Juice Kaboose

photo by flickr user Yellow.Cat

By Delaney Roth & Jan Carstens

It was a Saturday morning, dragged out of bed at the crack of 9 am by an anxious mother eager to complete her last day of a consecutive thirty-day yoga marathon. When the worst was over, we saw it fit to celebrate and continue in the good health we were practicing and made our way over to a proud local establishment, the one and only “Juice Kaboose”. After hearing 30 days of hype about the healthy juice bar we were excited to try it for ourselves.

Located in the heart of downtown La Jolla, the tiny establishment boasts a seventeen-year residence in the town, attracting loyal customers by a commitment to health and nutrition.

Upon walking through its doors, not only was the shop excessively intimate in square footage, but also the other side the crowd it attracted outnumbered our own party. For being so easily crowded, the place maintains an air of rejuvenation, and each of those faces –which were no more than a few feet away from our own at any given time- were smiling and friendly.

Immediately one of the baristas struck up a lively conversation after we were introduced, and immediately we were swept up in the good vibrations and forgot what we had come there for in the first place.

We had come for juice, and it was juice we wouldn’t get. After one look through its diverse and exotic menu options there was no way we could just settle for a ginger-beet-kale-carrot blended beverage experience. Instead we decided to take our chances with choices from their fruit-bowl menu.

The Juice Kaboose maintains its reputation as a solid juice shop by following into the recent Acai bowl craze, but takes it even one step further with an entire menu devoted to the Pitaya bowl. Known popularly as Dragonfruit, the Pitaya offers a lighter, more refreshing base to the fruit bowl for those juice bar frequenters with a little less of a sweet tooth.

Our day of exotic health-food sampling was not about to end yet though. Before we could leave, the same friendly barista had us try one of their shop’s “algae shots”, a favorite dare food I’m sure. Similar looking to the commonly offered wheat grass shot, this dark green salty drink offers plenty of extra benefits including its support for healthy brain function and a half hour of one’s mouth tasting like tide pools. After taking on the challenging shot though we were immediately rewarded with a new refreshing feeling.

Whether it was the yoga, the fruit bowl, or maybe that dreadful slurp of sea-goop, the rest of our day went wonderfully and all we can say for sure is that we’ll certainly be back to pay the Juice Kaboose another visit.