Eating clean without sacrificing flavor at Blooming Beets Kitchen

Chef Iva Paleckova.

“I want people all over the country to be able to experience the clean and flavorful eating we offer,” explained Iva Paleckova, owner of Boulder’s Blooming Beets Kitchen. It’s an important goal for Paleckova who, herself, was admittedly a junk food eater in the past. Now, however, she runs Blooming Beets Kitchen, a restaurant dedicated to a completely clean-eating concept with a lot of flavor. “Anything that could be harmful to you is off the menu, and we don’t compromise on our ingredients.”

This local hot spot goes well beyond the “GF” buzzword. Instead it’s home to food without any processed seed oils, grains or processed sugars and very limited dairy. Locals have been flocking to this year-old establishment, thanks to Paleckova’s dedication to her recipes, her creativity and her art.

“Eating at other places is my favorite thing to do,” said Paleckova. She sites other inspirations for her food, including her travels and her own childhood. “I’m Eastern European and you’ll certainly taste a lot of paprika and the red-colored seasonings that are typical for my region.”  Other spots in which she finds great flavors for her foods include the popular local Savory Spice Shop, where she said she goes to “sniff spices and get ideas from time to time.” Her variety of inspiration often results in a popular menu full of completely grain-free, gluten-free, grass-fed, healthy dishes.

There is a lot of work that goes into creating a truly clean-eating meal and it all starts with that inspiration and some support from her culinary team. “We all have ideas and then we put our heads together to experiment to come up with a base dish. Then our chefs perfect it on the go. Our cashew batter waffle, for example, took literally hundreds of tries to get it right, since we’re cooking it without any flour or dairy. But we still wanted it to be amazing and we discovered the use of raw cashews instead. The whole recipe-creating process can be very tricky.”

Paleckova has created an approachable menu sure to please any doubters. Patrons love her signature appetizers like the bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with cashew butter or her Brussels sprouts with apple, candied pecans, apple cider reduction and a dairy-free lemon aioli. Reviews like “officially obsessed,” “absolutely love” and “this place is a MUST” fill the Yelp page for Blooming Beets, and Paleckova has been thrilled with the response. In fact, Denver may be lucky enough to have a Blooming Beets very soon, “we are currently expanding to two more locations in Arizona and Denver and eventually I have hopes to grow on a national scale.”

For now, however, you’ll simply have to visit this Boulder restaurant to try it yourself. If you’ve got Celiac disease or any sort of gluten sensitivity, it’s important to know that 100 percent of the menu is safe for you to eat. That means there’s no chance of any cross contamination and you can literally enjoy anything off the menu, which is a rare treat for those that struggle with Celiac. In an age when food sensitivities are on the rise, it’s so crucial to know there are chefs out there like Paleckova dedicated to finding solutions. Whether you’re sensitive to a specific ingredient, or you just love the feeling of truly healthy eating, Blooming Beets is ready to prove that you don’t have to sacrifice flavor to eat clean.