Health care
BY KAROLINE PFEIL
Co-owner Sara Siso prepares plant-based meals and desserts at Conscious Kitchen.
Several types of bread are created in the kitchen, including pumpernickel, banana raisin, olive and onion.
PHOTOS COURTESY CONSCIOUS KITCHEN
Conscious Kitchen serves up plant-based meals
Founded by holistic health practitioners Sara and Nikki Siso, Conscious Kitchen is serving up raw, organic plant-based foods designed with the intention to support healthy diets. The overview The mother-daughter duo behind the business trace their menu’s inspiration back to Sara Siso’s cancer diagnosis twenty years ago. Having noticed an improvement in her health through juicing and eating healthy meals post-diagnosis, she opened her own restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona, called Chef Sara’s Raw Vegan Cafe and Academy in order to share her food with others. “I wanted to spread the news [about] how plant-based [cooking] can really heal the body,” Sara Siso said. Upon moving to Austin, her daughter, Nikki Siso, became interested in joining the family restaurant business, ultimately nding an available location in West Lake Hills and creating Conscious Kitchen. “I was noticing that there’s no raw living restaurants in Austin at all,” Nikki Siso said. “I was in transition between holistic health coach- ing and wanting to do something in the next chapter, and [Sara had] been looking to open a restaurant. …Within a month I found this place.”
What’s on the menu? The menu features ready-made meals like falafel, pizza and quiche as well as a variety of bread loaves, drinks, and sweets. “Our meals are literally plants, seeds, nuts, herbs, and spices. That’s it. We don’t use soy, we don’t use gluten. We don’t even really use grains. Our breads have sprouted organic oats, that’s the only grain I would say we use,” Nikki Siso said. Instead of cooking, the kitchen utilizes tech- niques like blending and dehydrating for their dishes, which is intended to preserve certain nutrients and enzymes, Nikki Siso said. In terms of which dishes are most popular, the pizza and lasagna are ordered often, but a personal favorite for Nikki Siso is the falafel, which, instead of being deep-fried, is dehydrated and made with almonds rather than chick peas. What’s next? Following the success of Conscious Kitchen’s opening in West Lake Hills, the business hopes to expand into education, o ering classes on cooking and healthy meal preparation. “Starting [the classes] next month is my goal,” Nikki Siso said in May. The weekly classes will cover meal prepara- tion techniques, beginning with instruction on producing almond milk, Nikki Siso said.
Pizza, quiche and veggie burgers are popular items ordered by customers.
A selection of dehydrated snacks are o ered at Conscious Kitchen.
BEE CAVES RD.
360
WESTBANK DR.
2244
N
3620 Bee Caves Road, Ste. C, West Lake Hills www.consciouskitchenatx.com
37
LAKE TRAVIS WESTLAKE EDITION
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