When the little shop, Active Culture, opened in Laguna Beach’s former video corner store at Anita St. and PCH, I didn’t rush right down. Active Culture boasts a number of daily frozen yogurt flavors, and I hear they’re quite wonderful, but we have A LOT of frozen yogurt and yummy gelato in this town already. I figured I’d get down there eventually, but it wasn’t on my Top 5 list.
[singlepic id=406 w=320 h=240 mode=watermark float=right]Turns out, though, that Active Culture mixes up a heck of a breakfast Acai (pronounced ah-sigh-ee) bowl. As you probably know (because all my readers are hip), Acai is a small dark purple berry that’s touted as a great antioxidant with lots of aminos, fiber and fatty acids to boot.
I had my very first Acai Breakfast Bowl with my neighbor, Patrice, when I was visiting Patrice and her husband, Rob, in Waikiki. We stopped in at this tiny shop on the side of Diamond Head – The Cove Health Bar – and were served up this magnificent mix of acai, with other fresh berries, bananas, nuts and homemade chunky granola.
Since that sublime breakfast feast, I’ve been scouring the world for a comparable Acai Breakfast Bowl, but have only come across sloppy, runny purplish stuff (and sometimes uncomfortably frozen, ouch). Laguna Beach’s Bonzai Bowl was the first to come close, but it’s somehow more of a fabulous “snack” than a “breakfast bowl” in my book.
Active Culture mixes in all the right breakfast-oriented stuff to make this Acai Bowl sing. Does it match equally to the Diamond Head Cove version? Well . . . there’s still nothing like THAT breakfast bowl, but you never know – my nostalgia could be due to all that is Waikiki along with its trumpeting birds, endless surf, and a light head from the tunnel walk at the top of Diamond Head.
As I’m not flying to Waikiki on a weekly basis (and I daresay you aren’t either), I’d say Active Culture will do a perfectly fine job subbing in from the bench.
© 2011, Diane Armitage, www.LagunaBeachBest.com