Miami-based healthy eatery Carrot Express is expanding its passion for great-tasting, nutritious food across South Florida with a number of new locations including its first Palm Beach County outpost.
What started as a small menu offering up healthy eats inside a gas station off Alton Road in Miami Beach is now seven locations strong, with more on the way.
On April 12, Carrot Express will debut its first restaurant outside the Miami area with its Boca Raton store. Additional locations are currently slated for Cityplace Doral followed by Brickell, Weston, Pembroke Pines, Weston, West Kendall, and Fort Lauderdale.
Founded in 1993, owner Mario Laufer has been on a mission to create Miami’s healthiest dishes with a flavorful twist for nearly two decades. In the beginning, the passionate restaurateur saw the lack of nutritious cuisine in Miami Beach and quickly began his mission of serving food that was both delicious and healthy.
Today Carrot Express offers six restaurants in South Florida including Aventura, Coral Gables, Midtown Miami, South Beach, North Beach, and most recently downtown Miami.
"Healthy food always had the stigma of being boring and lacking flavor," explains Laufer. "I believe the opposite. The simpler the dish, the more delicious it is. That is the philosophy behind our menu and what we hope more and more people will realize that healthy food can be delicious, too."
Carrot Express prides itself on offering a creative and extensive menu based around natural, high-quality ingredients combined with a fun, comfortable, and relaxed environment. Only the best ingredients are used including an all-natural, antibiotic-free chicken, accompanied by seasonal, local, and Californian produce.
The nourishing hub features something for every kind of dietary restriction with its wide range of salads, bowls, wraps, fresh pressed juices, and smoothies. Their newest menu additions include the Lily’s Date Shake, with $1 of from each beverage sold benefiting Gigi’s Playhouse), Avocado Toast (topped with tuna or salmon tartare); a Healthy Burger Bowl (your choice of burgers or tofu chopped, over brown rice, avocado and pico de gallo, $16.95); and a Vegan Picadillo Bowl (seasoned crumbled beyond meat picadillo over brown rice, black beans, avocado, pico de gallo and baked sweet plantain, $16.95).
While the Scottish Salmon Platter (grilled salmon marinated in the house ginger glaze and served with cilantro brown rice, avocado and pico de gallo, $22.95) remains founder Laufer's all-time favorite Carrot Express meal, longtime customer favorites also include the Poke Bowl (brown rice or quinoa, seaweed salad, edamame, arugula, cucumber, scallions, avocado, carrots, pickled ginger, sesame seeds, crispy onion, spicy mayo and eel sauce with a choice of fresh ahi tuna or scottish salmon, $15.95); the Liv Wrap (grilled chicken breast, avocado, quinoa, kale, jack cheese and a basil pesto sauce, $11.95); and the Green Goddess Salad (baby arugula, baby spinach, kale, alfalfa, avocado, cucumber and toasted pumpkin seeds with a choice of dressinf, $10.95).
"Carrot Express is all about serving fresh, healthy and delicious food and exactly that is what we try to do with our entire menu by creating dishes that are calorie-friendly and made with the freshest ingredients," says Laufer. "As a healthy eater myself, there are some foods that I simply wouldn’t eat and are things that we will never serve at our restaurants. For us quality and taste are everything."
When it opens in May, the Boca Raton location will feature 1,700-square-feet featuring indoor and outdoor seating with the capacity to seat 40 guests inside, and 64 outside. Takeout and delivery will be available immediately after opening. The space will incorporate the similar relaxed atmosphere of Carrot Express featuring their branded colors of orange and green.
"We were drawn to Boca Raton because it’s one of those great hubs where people are passionate about taking care of themselves and eating right," adds Laufer. "We are very familiar with the South Florida market and their neighborhoods and couldn’t be more excited with the upcoming Boca location."
Hours of operation will be Monday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Delivery and takeout orders can be made directly through the Carrot Express website or via ChowNow, Toast, Postmates, UberEats, and GrubHub.
Carrot Express. 10 East Palmetto Park Rd., Boca Raton; EatCarrotExpress.com.
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