From Fruit Galley to Windward Farm to One Life and Whole Foods, Venice all but body-surfs on a wave of freshly squeezed juice spots. Still, the seaside city his yet to see anyone quite like Amanda Chantal Bacon, the medicine woman who opened Moon Juice this morning on Rose Avenue. The former Lucques line-cook and early principal at Forage has nothing but the highest standards in mind here, going through 20 different vendors to source a snack pack of dried mango alone. What is she up to here, and would you like to look inside?
Moon Juice’s hydraulically pressed juices strictly employ only 100% organic ingredients, a first for the city, while Bacon’s dream project seeks to eschew the whole cult of “raw-vegan-organic” for a place accessible to all walks of nutritional obsession. She’s refreshingly bent on bringing health food together with flavor profiles that can be easily appreciated by the California palate, in original blends like “Fennel, Frond, and Herb,” which promotes skin health and respiratory soothing, and a “Turmeric Gold,” featuring fresh turmeric with red apples for anti-oxidation and pain killing.
Bacon’s aim is to merge California cuisine with healthy eating, offering a selection of seven juices made on the spot and bottled to go, meticulously sourced snacks that deliciously defy expectations (as in a compostable package of dried wild harvested Mendocino sea kelp with unpasteurized almonds), and house-made almond milk made from frequent deliveries of truly raw, organic, unpasteurized California almonds from Marian Farms.
This “Moon Milk” comes in six flavors at eight to twelve dollars each, like a delicious date shake with maca, cardamom, and coffee beans, and an organic mint chip shake that tastes like the favorite ice cream flavor, but is packed with ormus green, mesquite, mint extract, and your choice of natural sweeteners like coconut nectar or Stevia. In addition, Moon Milks can be added to the store’s own granola or customized with super foods like cacao nib, medjool dates, probiotics, Sun Warrior protein, maca, and bee pollen. Shots of ingredients like aloe vera, ginger, e3Live, and Liquid Light will be also on hand for those seeking a charge, while young coconut juice will always be on offer.
Chantal Bacon tells Grub Street she got into the game following her own foray into juice cleansing, which turned out to be “like a full-time job.” Since she needed a full-time job herself and was drawn to organic, whole foods, she embraced the challenge of creating a new type of health food business, one that didn’t isolate people based on their dietary needs but welcomed everyone in a “social environment that doesn’t revolve around booze.” Not that the more debauched around us aren’t welcome, too. Bacon insists she wants a place for people “who go out the night before and eat spaghetti and get drunk, but can come here the next day and feel welcome,” removing the exclusivity and attitude inherent in some whole food circles.
Inspired by a passing bus with an oli painting of the night sky while she was sitting on the NorCal sand, Bacon dubbed her new project “Moon Juice” and today she offers both a rainbow and green cleanse for $70 a day, to be available by online order in the coming weeks and eventually by delivery. The owner, mother to a four-month-old baby boy, is also developing a line of super foods for the little ones, and is eying expansion to cities like New York and San Francisco in the days to come. Before Moon Juice goes everywhere, you can find the cold pressed, 100% organic juices, moon milk, and snacks now serving Rose Avenue in Venice. Until then, check out our slideshow of the space.
