At Juicy Ladies, food is medicine

At a health retreat in Ojai nearly two decades ago, Magal Nagar and Kinzie Oppenheim recognized that their shared passion for clean eating was elusive back home in the San Fernando Valley. Newly inspired, they returned to their community with a dream to create what was missing : a café that prioritized wellness, one that had “100% organic, truly good food.”

“We tried to get an investor and—I’ll never forget—he smoked cigarettes and blew the smoke in my face and asked me why he should invest in us when we had never built a business before,” says Oppenheim, who had flown to Canada for the meeting. That would-be investor was ultimately too skeptical and bowed out.

But that didn’t deter Oppenheim and Nagar. In 2008, they opened Juicy Ladies in Woodland Hills and, later, a location in the Pacific Palisades (temporarily closed due to the January wildfires; they don’t know if it’s possible to reopen). A new spot on Ocean Park Boulevard in Santa Monica is scheduled to open this summer.

At their flagship location on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills, high ceilings with broad windows bathe the space in sunlight as succulents dangle from suspended light fixtures. Cozy couches allow guests to sink into the cushions while enjoying a bite or one of Juicy Ladies’ fresh-pressed juices. From the menu to the décor, everything is intentional.

“We’re both channelers,” says Oppenheim, describing their shared experiences of receiving messages and energy from a source beyond their own conscious minds. “And basically, opening [the business] and its name were channeled to Magal. We’re not just a restaurant— we wanted to open a business that was health-related. … We are a community teaching health.”

Juicy Ladies is just that—a health hub where food is medicine, and the quality of ingredients is non-negotiable. “I once heard a monk say, ‘A human being has many, many, many problems—endless problems. Until you have a health problem, then the problems become one,’” she says. “We don’t have life if we’re sick or don’t feel good. It’s very expensive to be sick. It’s less expensive to spend money on nutrition and stay well.”

Wellness takes the form of various menu options, like the tuna toast, which has sprouted Ezekiel bread, avocado, pickles, tuna mix, mustard and microgreens; and the lamb kabob bowl, with New Zealand grass-fed lamb kabob, red rice, butter, sheep yogurt tzatziki sauce, sesame seeds, pickled red peppers and butter. The Super Sexy smoothie features coconut water, coconut meat, coconut butter, raw almond butter, dates, goji berries, maca powder and raw vanilla.

The bulk of the produce used in the dishes comes from John Givens Farm in Goleta and Nicholas Family Farms in the Central Valley, as well as a curated selection collected by Soully Organic Heath & Lejeune of Commerce, CA. Harder-to-access ingredients, and American products whose quality isn’t up to Juicy Ladies’ standards, are sourced from afar.

One of their best sellers is, perhaps surprisingly, the burger. “It took me a year to decide where to get our meat. I decided on New Zealand due to cleaner practices and grass,” says Oppenheim. “There’s no restaurant I know of that puts so much care into these decisions. When you walk into any Juicy Ladies [shop], the first thing you see is ‘Food you can trust.’ We go to great lengths to weed out bad things for people.”

In their early days, Juicy Ladies was strictly raw vegan and the clientele was exclusively “exercise moms and people who already knew about healthy eating,” says Oppenheim. But after learning about blood type diets, which suggested grass-fed beef for Oppenheim’s type O blood, meat was added to the menu.

The focus is healthy food that actually tastes good. “Just like our regular menu, our bakery has things that satisfy cravings,” says Oppenheim. “The difference is that our bakery uses sheep products from an Amish farm, high-quality grain [einkorn] and is 100% organic and non-GMO. There’s a way to eat really good food without poisoning the body.”

Their Foundation Program, a tool to regain health, uses the five basic elements, chakra soups and elixirs for organ support, says Oppenheim. “Our specialty elixirs are infused with sun and moon crystals and magnetized for specific organs.”

Those who know little about chakras, much less have a cleansing routine for their crystals, these descriptions could seem arcane or mystifying. But as someone whose own health woes were ameliorated by clean eating, Oppenheim says the proof is in the probiotic pudding. “My hair was falling out, and I was feeling bad in my 30s. I had skin breakouts and I developed melanoma,” Oppenheim says. “Now I’m 52. I don’t care about age. … Food is truly our medicine.”

Juicy Ladies
22423 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills
JuicyLadies.com