Food Tour: Vortex- Carrot, Beet, Ginger and Jalapeño Juice

Food Tour is a forum for me to share my favorite food from different cities, countrysides and islands that I find myself in or on.

Ever since I’ve moved onto Susan’s farm in the south western valley of Lopez Island, I’ve been in food heaven: fresh tomatoes, beets, and kale. It’s given me little reason to venture for food past the blackberry bushes that line the fence of the farm. However, this weekend, I did manage to get myself into Lopez’s small village and check out the farmer’s market (where they had some great local hot sauce, Chicaoji… named after its combination of chipotle peppers, cacao and goji berries), and the Vortex juice bar and café. There I tried a carrot, beet, ginger, jalapeño juice; a juice that was guaranteed to fulfill my “what looks like the most insane thing on this menu/how can I turn my pee purple” criteria. As I watched my appropriately earthy juice artist craft my 10 oz. glass, two things stuck me:

1. Holy shit, so many veggies go into juice. I mean, I’ve looked on the sides of juice bottles and been like “47 berries sounds like a lot of berries for 12 oz.,” but when you see 10 entire carrots go into a 10 oz. juice, you realize how dense juice is.

2. I need a juicer… I could really make some off-the-wall combinations that could taste real good.

The carrot, beet, ginger, jalapeño juice was definitely off-the-wall; the jalapeño and ginger gave the juice crazy kick while the beautiful pair of carrots and beets held the juice together and gave it a bright purple color. Really unique and really tasty.

The juice reminded me of Vijay Iyer’s version of M.I.A.’s “Galang.” The song has `serious kick from the dissonant thudding bass chords and Vijay’s left hand but still has this very natural and organic sound as a product of the jazz trio instrumentation. And most of all, like the 10 oz. juice, you’re left wanting so much more. Definitely check out Vortex if you get the chance.