Eat Like a Rawk Star at Natural Food Cafe

It’s right around this time that many people set out on a list of goals they want to accomplish in the New Year.

And no matter how many items are on that personal checklist, it’s a safe bet that almost every one contains some variation of the promise to eat healthier. 

Thanks to the Rawk Star Café on U.S. 19 in Palm Harbor, you can keep that resolution intact by committing to a lifestyle that will not only help you lose weight this year, but will help you feel better for the rest of your life. 

“Raw food is food in its purest form. It is full of benefits for your body because of its healthy qualities,” café co-owner Adam Kantrovitz explained. 

“Everything we serve is gluten free, soy free, dairy free and 100 percent organic,” added Karen DiGloria, Kantrovitz’s wife and business partner.

“Other places may say they're serving healthy, but that’s not true if they don’t know where the food is coming from, how it was transported and the chemistry of the food,” DiGloria said. 

The menu at Rawk Star is based on what are commonly referred to as “superfoods," or natural ingredients that pack a tremendous amount of nutritional value in very small quantities.

Some of the key components of superfoods include agave nectar, a natural sweetener derived from the agave plant found in Mexico; bee pollen, often referred to as “nature’s perfect food” due to its myriad healing properties; chlorella, an algae that contains numerous vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and nutrients; and cacao, or raw chocolate, which provides magnesium, iron, fiber and vitamin C.

Rawk Star utilizes these ingredients, as well as other items such as mulberries, cashews and loose-leaf teas, to create dishes that are not only good for you but also taste great. 

“I don’t have a favorite food here because everything is so good," Safety Harbor resident Marcella Ramsey said as she and a friend shared a decadent-looking, dairy-free chocolate cheesecake. "I'm in love with this place."

“It’s refreshing to see this type of place here,” added Ramsey’s dining partner, Dimitra Giannakoulias of Portland, OR. “This area had been a wasteland of healthy food places compared to Oregon.” 

Massachusetts natives Kantrovitz and DiGloria founded Rawk Star in June 2010 as a way to fuse their two backgrounds; he went to school for hotel and restaurant management, and she was an oncology nurse at a large Boston hospital.

They chose Palm Harbor as the site of their first venture because of its central location and the large number of holistic businesses in the area.

After dealing with doctors and medicines for so long, and seeing the effects that drugs — and food — have on a person’s body, DiGloria decided to forgo the world of traditional healing and put her efforts into preventive healing.

“No one realizes how important their health is until they don't have it anymore," she said. "Now is the time to prevent healthy issues rather than go back and try to reverse them.

"You have to be responsible for your own health."

The couple often find themselves educating people as much as feeding them, and sometimes they spend hours every day just informing customers of the benefits of eating healthier. 

“We’re not only a café; we’re a place of education,” Kantrovitz half-joked.

But DiGloria believes the “lessons” are starting to pay off. 

“People are starting to see the light, because they are starting to get sicker younger," she said. "If people ate this way all the time, they would find out that food is a major source of illness and allergies and many things that are wrong with their bodies.

“This is eating at the optimum level … if you are looking to improve your health.” 

Rawk Star Café

Address: 32522 U.S. 19 N

Phone: 727-772-7295

Hours: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, closed Sunday