Sasha Zabar assembled the simple ingredients quickly — açaí purée, frozen banana, strawberries banana and pineapple — and put them in a high-speed blender.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
While the fruit blended with a few splashes of almond milk, Zabar prepped fresh bananas and strawberries for the finished product.
The blended fruit was the foundation for one of the signature açaí bowls that can be had at The Juice Box, a new shop on Chapel Street that specializes in all things fresh-pressed juice, smoothies and smoothies in a bowl like the açaí bowl that Zabar was mixing up.
Juice Box Bowl in all its glory.
After spreading the fruit mixture into a compostable bowl, Zabar topped it off with the sliced banana, strawberries, gluten-free granola and local raw honey.
“If you’re vegan you can top it with agave or maple syrup,” he pointed out.
Roots drummer Questlove’s “Something To Food About” on display.
Zabar opened The Juice Box with friends Sam Chamino and Max Young. It is the third business the three have started in the Elm City. They opened up White Buffalo Vapors at 748 Chapel St., the city’s first e‑cigarette lounge. They followed that venture by developing a business that manufactures the liquid that goes in e‑cigarettes.
Chamino, Zabar and Young at White Buffalo Vapors in 2014.
They hop on up-and-coming trends like vaping, which is gaining steam in other metropolitan markets. When cold-pressed juicing started to become the hot new thing, Zabar, who develops the recipes for The Juice Box, said he and his partners found the next trend to bring to New Haven.
“We thought Yale, with its body of transplants and students coming from New York, Chicago and L.A., and staff, professors, and now Alexion — the city is kind of up and coming,” he said.
Zabar will modestly tell you that he has a background in food. That’s a bit of an understatement. His family owns the landmark Upper West Side Manhattan deli/gourmet food store that bears their last name. His father, Eli, is the owner of a number of successful New York restaurants, grocery stores and a bakery.
“From a young age I always loved working with food,” Sasha said.
He said he grew up working in his family’s businesses, from busing to running the cheese department in one of the grocery stores. He also took a turn as a line chef at Jean-Georges while taking a break from working on a degree at Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.
During that break he met his business partners through friends who had ties to New Haven.
Pictures of the namesakes of menu items.
Zabar said that New Haven has been a great city in which to open a business because the start-up and operating costs are a lot lower than in places like New York City.
He did admit to wrangling with Yale University Properties, the landlord, over the design of the light-filled, stripped down shop and its minimalist decor. The owners are fans of the nearby Yale Unviersity Art Gallery and Center for British Art and the work of architect Louis Kahn. They took their cues from there in the shop’s design. “The food is clean, simple and straightforward, and we believed it should be served in a place that looks the same,” he said.
Other downtown spots already cater to vegan and vegetarian sensibilities with similar offerings. The Juice Box is the only place in the city so far that has specifically jumped on the cold-pressed juicing trend.
Not only does The Juice Box sell cold-pressed juice; it also offers a custom package of juices for customers interested in detoxifying cleanses. Customers can purchase an introductory package of juices to be used for 24 hours to replace solid foods. The Juice Box can then help customers design their own cleanse, tailored to their needs.
Custom Cool cooler stocked with everything from whole coconuts to wheatgrass.
Zabar said that the introductory pack has gotten a fair amount of attention. So have daily grab-and-go offerings. Though The Juice Box has been open just four months, it has had a surprisingly busy summer, he said.
That has Zabar looking ahead to the future. He and his partners envision opening a specialty grocery store stocked with many of the additional ingredients beyond fruits and vegetables that they add to their juices and smoothies, such as maca, spirulina, chlorella, activated charcoal, and raw cacao.
“I think it would really be cool to educate the customer and allow them to buy those individual products on their own,” he said. He’d also like to be able to offer house-made almond butter and granola, along with to-go snacks and salads. He envisions eventually offering a line of gluten-free pastries.
He’s confident that New Haven is ready.
“We’re looking to expand out to secondary markets like New Haven,” he said. “New York and L.A. are overly saturated. And I think people are really liking what we’re doing.”
Like I said the Gentrification Vampires are on the way. Becareful what you ask for.
Highland Park Gets the Official Stamp of Gentrification: A Cold-Pressed Juicery
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
By Sarah Bennett
The Juice co-owner Elizabeth Halpern says she's sensitive to the gentrification fears. Although her product and its price point may not be for everyone
http://www.laweekly.com/restaurants/highland-park-gets-the-official-stamp-of-gentrification-a-cold-pressed-juicery-5390093
$10 Juice: A Cultural Symbol for Gentrification.
Later that day, I wanted to find out whether there is a correlation between juice bars and gentrification. So I screen-grabbed the search results for "juice" on Google Maps, which displays the promoted businesses that sell juice. I then compared the pattern from Google Maps to the map on Zillow based on houses for sale with the price of $500,000 and above. Ditto! There seems to be some correlation between the two. Not a huge surprise, but the simple comparison does tell a lot about the trajectories that gentrification will follow.
http://interacticus.com/post/10-juice-a-cultural-symbol-for-gentrification.
My bad.Do they take EBT Cards?