The dining and wellness destination combines health benefits with flavorful menu choices. Plus, late-night dance parties.
I don’t know if it’s the power of suggestion, but after my first meal at Soft Medicine, I felt really good. The café, tea house and yoga studio in downtown Sebastopol is all about organic wellness and shares a “food as medicine” philosophy with its vegan dishes and healing kavas, cacaos, matcha drinks, herbal teas and elixirs.
I had just polished off a grain bowl and felt pleasingly full, yet still light as a feather and, I must admit, a bit smug about my earth-and-body-friendly dining choice. The big, colorful creation piles on rice, mung beans, veggies, kraut, peppery winter greens and a lake of bright green pesto bound with Ayurvedic spices ($18). I knew those spices brim with therapeutic properties, such as aiding digestion and boosting immunity while adding so much flavor to the pilaf grains.
Later, as I floated through the day, I thought, wow, I’m suddenly smarter. Am I taller? Better looking? (Though those ideas quickly faded, I had to return for another meal).
Satisfying ‘superfoods’
The concept makes perfect sense for Sebastopol, a proudly self-titled Bohemian community — or, as Soft Medicine co-owner Jonathan Pinkston cheerfully says, a “hippie town.” But more and more, the healthy focus seems an obvious choice for diners. Superfoods equal superpowers, and many of us are paying more attention to plant-based diets, whole grains, clean ingredients and treating our bodies well.
The American trend is amusing for Pinkston, an Ayurvedic practitioner and acupuncturist, who has long embraced the lifestyle.
“Ayurvedic diets and natural wellness remedies have been used for thousands of years around the globe,” he said. “I think we forget that for the majority of the world, it’s not an alternative ‘woo-woo’ thing, but much more normal than our Western medicine. If you go to a little rural town, say anywhere in Europe, and visit their convenience pharmacy, it’s an apothecary, and half the medicine is herbs.”
Just as importantly, this food is satisfying. The small kitchen is humble, with dishes ranging from snacks of nuts and dried fruit ($3 each) to a “fancy toast” of local sourdough or gluten-free bread buried in garden greens, avocado or pesto and tangy kraut ($14).
Yet there’s enough flavor and texture to interest me, such as the tacos ($17), bringing two corn tortillas stuffed with avocado, al dente roasted veggies, greens, sprouts, vegan cheese and a flourish of the spicy kimchi that, as we know, is noted for high levels of antioxidants, packed with vitamins and tastes wonderful.
The Kitcharito is even better in my book, in a hearty burrito of amply seasoned local rice, beans, cheese, avocado, crisp sprouts, tart kraut and a saucy finish of salsa and vegan spicy mayo plumping up a wheat or gluten-free tortilla ($18).
The delicious bundle is a near-perfect food since the kitchen team soaks all grains for 24 hours so they’re more digestible. Then there’s that kraut, the microorganism magical delight that’s salty, sour and loaded with vitamin C and beneficial bacteria. The fermentation process allows nutrients in foods to be more easily absorbed, I learned, since the bacteria essentially predigest them (way to go, humble little cabbage).
Food as medicine
When Pinkston and his group of investors opened their business in 2022, they had a solid plan: source more than 80% of produce from within 200 miles of the café, use only local grains and olive oils and don’t use any seed oils, fillers, refined sugars or GMO products.
“Part of our thing is that if you went and saw a naturopath and they told you, you should eat this locally sourced, ideal diet, that’s what we serve, what you would get as a prescription,” Pinkston said. “We want to maintain and expand what the hippie culture has been here (in Sebastopol) since the 60s, the beautiful part of that — the openheartedness, the connectedness, the plant medicine phase.”
But keeping things realistic, they didn’t want to alienate diners, so guests can customize dishes to vegetarian or carnivore preferences. That means if the soup of the day is lentil, you’ve got a guaranteed win: the aromatic veggie broth stocked up with soft onion, tomato, fragrant fresh herbs and greens ($11). Yet I cheat and add the savory, more indulgent options of ghee ($1) and a four-ounce miso shot or curry-infused beef bone broth ($4).
The olive oil-drizzled white bean hummus is straightforward, too, in its platter dotted with olives, cheese and assorted pickled vegetables for scooping with sourdough or gluten-free toast ($20). But you can select your cheese — an entirely respectable nondairy or tangy goat milk. And I like to order a side of beef broth, served steaming hot and soothing to my core ($11 cup).