The arbiters of healthy eating have spoken: unsaturated fats are good for you. And no food has benefited more from this knowledge than the humble avocado, touted for its healthy fats, vitamins and minerals.
Even models are famously crazy about the newly crowned fitness fruit, spreading its green flesh on slices of toast for a nutritional boost.
Now, three Italians have picked up on the high-calorie fruit’s current trendiness and translated it into a restaurant concept in – where else? – New York.
Everything on the menu at Avocaderia, drinks included, has avocado in it. Customers can get their avocado fix on toast, in a salad, blended into smoothies or in an ice cream cone.
Most people in Europe, especially Italy, don’t eat avocado as a part of their daily diets, says co-founder Francesco Brachetti. While living in Mexico City for a year, he recounts, he fell in love with “avos” after eating them nearly daily.
Together with his friend Alessandro Biggi, who yearned for healthier food options while living in the US, and chef Alberto Gramini, he came up with the idea of founding an avocado bar.
Avocados are one of the most popular fruits in the US at the moment. According to a report in the Washington Post newspaper, consumption of the fruit, which is imported from southern Mexico, more than doubled between 2005 and 2015.
While tortilla chips and guacamole have long held a place in the US snack food canon, avocado also appears frequently in salads and sandwiches as well.
American football fans reportedly consumed 35,000 tonnes of avocado nationwide during the latest annual Super Bowl, the final game of the NFL season.
