Gourmet & Healthy in Kings Point

The all-natural alchemists at Tunies turn worn-out bodies into hale and hearty systems with their vast selection of natural groceries, vitamins, and supplements. Eschewing creepy preservatives and other unknown chemicals, they instead fill stores’ shelves with provisions ranging from from nut butters and apple cider vinegar to an array of omega oils. When not busy filling baskets with super-foods such as seaweed and almond milk, patrons browse remedies for digestion and the flu, as well as vitamins calibrated to strengthen eyes, kidneys, and vitamin-taking muscles.

The bartenders at Off the Hookah play with fire. The eatery’s world-ranked flair bartenders often incorporate pyrotechnics into the mixing of their cocktails. Even still, they’re competing for attention, working against a backdrop of gogo dancers, belly dancers, and other nightly entertainment. Meanwhile, in each location’s 14,000-square-foot lounge, patrons sit back and enjoy the venue-wide show while taking puffs from flavored hookah.

Of course, the eatery is not all atmosphere—at its core is a menu of international delicacies, which draw inspiration from far-flung locales such as the Mediterranean and Japan. Family-style feasts of kabobs, seafood, and falafel complement a la carte options, such as hearty pastas and sushi rolls stuffed with tuna, eel, and soft shell crab.

Sweet Ginger Asian Bistro fuses Thai and Chinese fare inside a modern space bedecked in warm earth tones. Generously sized portions of thai dumplings and classic pad thai share menu space with Hong Kong specialties such as general tso’s chicken and lightly fried soft-shell crab. Chefs artistically arrange each dish with drizzles of colorful sauce, leaving entrees ripe for photographing, then devouring both the photograph and the dish.

Leah Gizzi builds fresh pastas and sauces using imported ingredients chosen for their quality, such as Fiorucci genoa salami and Strianese DOP tomatoes. A stash of local veggies and herbs grown in her personal garden help her form her selection of crowd favorites that include her roasted-red-pepper noodles, meatballs, red gravy, and shells stuffed with spinach and ricotta. Leah also mixes fine ingredients into her cannolis and in her cakes, including one that comes in the shape of a three-dimensional teddy bear. On Sunday, she heads over to The Buttonwood Plaza Artisan’s Market, where she sells her handcrafted foods and easy-to-assemble Italian-dinner kits.

Dean Bruschi can trace his agricultural roots back four generations to his great-grandfather, who was a farmer in Northern Italy. Each generation thereafter passed down the family tradition of farming, and today, Dean stands proudly on his land, where strawberry plants creep across wet mounds of soil in the sun against the contralto babble of pigs.

From those fields drift the excited and curious shouts of guests participating in the U-Pick program. The visiting farmers wander the warm, furrowed ground, picking their own bell peppers and other veggies for dinner or dioramas depicting favorite X-Files episodes. Laden with fresh produce, patrons return to the shop, whose honey-hued wooden shelves brim with hot sauces, preserves, and a rotating array of fuji apples, bartlett pears, and tomatoes ripened on the vine. The shop gives one the sensation of stepping back through time into a small general store, and a soundtrack of happy chatter sometimes floats inside from Easter egg hunts, hayrides, and other seasonal events.

D and D Farms’ CSA boxes ensconce a medley of tasty veggies, which arrive to doorsteps or await pickup still covered in droplets of dew and carved with the initials of a loving plow, and specific vegetables for delivery fit seamlessly into recipes.

Drawn to a tomato picked right from the vine, a small girl breaks its crimson skin with her teeth, its earthy scent and tart-sweet flavor imprinting forever on her mind. This childhood memory of her family's garden inspired Sheila to establish SW Ranches Farmers Market, where shoppers can nibble on samples of the day's harvest just as Sheila did as a little girl. The produce on display is all grown sustainably and without pesticides, whether it is cultivated by Sheila and her crew or brought to the site from local farms.

Patrons can suss out the available options on the market's website in order to plan meals or find something that fits in a factory-defect cornucopia. Shoppers stock pantries with other organic options when available, including cereal, flour, seasonings, meats, and fish. Some summer nights, the market shows outdoor movies with a focus on healthy foods, such as the documentary Forks Over Knives.