Avocados Steal The Show On Menus Across New York City
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Move over, guacamole. It's time for your star ingredient to shine.
The avocado is taking center stage on the menus at multiple restaurants across New York City.
As CBS2's Vanessa Murdock reported Thursday, entrepreneurs are seeing green of another kind when they feast their eyes on the avocado.
"Avocado has the unique property of being fat and being healthy at the same time," said Francesco Brachetti, co-founder of Avocaderia.
It's a rare combination in a fruit. Yes, the avocado is actually a berry.
It's also the centerpiece of every dish at Avocaderia, inside Terminal Stores in Hudson Yards. There's even a body scrub and chocolate made from it.
"It's really about serving healthy and tasty food at the same time," Co-Founder Alessandro Biggi said.
The co-founders told Murdock this is their second location. They opened their first in Sunset Park, Brooklyn in 2017, dubbed the first avocado bar in the world, and lines went out the door.
"I think the first week we sold out every single day," said Biggi.
New Yorkers fell in love with their artfully created dishes, like the Burrata Dream -- toast covered in sweet pea and mint spread gets topped with an avocado rose and burrata fills the middle, then it's topped with pistachio and olive oil. It's a celebration for the senses.
Over on the edge of Chinatown you'll find Avocado Appetit. The hard-to-miss avocado draws you in, the décor makes you smile and the food might transform you, just as it did Founder James Mai.
"A year or two ago, I was really, really overweight," he told Murdock.
So he started Googling how to shed pounds.
"Number one thing I saw was avocado, the good fat," he said.
Mai started a diet that included one avocado smoothie a day, and he lost 50 pounds. Before then, he said he never ate an avocado. Growing up in Chinatown, it just wasn't on the menu.
"It's just something people aren't aware of," he said.
So he's cooking up change with avocado smoothies, avocado burgers and avocado fries.
Perfectly ripe, flash frozen avocado gets coated with his father's tempura batter. A dip in the deep fryer and dad's special seasoning leads to perfection.
There you have it: Avocados are on a roll in New York City.
