complete with banana, raspberries, ginger, mint, beets, all greens powder, coconut water, coconut oil, and coconut nectar. One sip, and bam: my eyes were wide open. The front end of the smoothie was sweet and creamy, but beyond that the overpowering spiciness of ginger overwhelmed my senses. It wasn’t bad per se, but the other flavors didn’t have their chance to shine.
To round off my order, I added the ultimate super food snack of kale chips and a chocolate coconut mousse to satisfy my sweet tooth. The kale chips were … interesting. I ordered a seasoning called “Legalize It,” which included the flavors of cherry and sun-dried tomatoes and a few other spices. I’m used to crispy, salty kale chips. I do actually really enjoy the taste of kale, but wasn’t given the satisfaction, as these were drowned out with the intense flavor of tomato. The overabundance of flavor coating also made the chips more chewy than crunchy. I wasn’t a fan.
The chocolate mousse on the other hand, now that was good. When I say “good,” I don’t mean in the nice-thick-creamy-bold-chocolaty-flavor-of-mousse-made-with-heavy-cream sort of way, but more so in the sweet-and-fluffy-and-yet-good-for-my-body way. Very delicious and probably the closest a healthy dessert has come to tasting similar to the real thing.
For those of you who are into the juice cleanses, the all-natural organic everything, and the “I’m going to save the Earth every second of my life” thing, then I would highly recommend Simply Juiced. If you’re a broke college student like me and looking to be healthy in the long run, it would probably be cheaper to invest in a blender and make your own smoothies.
