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There is a kind of wellness—call it deep wellness—that pushes beyond the balance of protein and carbohydrates and calories we ingest and wraps its arms around our feelings about eating and the ripple of consequences it leaves behind. Wendell Berry considered true pleasure, in eating, to come from the “accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes.”

As we move into a new age of world-environmental awareness, we want our guests to feel well from this broader consciousness by providing services and experiences that honor the earth and its water and lands, which as Joanna Macy says, are “part of our larger body.”

Many of us are eating and living in a cloud of ambivalence about our choices and their consequences. This takes a toll on our bodies and spirits, our ability to be, truly, well. Which is why Vinaigrette is dedicated to a higher level of awareness and sustainability, forms of convenience that don’t come at a painful hidden cost to nature, carbon-breathing and air-filtering trees and gardens in all of our spaces, innovated waste and production models for the food business, and a new Farm Fund that reallocates dollars to soil health and sustainable agriculture.

Something about eating lovingly? Deep wellness.

To Go

Something about eating lovingly? Deep wellness.

To Go

Something about eating lovingly? Deep wellness.

Santa Fe

We planted 12 trees here and a whole bunch of grasses and perennials!

Santa Fe

We planted 12 trees here and a whole bunch of grasses and perennials!

Santa Fe

We planted 12 trees here and a whole bunch of grasses and perennials!

Why These Walls Matter

erinedubby
Jan 7, 2022
1 min read

Updated: Jan 3

An old-school restaurant expert once taught me about something he called the “three portals of restaurants.” These were the three most important moments in a dining experience—moments a restaurant had to get right when the threshold between “out there” and “in here” was open, and the diner could be transported.

The first portal is when you walk through the front door—a moment of possibility, transition, beginning. The second is when you get the menu—a moment of curiosity, excitement, discovery. The third is the moment the food arrives—relief, satiation, delight.

At peak pandemic, our restaurants lost all three portals. No one came through our doors, you went straight to ordering online, and the food changed hands anonymously, hidden in a box and bag. We became ghost kitchens.