Nalu Health Bar and Cafe – Kailua Town Shopping Center

Nalu Health Bar and Cafe is right up my alley: boasting healthy yet delicious foods with organic ingredients whenever possible. They offer the usual healthy restaurant options such as smoothies, acai bowls, and sandwiches. If that sounds like your thing too, or you’re trying to make better choices, read on!

Before this visit, I would only go to Nalu’s South Shore Market location for the Purple Bliss smoothie and Nalu Salad. These items for me are no-fail because for one, the smoothie has greens in it but just takes like an acai smoothie; and two, the dressing for the Nalu salad is *chef’s kiss*: the best honey balsamic dressing I’ve ever had.

This visit, I decided to try some other things. Here’s what me and my friend decided on:

• Energizer Juice
• Purple Bliss (sorry, I can’t get enough!)
• Rainbow Salad
• Turkey-Kale Pesto Sandwich
• Veggie Wrap

First, let’s talk about the drinks. The Purple Bliss was just as I remembered it: an acai smoothie with greens that didn’t taste too green. I wish I had the right measurements to make my own, but I think after all my failed attempts, I’ll just stick to the one at Nalu. This smoothie consists of organic acai, banana, blueberry, spinach, banana, and almond milk. It isn’t super sweet or thick, but the taste is enjoyable and gets extra points for not tasting like a green smoothie or watered down from the almond milk. Compared to other acai smoothies, it’s probably a lot lower calorie too.

The detox juice was yummy as well. It’s made of orange, carrot, apple, and ginger, but isn’t too heavy on the ginger taste. It helped my friend’s usual bloating issues (probably thanks to the ginger). Their juices are all made fresh and aren’t just sitting there all day, so that’s awesome too. Our only gripe about the drinks were that there aren’t bigger sizes! Both the smoothies and fresh juices only come in a 16 oz option.

Next, let’s talk about the salad. Like the name suggests, this thing is colorful. It has mixed greens, beets, tomatoes, carrots, avocado, red onions, and what they say is a creamy sesame dressing. In my opinion, the dressing wasn’t that creamy, but that’s probably because I’m used to the creaminess of Kewpie’s goma dressing. This salad was good, but 9 times out of 10 I’d probably still get the Nalu Salad.

Last, let’s talk about the stars of the show. These were so good, but my friend and I were not expecting to both prefer the veggie wrap. This was the most flavorful and juicy wrap I’ve ever had – I’m pretty sure my friend would agree. The wrap consists of hummus, carrots, tomato, avocado, honey balsamic, red onion, sprouts, and mixed greens. On their website, it says the wraps are served on a spinach tortilla, but this one was served on a tomato tortilla. It was soft and full of flavor, and the contents were so fresh and crunchy. These people really know how to make a wrap!

The Turkey Kale Pesto sandwich was tasty. It consists of swiss cheese, tomato, sprouts, and a homemade kale-pesto sauce on a croissant. The croissant was super buttery and flakey, and held up well against the contents. I’ve had some croissant sandwiches just fall apart or get soggy, but this one held up all the while taking photos and the leftover half tasted great after the drive to Aiea. There’s also a lot of turkey in here, so it’s actually really filling.

Overall, everything we had was awesome. I don’t know what took me so long to stray from my ordinary order, but I’m glad I did!

Nalu has three locations: Haleiwa, Kailua Town, and South Shore Market. They’re open for dine-in, takeout, and delivery from 9am to 6pm at all locations!