De Maria is one of the most Instagram'd places in the city right now as it's got this funky California hippie vibe and all its food is bright and super colorful. Plus the food also quite healthy - think avocado toast, grains, flax seeds, and turmeric. The first person I thought of when I saw this menu was my friend Laura and in true cliched fashion, we both meet up here after going to our morning pilates class.
The place was packed on a Saturday morning - mostly full of gals like us who just came from pilates or yoga, sigh. I'll give them credit and say that the menu was quite unique and full of dishes that you haven't really seen or heard of else where but not in a weird gross way but in a "hmm, that sounds interesting" way. My one big gripe about the menu is that nothing sounded really hearty or very filling. Everything sounded like a dish that would leave you hungry within 10 mins of leaving the restaurant. I got a grain bowl where the name escapes me as it wasn't their famous Dragon Bowl but it had a similar name since it had similar ingredients like a grain mix, heirloom beans, and avocado except mine had raw salmon and was served with a leche de tigre sauce instead of a poached egg and tahini sauce. Laura got the actual Dragon bowl and a bone broth as well.
The first sign that things weren't going to be great was that we waited forever for our drinks which was a simple coffee and grapefruit juice. I could tell that the waitstaff was busy and seemed a bit overwhelmed but to me, your drinks should come out quickly so that you can buy some time with the food in a crazy busy setting. Of course, we waited a while for our food to come out too and I'll be the first to admit that the bowls were beautiful - colorful and nicely presented. Taste-wise, it was exactly as advertised, a super clean and healthy tasting dish. The mixture of the leche de tigre, raw salmon, avocado and 5 grain was creative and well balanced. I just wished it was 3 times of the size of what it was. I also sipped Laura's bone broth and honestly I wasn't all that impressed with it. It had spicy chili-turmeric to it that I honestly didn't care for. When I drink bone broth, I want it to be focused on the salty broth flavor and not be distracted by a spicy flavor to it. If you're into bone broth, I had a very salty but good one at Dickson's Farmstand Meats in Chelsea Market.
One of the main reasons I gave this place 3 forks was that I just wasn't feeling the crowd around us either, even though on the outside we clearly looked like everyone else in their work out clothes. It felt like a really pretentious snotty crowd, bordering on basic bitches - even the girl next to us was super rude - Laura accidentally flung a bit of grain in her direction and she looked at us like you thought we killed her puppy or something even after Laura apologized profusely. The service was super slow and not apologetic about it at all. As expected, I walked out ready to eat pizza within a few hours of my meal (I actually did go and eat pizza 2 hours later). If you're into all the hippe dippie, health food craze, by all means go and try it out. I'd just recommend avoiding it during brunch hours and don't got if you're really hungry. Total bill: $30/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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