Disease Proof

“My kind of town, Chicago is…” Old Blue Eyes was onto something when he sang these lyrics because this week Eating to Live on the Outside takes a look at Chicago’s own Lake Side Café—and it’s a good one! No way is this place a standard American restaurant; healthy eateries like P.F. Chang’s, Just Salads, and California Pizza Kitchen just gained a new ally. So let’s see what’s cooking!

First off, their fruit smoothies caught my eye. All three flavors sound good to me: Banana Cinnamon, Blueberry Banana, and Strawberry Banana. Now, you have the option of ordering any of them with soy milk, rice milk, or regular milk. For me dairy is not an option and I prefer soy milk over rice milk, so if I had to pick, a Banana Cinnamon smoothie with soy milk sounds good to me. There are also a few interesting juice creations on the menu too, but I’m not that into juice, I prefer my fruit with a little more substance—and fiber!

Okay, onto the munchies. I really like the Italiano Toasted Sandwich—and no it’s not because I’m Italian—it’s because I love artichoke hearts! In addition to artichoke hearts this dish comes with pesto, cucumber, tomato, and mozzarella. Mozzarella! Relax, Lake Side Café gives you the option to veganize the cheese and that’s exactly what I’m doing. Also, since this is a sandwich, I’d ask the wait staff if you can get whole-wheat bread. No sense spoiling all these veggies in between two slices of white bread. So if you do all this, you’re left with a pretty Fuhrman-friendly meal, your only concessions would be the bread and the olive oil used to make the pesto, but the side salad should quell your apprehension.

Lake Side Café also offers up a couple interesting salads as well. Naturally they’ve got a Simple House salad that’s prepared with lettuce, carrot, peppers, tomato, onion, and sesame seeds—pretty cool right? But the one I really like is the Greek Islands. It’s not very fancy, but I’m a sucker for balsamic vinegar. In addition to the balsamic it comes with red onions, olives, peppers, tomato, cucumber, olive oil, and feta cheese. Now, I’m not sure if you can veganize the feta, if you can that’s great, but I take no chances with dairy so it’s gone. I’d also ditch the olive oil in this case because balsamic vinegar is all I need to top off a salad. It’s got more than enough flavor for me.

If you’re an Eat to Liver with a lust for pizza, check out Lake Side Café’s Thin Crust Pizzas. Both of them look great to me. For starters you can order both of them on a wheat-free spelt crust, so that should calm your refined grain worries a little. And you can pretty much veganize both dishes if you so choose. The Organic Garden Pizza is prepared with broccoli, mushroom, green pepper, red onion, mozzarella, and red sauce. Once you’ve swapped out the dairy cheese, this is a pretty good line up of veggies. The Mediterranean Pizza is nice looking too; red onion, artichoke hearts (yes!), feta, mozzarella, and pesto sauce. Clearly I’d skip the feta and once again veganize the mozzarella, even after these alterations I still like what’s left. Probably even tastes good cold the next morning—oh you’ve done it too!

All and all there’s lots of neat stuff on Lake Side Café’s menu, these were just the ones that caught my eye, check out their menu and let us know what got your mouth watering. And give us your feedback too! Leave a comment or email us at diseaseproof@gmail.com. Let us know how you Eat to Live on the Outside!