By Dana Ferrante ’17
One week ago today, Liquiteria opened its doors to the public for the first time, its bright blue and yellow interior the only beacon of hope on the otherwise dismally cold June day. While the New England weather may not always show it, Liquiteria radiates the tastes and smells of summer, offering an extensive variety of smoothies, cold pressed juices, cleanse kits, and to-go food items.
Sitting on the corner of Mass Ave and Church St. (translation: right near the once 24-hour CVS, or 20 steps from Johnston Gate), this outpost is the first to open in Massachusetts. The original three locations reside in New York City where Liquiteria began as cold pressed juice shop. Cold pressed juices became very popular a few years ago, as big names such as Starbucks and ‘the west coast’ caught on to the trend, and Liquiteria seems to have benefitted from the juices’ widespread success.
So what’s the difference between cold pressed juice, and well, regular old juice? Chances are the apple juice your mom used to buy at Walmart is ‘hot pressed juice,’ made by heating, boiling, or steaming the fruit so that its skin and pulp will separate. The pulp then becomes very easy to press, making for a smooth, skinless juice. However, with the benefit of easy-pressing comes the risk of losing flavor and nutrients. When juice is heated, volatile flavor compounds are the first to go. (If you are familiar with the use of what are called glass, or cellophane, noodles in Asian cuisines, these noodles absorb the volatile compounds released while stir-frying vegetables, retaining the flavors that would otherwise be lost in the cooking process. This is conceptually similar to what happens when making a hot pressed juice, except these compounds are lost.)
Cold pressed juices are a different story. To eliminate the negative effects of heating, thousands of pounds of pressure go into squeezing all the juice possible from the fruit or vegetable, a method known as high pressure processing. Furthermore, as compared to hot pressed juices, much more produce goes into a single bottle of juice. For example, some companies claim that up to 6 lbs of produce can go into one 16 oz bottle of cold pressed juice, whereas Tropicana orange juice (a hot pressed juice) has less than 2 lbs of oranges per 16 oz bottle. Thus, cold pressed emerges as the nutritionally, and most likely flavorfully, superior choice.
Liquiteria offers twelve different juice flavors daily, ranging from the obligatory All Greens (Kale, Spinach, Romaine, Parsley, Celery, Cucumber) to some funkier blends, such as Turmeric Tonic (Turmeric, probiotic, lemon, maple syrup), the unfortunately-colored Skin Trip (Parsley, Spinach, Cucumber, Carrots), and my personal favorite, the refreshing, much-needed-wakeup-call-to -your-taste-buds, the Killer XX (Apple, Lemon, Ginger, Cayenne). As a seasonal extra, they are currently offering Watermelon juice, which essentially is like drinking the 4th of July from a plastic bottle. Each juice flavor comes in a 16 oz bottle, and is always available in the grab and go section.
A particularly intriguing set of options on Liquiteria’s menu are the fruit juice cleanses, sold in either 1 or 3 day packs. Four cleanses are available, ranging from the introductory/beginner level in which one is still allowed to snack intermittently throughout the day, to the final level which is described simply as “aggressive.” If you’re interested in giving your body a boost, or just want to see if you can “drink your body weight in ounces of spring or purified water per day”, check out Liquiteria’s website for more information.
While I was only able to try one smoothie flavor during my visit, the smoothie options seemed on the whole very promising. Whether you’re feeling fruity, craving peanut butter, dreaming of açaí, or still can’t get enough of kale, there’s a smoothie for you. Even if you’re not sold on the pre-made combinations, you can customize any of the smoothies to your liking, as well as substitute almond butter for peanut butter if you have an allergy. There is also the option to add boosters to your smoothie—chia, vitamin c, aloe vera, spirulina (a blue-green algae purported as a “superfood”), bee pollen, and flax seed oil, to name a few—and many of these ingredients are also featured in the 1 oz juice shots in the grab-and-go section.
Sure to be a campus-wide favorite, during my visit I decided to try the too-good-to-be-true Hangover Cure smoothie. While I admittedly did not have the proper qualifications to participate in a controlled study of its efficacy, I can attest to its perfectly blended texture, and mild, satisfying taste. I would say this smoothie as a whole lacked any sort of “wow” factor in terms of taste, but this may be mainly the fault of the typically milky taste of its main ingredients: papaya, peaches, and bananas.
[But then again, no one who actually needs this smoothie would want anymore surprises after hearing from their blockmates what happened last night…]
The service at the newly opened location is the perfect blend of excited and sassy. Having gone through an extensive training before the opening, the staff have memorized the ingredients of each item and are also capable of speaking to their health benefits. They also have had time to pick favorites. One staff member raved about the PB&J Parfait, as well as the Blue Velvet smoothie, which she said tastes like you’re sipping blueberry cake. Sounds good to me.
Besides the great staff recommendations, Liquiteria is notably staffed with enough people, and also enough blenders, to get the orders out quickly. This cannot be said of all smoothie places— I know I have waited considerable amounts of time for blended drinks, as most places only have one or two blenders, and not always enough staff on hand.
So… what’s the catch? As you might have already suspected, Liquiteria is not exactly a bargain like our beloved Noch’s or Felipe’s. While theoretically we should all invest in our general wellbeing (remember, there could be up to 6 lbs of produce in one 16 oz bottle of juice), up to $9 for a juice or smoothie seems outrageous for the average college kid on a budget. With that being said, the staff were quick to mention that many of the smoothies contain whey protein, meaning they can serve as a meal substitute in terms of the nutritional content. In that sense, $8-9 does not seem too terrible, especially if you are in a rush between classes and don’t have time to chew.
Only time will tell if Liquiteria lives up to all its pulp and circumstance.
To give you a better idea of how Liquiteria fits into the current smoothie-scene on and around campus, check out the chart below!
*Walking distance with Harvard Yard as the starting point.
Sources:
http://www.quora.com/What-is-cold-pressed-juice)
http://www.livescience.com/48853-spirulina-supplement-facts.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/cold-pressed-juice_n_4911492.html
http://www.liquiteria.com/smoothies/
Click to access LifeAlive%20Poster%20Menu%202-23-15.pdf
http://www.o2yoga.com/o2-vegan-cafe/cafe-menu/
http://franchise.bgood.com/ourmenu.php
http://www.allmenus.com/ma/cambridgre/353082-boston-tea-stop/menu/
crimsoncrave.com 