Fresh Kitchen Offers Healthy Fare for the Holiday Season

Face it: You’ll want a break from gluttony this holiday season. When that time comes, head to Fresh Kitchen in Sea Girt, where founder Mike Nitto and chef Chris Burgess prepare nutritionally dense components for their fast-casual build-your-own menu.

Nitto’s an athlete who spent years traveling for work; he had trouble finding healthy fuel on the road. Burgess left a job as a corporate chef to work at farms, butchers and fish hatcheries across North America. Together, they’re on a mission to make healthy food seriously flavorful, armed with cooking techniques like sous vide and fermentation and a commitment to locally sourced ingredients. “The biggest part of treating your body well is what you put into it,” Nitto says.

Here’s how the menu works: Choose a grain bowl, salad, wrap or stock pot. Then choose your base, vegetables, grains, protein and sauce. How does sweet potato mash with ginger-cumin carrots, farro and chicken, topped with a shot of housemade Sriracha, sound? Or a spring-greens salad topped with pickled cauliflower, sun-dried tomato quinoa and grilled tofu, drizzled with shallot vinaigrette? There are 39,000 possible meal combinations. (If that number makes you panic with indecision, you can pick from a short list of suggested meals.)

Fresh Kitchen will have you in and out quick, but don’t miss the bone broth. Burgess uses whole chickens from Senat Farms in Lancaster, which he simmers for 16 hours. “You’re left with this really beautiful, translucent, fat-free bone broth,” Burgess says. It’s used as the base in the soup option, but you can also pick up a growler to go. —Katherine Rapin

Fresh Kitchen
2204 Route 35 North, Sea Girt
732.769.8133