Getting Your Healthy On At Ruby Lane, Manly

Ruby Lane in Manly serves up healthy breakfasts and lunches and friendly service on Manly's busy Pittwater Road. Just be sure to get there before noon if you want a breakfast!

"This is my sort of food," says Nina eyeing the menu at Ruby Lane in Manly. So much so that she has ignored her steadfast 10km rule from Bondi to make the trek over the bridge to Manly for lunch.

Located on Pittwater Road which has changed vastly from when we used to live there, there are now lots of boutiques and eateries. Ruby Lane is a wholefoods cafe and grocer and a rather large one at that with an enclosed outdoor area as well as an indoor area.

It's just after 1pm on Saturday and I was hoping that the breakfast was an all day one because I had my eye on the bone marrow mushrooms. It finishes at 12noon which is a tad early especially for people that like to take their time and the breakfast menu actually sounded better than the lunch. The food is on the paleo side but the word doesn't really appear anywhere.

The drinks sound interesting (there's also bone broth in the hot drinks section too). I think I loved the sound of this a bit more than the flavour. The predominant flavour of this is cinnamon courtesy of the liberal sprinkling of it on top. It's also not sweet and I would have loved to have tasted a bit more coconut to it because I think this could easily be fabulous.

We also go for something caffeinated. The Beach Bum is a Cold brew coffee and coconut water served in a glass with fresh cut fruit. "This is my first cold brew," says Garth excitedly. I've never seen coffee served like with fruit to be honest. It's not bad at all, if cold brew is your thing adding coconut water is refreshing and no doubt hydrating. I like the Ruby Rifle, a double espresso blended with grass fed organic butter and MCT coconut oil that gives it a creamy mouthfeel and texture and perhaps the closest coffee in our selection to a regular one.

Nina is spoiled for choice here, a position she doesn't usually find herself in so we decide to split a vegan dip plate for starters. It is a selection of four fermented and sprouted dips with organic sourdough. The four dips are a sweet potato and fennel seed dip, hummus with sprouts, avocado dip and a cashew cheese dip. They're all good but I especially like the hummus and the cashew cheese dip. There isn't quite enough bread so we order some more that come with corn chips.

All of the rest of the food comes out together. We start with the yogi bowl, with sprouted legumes, activated nuts, seasonal veggies and garden leaves with Ruby’s Green Elixir Dressing. This green elixir dressing is made up kale, basil, ginger, tahini, lemon & pumpkin seed oil and adds a lot of flavour to the crunchy and wholesome salad. I did find that I wanted to add salt and pepper to all of the mains before eating them but then again I always season food.

The superfood salad is made up of kale and quinoa and changes daily. You can either have this with the green elixir dressing or a red wine vinaigrette-they ended up choosing the green elixir for us. It's actually pretty good for super healthy food and you can add meat onto the dish but we had it as it was.

Nina's choice was the sweet potato, kale and quinoa hash log with a side of organic eggs, smashed avocado and greens. It has a generous amount of smashed avocado but alas the poached eggs were cooked through.

Probably my favourite dish is hte cured market fish that combines delicious dill and coconut sugar cured fish with a crisp salad of fennel, radish, apple, black lentils and lemon verbena. It's fresh, crunchy and the fish is delicious.

It's almost 3pm and we take a look at some of the raw desserts. The raw carrot cake is ordered. The icing layer on top is a little odd, we don't really go for this.

Everyone prefers the raw Snickers bar with a top layer of chocolate and a sweet caramel date layer on the bottom.

And I think that it has maybe changed Nina's mind about extending her 10km rule! Maybe! ;)

So tell me Dear Reader, what do you think of the sort of food here? Have you ever had coffee served over fruit? Have you tried cold brew or cold drip before and if so, do you like it?

This meal was independently paid for.

Ruby Lane

200 Pittwater Rd, Manly NSW 2095 Phone: (02) 9977 7386 Monday-Saturday: 6:30am-4pm Sunday: 6:30am-6pm https://rubylane.com.au/