–Green Bowl on a mission to change misconception about nutritious meals

By Naomi Parris
LEVERAGING the rich agricultural patrimony of Guyana, a new restaurant, Green Bowl, will be aiming to promote healthy eating among the population with nutritious substitutes for traditional fast foods.

Owner of the new establishment, Natasha Rambaran, a Guyanese to the bone and a lover of rice, has created a menu which incorporates a mixture of traditional dishes and healthy and wholesome ingredients.

A self-proclaimed “foodie,” Rambaran told this newspaper that her growing business located along the Kitty Public Road aims to promote and change the outlook of what the meaning of eating healthy is in Guyana.

“I have had a love for food since I was a child, I would say that I am a ‘foodie’ and that is where it came about. I wanted to sell healthier food in Guyana because I didn’t think there isn’t another option like Green Bowl currently. You can find healthy food indeed, but not the variety of healthy delicious food that we offer,” Rambaran said during a recent interview with the Guyana Chronicle.

She related that her goal is to provide a healthier lunch option in place of the traditional fast foods such as burgers, fries and fried rice.

Green Bowl meals are prepared with fresh and wholesome vegetables and other ingredients sourced from farms across Guyana. Meals are prepared using methods such as grilling, baking and sautéing.

“Lots of the food is what I eat; it is what my family eats. We try to do lots of sautéing, baking and grilling. As you can see, lots of my food are sautéed or grilled and this is just playing on the healthy version as well,” Rambaran said.

HOW THE GREEN BOWL MENU WAS BUILT
Like many small businesses, Green Bowl was birthed amidst the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While being confined to her home with her immediate family for their safety and health, Rambaran began experimenting in the kitchen with fresh and organic ingredients.

She said: “You know, we started doing these healthier salads and I didn’t just do them for my immediate family at home, I did it for a little bit of extended family and so everybody loved it and I would always get compliments about my food, and people would tell me you need to sell your food and that kind of thing.”

After receiving excellent feedback from family and friends whom she shared her meals with, Rambaran thought, why not open a restaurant and share her delicious creations with the whole of Guyana.

She officially opened the doors to her business in April of this year, offering a plethora of meal choices and even allowing customers to build their own personal “green bowls.”

Along with her green bowls, Rambaran also offers a euphoric blend of local fruits in a sugar free smoothie curated to boost one’s immune system and one’s psychical and mental health.

While the menu might seem a little fancy for the old-fashioned person who would prefer the traditional “rice and stew or curries,” it does not stray from the foods Guyanese know and love.

“There is the rice and quinoa bowl; I know that Guyanese love rice, Caribbean people in general … our lunch food is generally rice, we love to eat rice. What the quinoa does, it is gluten free, it is a healthier option and it makes you feel like you’re eating rice and then I have other options, that is the brown rice that is low glycaemic, so it releases glucose over a period of time and not all into your blood stream at one time, so it is healthier. It is good for diabetics and it is good for anybody that [sic] wants to eat healthier,” she said.

Rambaran added: “So, that is how I built my menu for my salads and my green bowls. I know the Guyanese love rice, so I wanted to offer them that option; I wanted to offer them the healthy version of it. The toppings and all these things that we offer they all pair very well with them.”

CHANGING THE MISCONCEPTION OF HEALTHY EATING
Usually, when most Guyanese think of healthy eating, they think of food that is not pleasing to the taste buds. So, Green Bowl is on a mission to change this misconception.

“There is this misconception that when you hear healthy, you think it doesn’t taste good and when you hear salad, you think it is a “limpy” piece of carrot and sad piece of lettuce. Our salads are complex and they are filling, there are not going to be lettuce, tomato, cucumber,” Rambaran said.

While the menu consists of many salads, it also includes all the wholesome ingredients such as chicken, fish, rice and many other favourites.

Green Bowl’s meals could also be built to satisfy any customer’s needs, catering for meat lovers and vegetarians.

Rambaran said: “What we are trying to do is sell the food that we know people are going to love, that is going to taste good and is also going to be good for your body. It’s going to make you feel good after you eat it.”