These are Charlotte’s top healthy cafes, restaurants, and juiceries.
As Charlotte residents continue to pay more and more attention to their wellness, local companies have found unique ways to revitalize their menu items and concepts. We took some of our favorite spots to eat and found their healthiest, most delicious dishes. From lighter, fresh dishes like whole fish and stuffed avocado to more traditional takes on “healthy” dishes like salads and veggies burgers, these are the best bites you can find that will taste just as good as they make you feel.
Link & Pin
Link & Pin, one of Charlotte’s newest gastropubs, offers a whole branzino that is sure to make your mouth water. The branzino is served with duck fat confit marble potatoes, haricot verts, and charred lemon, making it the perfect family meal.
Fine & Fettle
A coffee house in the morning and a gastro lounge at night, Fine & Fettle offers a variety of southern style meals including a beet salad that you don’t want to miss. Burrata is served with roasted beets, pickled beets, hazelnut, and charred citrus, making it the perfect start to your meal.
Rooster’s Seasonal Salad
The seasonal salad from Rooster’s in South Park comes with Fair Share Farms’ mixed greens as the base. From there, expect the toppings on this salad to change seasonally (and sometimes even weekly) depending on what Chef Jason is able to source from local farms. It’s about as fresh and farm-to-table as you can possibly get.
roosterskitchen.com
Lotus Soul
Organic and good vibes are sure to be found in any of the smoothies at Lotus Soul Cafe. Try the Lucky Green smoothie for a healthy meal substitution, a pineapple spinach smoothie with ginger, avocado, spirulina, coconut water, bee pollen, and honey.
Living Kitchen
Who says burgers can’t be healthy? Living Kitchen’s fire & brimstone burger is made with a quinoa and millet burger patty, and topped with chipotle sunflower seed hummus, tomato, red onion, guacamole, sprouts, and fire & brimstone sauce.
Yafo Kitchen
Yafo Kitchen is the Mediterranean street food you’ve been missing. The cauliflower stuffed pita, made with cauliflower, hummus, cucumber, tomato salad, and green schug is one of the chef’s features offered on the menu.
VANA
The Beet Cured Salmon, is a must-try brunch item at Vana in Charlotte for a healthy, delicious start to your day. It is paired with capers, pickled red onion, bitter greens, and a soft boiled egg.
Verde
Salad lovers will be dying to try one of Verde’s signature creations, providing salads topped, chopped, or wrapped with fresh bread. The Southern Harvest has mesclun, roasted chicken, apples, pecans, cornbread croutons, and to top it all off, a sweet tea vinaigrette. It’s one of Charlotte’s top healthy lunch grab-and-go places.
Fern, Flavors from the Garden
With a focus on plant-based and southern cuisine, Fern, Flavors from the Garden has a variety of healthy menu options to still give you a taste of home. The chimichanga contains tofu sofritas, mixed vegetables, cashew queso and avocado, and served with salsa and tortilla chips.
Green Brothers Juice Co.
Green Brothers Juice Co. strives to empower people to be healthy and happy through their nutrient dense recipes. Try the Crave-a-Bowl, made with acai, blueberry, banana, cold brew coffee and almond milk blended, and topped with strawberry, hazelnut spread, coconut flake, hemp seed, granola and honey.
Clean Juice
With over 100 locations, Clean Juice Co offers organic ingredients in their salads, juices, and smoothies for a healthy meal option. The Healthy Heart One smoothie contains himalayan pink sea salt, organic almond butter, organic almond milk, organic avocado, organic cinnamon, and organic maple syrup.
Pure Pizza
Pure Pizza’s commitment to sustainability is not just to the environment, but to offering farm-2-fork pizzas, salads, and sandwiches for their customers. One of their vegan and vegetarian craft pizzas includes the She-Rex, mozzarella, mushrooms, onion, peppers, topped with greens tossed in lemon vinaigrette.
Little Mama’s
Italian food doesn’t have to be heavy: This simple broiled salmon from Little Mama’s is a perfect example of that. Served with Faroe Island salmon alongside an olive pesto and a warm quinoa salad, it’s a satisfying meal served with clean ingredients.
Roots Cafe
Roots Cafe brings locally sourced ingredients handcrafted with love to the table in each of their menu items. Dig into the Avocado Chicken Wrap, composed of grilled chicken, local greens, applewood smoked bacon, avocado, and cracked pepper dressing.
Chopt
Get a taste of the West Coast in Charlotte with one of Chopt’s Destination California salad bowls. The Baja Shrimp Taco Salad is made with wild-caught shrimp, corn, watermelon radish, jalapeno, tortilla chips, romaine, cabbage and cilantro blend and add on the baja sauce for some extra flavor.
Eight + Sand Kitchen
Eight + Sand Kitchen uses the freshest ingredients to bring high quality meals made from scratch to our plates. One of their signature meals is the Eight + Sand salad, mixed with romaine, kale, tri-color quinoa, sweet potato, pickled onion, charred brussel sprouts, roasted cauliflower, toasted sunflower seeds, and vegan green goddess dressing.
