Present Moment Café opens market

By Haley M. Walker | gargoyle@flagler.edu

With the opening of several art galleries, a raw food restaurant and the new Rockin’ Bean Coffee Shop, West King Street has recently become quite a progressive part of town.

A new organic market and vegan deli has just joined this up-and-coming location. The Present Moment Market, which is affiliated with the neighboring Present Moment Café, provides a small amount of fresh produce, a vegan deli and a number of other organic products.

The menu changes from day to day and includes some dishes from the already established Present Moment Café as well as some new creations of their own. Some examples include burgers, stuffed portobello mushrooms, stuffed avocados and tuna salad. The catch of all these options is that they don’t contain regular meat, but instead are created with a mixture of nuts and vegetables. This aspect of the deli intrigued me in particular.

For lunch I chose a Sunlight Burger, a patty made of sunflowers, walnuts, almonds, carrots and zucchini. Although this was not the typical burger served with a Coke and fries that many of us are accustomed to, it was delicious.

Another interesting element about the food served in the deli is that it is raw, unprocessed and uses no animal products. According to www.thepresentmomentcafe.com, the food “remains as nature had intended it to be,” still containing many enzymes and nutrients.

In addition to the deli, the store also sells a number of organic snacks and products ranging from juices to organic laundry detergent.
Many of the items in the deli are very reasonably priced at around $6. The other household products are fairly inexpensive as well. For example, an organic detergent is about $10. The high-priced items in the store seem to be the other gourmet snacks available.

The main element that made me feel welcome in this place was the energy of the employees. Everyone was extremely helpful and exuded a great amount of enthusiasm and positive energy. From a customer’s point of view, it is apparent that the food here is made with a great amount of love and dedication.