Jenn’s Shout Out: The Daily Juice Cafe

The Daily Juice Café at 4500 Duval Street is my new jam. It’s the cream in my coffee, the chocolate chip in my cookie, the dreidle in my Jewish holiday. I want to put it on a raw, vegan, gluten-free, organic, living mixtape, blast it from my car stereo, and end world hunger. Because it could. It really could.
From juice to coconut bbq to raw chocolate, each item on the deliberately select and well-balanced menu is hand-picked with your five flavor centers in mind. The Thai Noodle Bowl is my favorite so far: organic, spiralized yam and daikon noodles with red bell pepper, sunflower sprouts, radish, coconut strips, and cilantro, all tossed in a creamy almond-ginger sauce. Yum! Not only does this dish (and everything else on the menu) satisfy every textural and temporal craving you could possibly have, it looks pretty, too. Real pretty. Daily Juice understands that eating is an experience and they have mastered the visual element with care and attention to detail. The love that goes in to each delicately placed morsel is unmistakable and is guaranteed to make your day better.
So, do something good for yourself. Go out and support your local food radicals, the rare ones who refuse to sacrifice quality for profit, and make the world a better place. One heavenly bite at a time.

(by Jenn)

Shout Out: The Good Knight

It’s 10:30 on a Thursday night. You’ve come to after a 5 hour Weeds marathon when you were only going to watch a few minutes before doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom, and going to return that fan to Target. Crap. You’ve been so entranced, you’re butt is numb, and now you’re hungry and the only restaurants open past 11, you don’t wan to go to. In fact, you feel so guilty about not doing laundry and all the other stuff you had planned to have done before you go out of town on Saturday, that all you really want to do is have a delicious drink to numb the guilt.

(Or something like that.)

Do I have the place for you! I almost don’t want to tell people about my favorite places, so I can love them and hug them and squeeze them and call them George all by myself, but this place is too great for me to be selfish.

The Good Knight is located on East 6th, at the corner of Attayac, just a few blocks east of I35. They are open until 2 and serve food until 12:00. The interior has a dark taverny feel, with dark wood tables and captains chairs and old family pictures covering the walls. And they are family pictures of The Good Knight’s owners and employees. It’s the kind of place that you walk into and you feel immediately at ease. All the crapola that you feel you have to carry around and worry about is left at the door. You could sit in the upholstered chair in the corner, set your drink on the end table next to the lamp and simply be. You could meet some friends and pick at the flammekueche (rustic flatbread baked with caramelized onions, crème fraiche and applewood-smoked bacon) while you sip on a June Rose (White Seedless Grapes, Basil, Bitters and Hendricks Gin) or a Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat on draft and talk about the trips you want to take together. It’s almost as if you are transported to another era where time goes a little slower (as long as you can part with your iPhone for an hour of uninterrupted analog interaction).

The bartender is a jolly, sincere, and an amazingly talented mixologist whose laugh can be heard above the Friday night din of a packed house. He truly cares about his craft and is always up to make you a custom cocktail. The following things I have had and are stop-you-in-your-tracks-and-moan-all-gross-sounding good:

The meatloaf. Not your mom’s meatloaf. Unless you’re mom is a cook at a 4 star French bistro. Angus meatloaf bacon wrapped with whiskey gravy and mashed new potatoes. Nothing less than an epiphany.

The desserts. Oh the desserts. I don’t even like dessert! The very first thing I had there was the good knight pot de crème chocolate and earl grey custard served with chantilly. The kitchen had just closed, so they were nice enough to serve me that tea cup of wonderfulness that made me clutch it to my chest like Golem and scowl unecessarily at my friend (sorry John) just to make it clear I wasn’t sharing. I am the type of person that when I find something I like, I stick with it, so it took me many months to try the (bruleed!) crustless coconut buttermilk pie with blueberry cardamom compote. I quite literally dream about that pie.

Clearly, I love food, but the cocktails are just as good. The bloody mary is really unique and made with fresh tomato juice, it makes all the difference. I could go on, and on, but I’m pretty sure Home Slice isn’t paying me to write a dissertation on The Good Knight, a shout out will suffice.

Want to WICKED impress someone on a first date, but don’t want to put too much pressure on the date by taking them to someplace fancy and stilted, yet have the quality of service and food and drink? TAKE THEM HERE.