Cafe 118 Degrees is a restaurant with a very unique theme: their entire menu is not only organic and vegetarian but all of their food is also prepared completely raw. Located on 153 E Morse Blvd off of Park Avenue in Winter Park, Florida just a few miles north of Orlando, Cafe 118 serves up some pretty interesting and innovative dishes.
Cafe 118 Degrees is named after the optimal temperature at which foods are “cooked” here, with the belief that food cooked above 118 degrees begin to break down their enzymes and minerals, resulting in diminished nutritional value. Truly natural food.
As America’s waistlines continue to balloon and more and more people are being diagnosed with health problems related to obesity and heart disease each year, we must start looking into eating healthier and living healthier. Cafe 118 Degrees hopes to continue the promise of this movement to healthier lifestyles through eating food as natural as can be. This Orlando food blog hopes this movement continues strong.
On this evening, I am joined with Lily and her husband as well as old friends Jacques and Yvonne (who luckily has a restaurant.com gift certificate for our bill). As you can guess, eating healthy does come at a higher price as organic natural foods cost more since they are not mass produced like our every day processed foods.
Note, they also rotate their items in and out seasonally to ensure freshness.
For appetizer, we order the spiced macadamia hummus with sun-dried tomato flax crackers. The hummus is light and soft on the palate, almost airy and creamy. For my entree, I choose the ravioli made with macadamia ricotta and my partners choose the “pad thai” (made with zucchini and carrot noodles, pad thai sauce, drizzled with a sesame cashew glaze), the “lasagna” (made with sun dried tomatoes, herb pesto, and macadamia ricotta), and the mexican chopped salad (made with spinach, sweet corn, avocado, corn chips, cherry tomato and a “queso blanco”). All in all I enjoyed my meal and thought it was quite ingenius to create such inventive dishes made entirely with vegetables and fruits and non-meat products and to make it entirely without cooking above 118 degrees. I would definitely try to bring friends here in the future especially if I have a gift certificate cause it can get really expensive…
though I like Cafe 118, if you want to try an all around excellent raw vegan place (and by all around i mean inventiveness of food, tastiness, friendly staff, great prices, ambience and business model) you have to try The Present Moment Cafe in St. Augustine. Totally worth the trip if you want to explore further into raw vegan cuisine.