Gourmet & Healthy in North Palm Beach

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.

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.

It can be difficult to track where your produce is coming from when it’s often exchanged between far-flung middlemen and carried inside food trucks used to transport commando teams. The Urban Farmer attempts to simplify that supply chain for Broward Country, connecting eaters to the land and helping to expand the slow-food movement with an urban farm and education center. More than 10,000 veggie plants stretch upwards from their vertical hydroponic system, waiting to be displayed to visitors and sold at a monthly Green Market. The [CSA program] http://gr.pn/IPqYVe) blends Urban Farmer produce with crops from trusted Florida farms, with all produce clearly identified so recipients know exactly where their food comes from. The Urban Farmer also sells products such as Earthbox and vertical gardening kits that facilitate backyard gardening and encourage home farmers to learn their tomatoes’ favorite bedtime stories.

Nutrition World owner Joanne Augusto has immersed herself in the natural-health industry for more than 25 years, and has even hosted a radio program called Joanne's World of Nutrition. Informed by macrobiotics and homeopathy, Augusto seeks to share with her customers the powerful link between diet and health. To achieve that goal, she stocks the aisles at Nutrition World with an array of holistic goods, from vegan and gluten-free fare to vitamins, herbs, and Herb Alpert records.

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.