Spotlight: Good Choice Kitchen & Chef/Owner Laurie Gershgorn
A handful of people in my family are vegan, and I’m a self-proclaimed flexitarian, so finding healthy restaurants where we can all have an amazing meal can sometimes be both a challenge and a pleasure. Everyone in my family is a true lover of food, so going to a meat-focused restaurant and getting the “house salad” or the one vegan/vegetarian dish on the menu simply won’t cut it! In our search for restaurants that offer healthy, creative, exciting, satisfying meals, we have definitely created our own list of “greatest hits”. A couple of years back, a new restaurant opened in my hometown. It was vegan, farm-to-table, had an incredibly creative menu that changed with the seasons, and was doing work to engage with the community in a variety of ways. Needless to say, we couldn’t wait to check it out. Fast forward 3 years, we now stop by Good Choice Kitchen several times a month and have happily added it to our “greatest hits”.
Good Choice Kitchen skillfully embodies so many core tenets of sustainable eating and sustainable living. The Restaurant/Café sources nearly all of its produce from local (within 100-150 miles), fair trade producers that engage in healthy, ethical, and sustainable farming practices. As a result, the menu is one that changes in both options and availability throughout the year in an effort to remain true to their mission, but this is not so much a limitation as it is an opportunity for them to flex their creativity and resilience. It’s also one of the many sources of learning that they offer. As patron’s who dine there regularly might tell you, watching the menu change as the weeks go by instills an understanding of the realities of locality and seasonality in the northeast of the United States. By no means does the learning stop here, however. The restaurant offers cooking workshops and wellness events regularly. These workshops/events give patrons the opportunity to refine their cooking skills, to learn about new cuisines, to gain a better understanding of their food’s nutrition, and to expand their understanding and versatility in the context of adaptive diets. Additionally, to offer patrons an inside look and intimate experience with the people who actually grow their food, Good Choice Kitchen hosts periodic “Farmer Spotlight Dinners'' in which entire menus are crafted from the farmer’s harvest, and diners get to hear about the farms and the farmer’s experiences first hand.
Oh, did I mention they have an incredible menu as well? This is my own personal opinion, but I sometimes find it strange (and even off-putting) when vegetarian/vegan restaurants have menus full of replacements. Instead of “chicken-less fingers” and “meat-less ground beef tacos”, Good Choice Kitchen has a menu that not only respects but highlights the incredible flavor and versatility of their ingredients. Some of my favorites from the regular menu are the “Hearty Sesame Kale Salad” (with crunchy seasonal raw vegetable, miso-sesame dressing), the Soba Noodles (with sesame or almond sauce), their signature Burrito (with beans, yam, greens, avocado, salsa in a wheat or red lentil wrap), and the Peace Bowl (with avocado, yam, sprouts, protein grain, toasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds, raw shredded vegetable, miso-tahini dressing). That being said, their specials are always changing and never cease to impress.
Behind all of this is the head chef and owner, Laurie Gershgorn. I had the pleasure of interviewing her recently to learn more about her journey through sustainable eating, sustainable living, and wellness:
In the wake of leaving her career in the television industry to take care of her newborn, Laurie became infatuated with the role that food can play in both healthcare and wellness. Immersing herself in that world with the help of friends, physicians, and a variety of community organizations, her understanding of how broad and interconnected the worlds of food production, healthcare, wellness and environmental protection, quickly expanded. As her involvement in many of these community organizations (including her leadership in a variety of produce co-ops and CSAs) increased, her desire to not only get educated but to become an active agent of change and betterment increased as well.
On her quest to find the avenue that would allow her to channel her passions, fight for the causes she so deeply believed in, all while juggling a growing family, she realized cooking could be a way to do it all. With her natural passion and ability in the kitchen, as well as her training through places like the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health & Culinary Arts and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, she has been able to hone her craft in a way that allows her to be incredibly flexible and accommodating in the face of a diverse range of needs (from individuals) and an ever-changing supply of ingredients.
Shortly after completing these training and educational programs, she would found Healthy Culinary Creations LLC, a mélange of private/public cooking classes, small-scale catering jobs, and various forms of personalized private cooking (all in addition to all of her work with various CSAs, farms, and co-ops). Over time, this would transform and blossom into what is now Good Choice Kitchen.
From the very beginning, her focus on community, individuality (with regard to patrons’ needs), wellbeing, and sustainability were baked into the very foundation of the restaurant. Although the restaurant feeds a community, continues to build relationships with both new and established farms, offers a huge array of learning and community-building opportunities, Laurie continues to nurture one-on-one relationships with her patrons. To this day, she still provides personalized meals to families in the community (and the surrounding communities) to meet both their flavor pallets as well as their nutritional/medicinal needs (check out the Green Plate Club here).
I was also able to speak with her about some of her philosophies regarding veganism/vegetarianism, sustainability, and the growing markets for sustainable/plant-based/ethical foods. While she doesn’t feel she can advocate for animal-based foods/products, in her understanding that people’s needs can vary dramatically from case to case, she does feel that the pathway to healthy and sustainable eating on a global scale is not on that can be paved with shaming and exclusion, but rather with love, inclusion, and patience.
I would so highly recommend visiting her restaurant, and supporting other restaurants like hers that not only practice these tenants of healthy and sustainable eating, but do so in a way that engages their communities.
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