Lifefood Gourmet, located on the narrow streets of Coral Gables, is a place to learn about all that is raw eating and to be taught about everything from vortex water to tea infusions.
The menu, while on the pricey side, offers a complete raw vegan dining experience. The shop is small but has high ceilings and a windowed wall, which makes the room open up. We took a seat at one of the high-top tables with Lifefood Gourmet's Chef John Schott and got to work.
New Times: I see more than half the menu is made up of drinkable items. Can you tell me about your teas, like the gingerade.
Chef John Schott: Our teas contain nothing artificial, nothing processed,
everything we make here is from scratch. The Ginger in the Gingerade is a
powerful antioxidant and there is a lot of vitamin C from the whole
lemons we use. It's also full of electrolytes, a little bit of
wildflower raw honey, and sun dried Celtic living salt.
For those who haven't studied nutrition, could you give us a play by play on what electrolytes do?
Electrolytes basically give you your energy. They are the negative ions
that the body needs to actually perform its duties. It nourishes the
adrenal glands which makes your cortisol and adrenaline and all the
hormones that are actually the ones that drive your whole body.
You seem like you know a lot about this. Did you study nutrition?
I'm actually self taught. I learned all of this on my own. I'm very
passionate about healthy living, so I found this nice vehicle to
continue doing that.
The smoothies are a big part of my menu. We do a couple
of things with them. The first is putting a lot of nutrient-dense
elements into the smoothies, so some of our smoothies are actually a
meal in and of themselves.
Our super shakes have a ton of nutrients, including raw chocolate which is
rich in antioxidants, and spirulina which is a blue green algae which
is unbelievably packed with chlorophyll, vitamins and minerals. All the
bases for our smoothies contain something we call "wild milk" made from
wild brazil nut milk, which we make in house by blending brazil nuts to
make into a butter, then we add the vortex pristine hydro water to
create the wild milk.
Vortex pristine hydro water? That sounds like something out of this world.
It basically creates a system that mimics nature's living water source.
Laboratory grade water (or hungry water) is stripped of electrolytes
and will steal nutrients and minerals from your body. What we do is
re-mineralize that water by adding magnesium bicarbonate solution, which
makes it a healing water. We give it structure by doing a double
vortex. This water will actually hydrate you instead of stripping your
body of what it needs.
Wow, this is thorough.
(Laughs) You know, everything that flows in nature, flows in a vortex
spiral-like pattern. Water that has this pattern is structured, and you
can test the antioxidant level of different waters. Then finally, we run
it through quartz crystals to imprint something back from the earth,
since water holds memory.
Wait, water holds memory?
That sounds a little bit more esoteric, but there have been studies in Japan, like the study of,"The Hidden Messages in Water."
[Masaru Emoto] took crystal pictures of water at different stages. He
iced them and took micro photos. He took one that had a message of
hatred-
Did it look jagged?
No, not even. It looked like the crystal exploded. Like an atomic bomb.
Woah. And these are still photographs of water crystals right? Not him tampering with them?
No, they were stills with macro lenses. We know it's more of an
esoteric thing, but I don't lose anything by running it through the
lodestone and quartz crystals. It re-mineralizes the water, and makes it
better for you.
It's really interesting that you guys not only offer the raw
vegan food, but also the supplies to make it at home too. You have a two
bookcases full of spices and ingredients, and even sustainable items.
Yes, we do that because we like to educate a lot. Right now, I'm the only one who teaches and it's private classes, but
we are going to get more into education and reading materials.
Tell me about the NYC Pizza?
The dough is made from flax seed, coconut flour, olive oil,
vegetables and herbs. We did this because we saw many kids who couldn't
eat glutton. This pizza is glutton free, and it's a healthy pizza for
the kids. We then layer it with sun-dried tomato sauce, and add
fresh tomatoes and top it with the cheese spread. It's made from pumpkin
seeds, Irish Moss (a type of seaweed), and seasonings.
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