Luna’s Living Kitchen: My Happy Place
Whenever I’m at a sporting event, I watch the people around me; it’s safe to call me a people watcher. One of the things that always makes me chuckle is the way men (or women) react to their first sip of cold stadium beer. They even top it off with a sound effect, “ahh” and a quick wipe of the lips to remove the foam. When I go into a cafe or juice bar, I react the same way after getting my cup of coffee or cold press juice. It instantly gives me the happy bug. I make the same sound effect and wipe off foam from the lip. We all have little things in life that make us excited. Coconut water, smoothies, healthy restaurants, and salad are some of my little favorites. I like antiques stores, old towns, taking pictures, and candles too.
When Nick told me we were going to Luna’s kitchen on Friday, I was so excited. Lunas’s has everything that makes me happy!
Because I was so excited to tell you about my race on Saturday, I skipped this post entirely. I’m finally getting caught up, kinda, if you don’t count posts that I have lined up from months and months ago. I’ve been binge watching the Fosters for the past couple of days and it’s helping me catch up on work. Anways, before my attention span takes us to a totally different topic, I’ll get back to Luna’s!
Iowa was playing on Friday and so we decided to get our food to go. Luna’s Living kitchen is in the Southend of Charlotte right off of South Blvd. It’s a must if you like healthy food; it’s a must if you like food in general.
Their juices are so good! I picked up one for my race Saturday.
I love everything that Luna’s kitchen is about.
*organic farmers, *seasonal produce, *family-owned farms, *organic, *living food, *plant-based cuisine
I already knew what I wanted when I got there!
Nick and I decided to split and appetizer, which is our excuse to order more food and feel better about it. They had a new item on the menu, sweet potato sushi! It had red bell peppers, cucumbers and arugula wrapped with sweet potato rice and nori leaves and garnished with a lightly spiced Thai chili sauce. These would be fun to make at home!
We also ordered whole grain vegan bread with almond butter.
I’m really bad at deciding, and so I saved the pain, and ordered the arugula harvest salad. I ordered it last time and have been craving it ever since. The salad has arugula, red cabbage, spriralized root vegtables, avocado, pear, caramelized pecans, pumpkin seeds, raisins, homade cashew basil cheese, and maple mustard vinaigrette.
The cashew basil cheese literally tastes like cheese. I was impressed!
Nick ordered the Lunasagna. It has layers of tender, crisp zucchini noodles, cahsew basil cheese, sun-dried tomato sauce and mushrooms. It’s also served with a side salad. The Lunasagna was really good and I didn’t think I’d like it because it was cold, but it was perfect!
This was the perfect meal to prepare for a race!
Thanks Taralynn had no Idea that cashew cheese tastes like cheese! You are such a good and detailed blogger! What would I do without your wonderful blog posts with such vivid descriptions?
Well, the fact that it’s not actually cheese is why I said it actually tasted like cheese. It could pass as the real deal. No need for your snark.
That’s a little rude–if you have nothing nice to say and don’t enjoy Tara’s posts, why bother to spread negativity? Keep it to yourself, Tara doesn’t deserve the hate.
I guess I’m on the flip side…I’ve never heard of cashew cheese. Just reading the name makes it sound kind of disgusting, so I’m personally glad you said something about it because that’s normally something I would not even think twice about because it doesn’t sound like something I would like. But now that I’ve heard of it and know that it got such high praise from you, I would be way more tempted to try it. Thank you!
Agreed, I knew what you meant! It was re-“FRESH”-ing to hear that cashew cheese taste like actual cheese because I’ve passed it up a few times now at a local spot in fear it would taste disgusting! ;o)
I love healthy, local restaurants! I wish there were more in my town:(
Is this place worth a 2 day drive? 😉 haha
Why would you order a salad that you could make any ol’ day when they have so many other exciting options?
because its delicious, it makes me happy, it satisfies me, and its what i wanted 🙂
I crave salads also. For the longest time I was craving a Ruby Tuesday salad (of all places lol). I consider salads as much food as “real” food…after all, they are food. haha Excellent option and I applaud your commitment to health! It’s hard to stay healthy while eating out so I really do admire and appreciate you!
salads are the bomb! They taste amazing.
I do know that whenever I go out and buy salad really I am paying for lettuce and it’s not worth the money but when you’re trying to eat healthy, you gotta make the sacrifice–pay a little more of just don’t opt to go or and eat when you can make a delicious healthy salad at home for less than half the price!
Oh my gosh, that food looks so awesome!! I need to start looking for more places like this around here. We have such great options living in a city, but often they are totally way too pricey!
Everything that you guys ordered looks delicious! Wish they had a Luna’s here in Arizona!
Luna’s Living Kitchen sounds a lot like this restaurant near me that I’m OBSESSED with called Chicago Raw! It’s a completely raw vegan restaurant… and they happen to have a mini-shop set up in my new job, which is both the best and worst thing to ever happen to me! 😉
I’m plant-based in Chicago and I’m ALWAYS hanging out at Chicago Raw. It’s so damn delicious but costs WAY too much, so I just mooch off of the samples mwahahaha.
Sweet potato sushi sounds like a dream! Wish we had such good eats over here in the UK.
Courtney x
Courtney Says What
Everything just looks so fresh and nurtrient dense. 🙂
That looks delicious. I wish we had restaurants like this in Wyoming.
That sweet potato sushi looks delicious! I never thought to julienne them like that, I’ll have to try it sometime! And that juice makes me crave fresh juice; do you still use your juicer Tara!?
What is “living food”? I haven’t heard that before (which is surprising since I live near Asheville, lol).
It looks really yummy, other than the fact that I love meat and they don’t have any :p
Luna’s looks like a cool place! I love restaurants that have a lot of character and offer healthy/fresh options! And sweet potato sushi?! That sounds amazing 🙂
Ooh, this place looks so awesome! I wish we had one in CA! :'(
I love cashew cheese! I ate it a few times! Nutritional yeast gives it a nice cheesy Flavor too!
That place looks so good!
http://www.laurahager.blogspot.com
Everything looks amazing!
Flip Flops and Furs
Your photos are great.
I went there after you blogged about it. Thank you for helping me navigate charlotte in a healthy way!