Plant Joy
Plant Joy is Charlotte’s top healthy plant-forward food stall: the final installment to the Camp North End food scene, bringing healthy vegan dishes with a twist. The Falafel Stack is a can’t miss meal that is served nacho style with all fresh and vegan ingredients in their Mediterranian style dishes.
Noble Smoke
Noble Smoke may be BBQ-heavy, but Chef Noble was careful to accommodate different eaters, as well. The Noble Smoke salad comes with mixed greens, cucumber, radish, and celery and you have the option to add smoked turkey or Joyce Farms chicken for a lean, right-off-the-smoker protein. Joyce Farms chicken is the cleanest chicken you can source: There are no hormones, no antibiotics, no growth stimulants, and no chemicals.
Oh My Soul
Noda’s first fully vegan restaurant, Oh My Soul, is one of Charlotte’s top healthy eateries, offering vegan burgers with a South African twist that you cannot miss. The Waka Waka ‘vurger’ is made with their South African spicy lentil patty served on fresh cilantro, tomato, red onion, chilli mayo, and then topped with sliced avocado, chakalaka, and chilli flakes.
Kid Cashew
Fresh and organic foods are coming out of KId Cashew’s kitchen, with some of the healthiest and freshest meals you can find. Kid Cashew offers quinoa stuffed avocados that are filled with cucumber salsa, lettuce, and a chipotle sauce that is sure to leave you feeling stuffed and satisfied with such a clean meal.
Flower Child
Flower Child is the perfect stop in South End to get your daily dose of vegetables and enjoy a delicious meal at the same time. The Glow Bowl is a vegetarian and gluten free staple at Flower Child, containing spicy sweet potato noodles, bok choy, zucchini, onion, jalapeño, shiitake mushroom, coconut milk, sunflower butter.
Rico’s Acai
Rico’s Acai offers a variety of acai bowls, including a Butter Bro Bowl, that is sure to satisfy your sweet tooth while keeping healthy at the same time. The Butter Brow Bowl contains acai puree, banana, granola, almond butter, peanut butter, Nutella, and hemp seeds.
Copain
Copain’s hummus bowl is an ideal grab-n-go option that’s always available at the Copain retail shop, although flavors and ingredients may change based on seasons and availability from local farms to ensure you the freshest version.
Bean Vegan
Bean Vegan is the place to go when you are testing out your vegan diet or wanting to explore the alternatives to meat, the menu was made for vegan based diets and non-vegan diets, so you can bring anyone there to enjoy the vegan meals. The cheesesteak hoagie is an example of an atypical vegan meal, made with: seitan grilled with peppers, onions, mushrooms, daiya mozzarella, vegenaise, shredded lettuce, tomato, and onion to give you the glorious taste of a “healthy” cheesesteak.
STIR
Located in the RailYard in South End, STIR has seafood options for all times of the day. The avocado & mahi ceviche is a go-to dish for lunch or dinner, made with mahi, avocado, red onion, sweet potato, and green tiger’s milk.
Crisp
Crisp is your fast and to go lunch that just got a whole lot healthier, Crisp offers healthy soups, salads, and wraps that are great for someone on the go. The Asian salad is a staple dish that bursts with flavor, filled with chicken, spinach, romaine, sunflower kernels, mandarin oranges, cucumbers, chinese noodles, and soy ginger dressing, this salad is a must have.
The Goodyear House
The Goodyear House combines Asian and southern cuisine and has meals for every palette including steak lovers and vegans. The smoked cashew mac and cheese is a go to vegan dish topped with chile breadcrumbs, this dish is sure to curb those mac and cheese cravings with a healthy, but delicious substitute.
B.Good
A restaurant that knows the meaning of flavorful food, B.Good, brings you a clean menu that uses fresh ingredients and turns their classic meals in a clean and healthy dish. The Spicy Avocado Lime bowl is vegan and gluten free, made with avocados, black bean corn salsa, sauteed veggies, quinoa, kale, tomatoes, cilantro, lime, chipotle puree, and a chipotle vinaigrette.
Freshii
Freshii is more than just your typical juice bar, they bring quality wraps, burritos, and bowls that are stuffed with healthy ingredients so that you can grab a bite to eat when you are getting your favorite juice. The Metaboost wraps are made with spinach, kale, field greens, goat cheese, mango, almonds, carrots, edamame, and balsamic vinaigrette giving it a sweet and tangy taste.
Fin & Fino
The tuna and salmon poke bowl is always a light lunch winner. It’s crisp and perfectly fresh, served with sushi rice, furikake, pickled jalapeno, and bibb lettuce.
finandfino.com
The Stanley
From Chef Paul Verica and his talented team at The Stanley comes this super-stylized take on a beet salad. The “roasted Small City Farms beets” come with house ricotta, arugula, nasturtium, parsley, balsamic, and a sprinkle of flowers.
thestanleyclt.com
Enjoy all of Charlotte’s top healthy spots for food and drinks this New Year, and help support local business at the same time.
