In rural El Dorado County, the new Lemon Grass Cafe bills food as preventative medicine
Deep in rural El Dorado County lies the 4,000-person Georgetown Divide town of Garden Valley. Barefoot guitarists and small-scale farmers walk past State of Jefferson signs a few miles from the remnants of Gold Rush towns, a community formed by collective reclusivity.
It’s here that Kiki Castro recently opened Lemon Grass Cafe, her ayurvedic herbal bar and restaurant. In the greater Sacramento area, no restaurant takes the idea of food as medicine so literally.
“You’re putting that (food) into your body as your first form of medicine, and if you don’t love what you’re eating, how is that love going to end up in your cells?” Castro said. “What’s going to make you sit and make this a sacred experience for yourself?”
Ayurveda is a 3,000-year-old Indian holistic preventative medicine centered around the idea that people have three bioelements called doshas: kapha (water), pitta (fire) and vata (air). Followers believe health problems arise when the doshas are imbalanced. Too much pitta and you might develop inflammation, excess vata and lethargy might be your issue.
Diet can help balance one’s doshas, ayurvedic practitioners like Castro say. People with high amounts of kapha, for example, need more vegetables and less sweets, dairy products and grains than others.
What it’s like to get a consultation
And so while customers can just walk into Lemon Grass Cafe, grab a bite and walk out, an ayurvedic newbie’s first visit isn’t complete without a complimentary consultation from herbalist Magan Murrell (or at least filling out the cafe’s online dosha quiz). Raised in an indigenous household as a member of the Berry Creek Rancheria of Tyme Maidu tribe, Murrell now studies holistic medicine at the Northern California School of Botanical Studies in Grass Valley.
A consultation involves Murrell and her patient talking through the latter’s life from childhood to present. All the while, she’s sizing up their physical attributes for hints of the three doshas. She’ll then recommend therapeutic teas made from herbs like skullcap, tulsi and motherwort from the many jars behind Lemon Grass’ front counter.
“I’ll go off of what people are talking about and what kind of words using, their body language, their attitude, their thought process. I’ll look at their face and their tongue and take their pulse,” Murrell said. “And then I’ll take everything I learned about that person from that consultation, and I’ll make formulas specifically for their body and their dosha balance.”
Murrell’s also responsible for the bottles of rose water and poison oak remedy (manzanita and cedar leaves infused in apple cider vinegar) for sale around the cafe, as well as foraging for wild lettuce and dandelion tinxtures. Books on ayurveda rest on shelves behind the bean bags and chairs on the cafe’s eastern side; to the west, it’s children’s books, toys and a play area.
Food at Lemon Grass Cafe, meanwhile, tends to be tri-doshic combinations that won’t bring anyone too high or too low. Menu items appear less as dishes and more as grouped ingredient lists, seasonal and locally-sourced when possible.
Do feta, bacon bits and balsamic glaze sound like they’d taste good together? Great — order them as a wrap, salad or on a chewy naan-inspired flatbread.
Finding a food equilibrium
An ayurvedic diet isn’t necessarily carbless, dairy-free or even devoid of junk food, said Castro, who ran her own catering company before opening Lemon Grass. It’s about equilibrium, not rigid abstinence: the occasional cheeseburger won’t ruin your life, just don’t eat one every day. That’s good news in Garden Valley, where Lemon Grass is an anomaly despite the region’s eclectic population.
“Have you been to other restaurants up here? There’s nothing else like it, not even close,” said David Verdugo, a Lemon Grass customer and local musician. “You can get a burger, you can get a pizza, maybe a taco or some Chinese food, but there’s nothing else like (Lemon Grass) up here.”
Castro opened Lemon Grass’ first iteration on the other side of Garden Valley in February 2020. That cafe closed shortly after the pandemic began, but Lemon Grass continued to host pop-ups around the Georgetown Divide last year until securing the new restaurant at at 4916 Marshall Rd. in February.
Traditional medicine beckoned to Castro first. She studied nursing at Sierra College, worked concerts as a Rock Med paramedic and had nearly enrolled as a biological psychology student at UC Davis.
That changed after a Vincente Fernandez show at Arco Arena, where a blacked-out patient punched Castro and vomited into a trash bag she held while straddling him on a gurney. Debriefing with other paramedics after, she said, she felt like her efforts were as wasted as the patient. Why help someone who doesn’t want to help himself?
“This dude wanted to be this drunk. He wanted to do this to himself ... I can’t help that,” Castro said. “That was that moment in my mind where it really clicked, of preventative (care) versus after.”
Castro never ended up going to UC Davis. Instead, she and her husband moved from Citrus Heights to Cool in 2013, then later to Georgetown.
A masseuse’s recommendation led her to the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm in Grass Valley, where she received a certificate in ayurvedic cooking. She’s also earned practitioner certificates for ayurvedic bliss therapies and health counseling from the California College of Ayurveda in Nevada City, where she continues to study.
Ayurvedic practitioners place lots of faith in the power of touch, believing it can calm the nervous mind and activate the brain’s healing mechanisms. Good energy can be similarly passed through deliberately prepared food, Castro said.
Don’t believe her? See for yourself.
“What we are doing here is creating a safe space for people to come and just begin that (ayurveda) journey,” Castro said. “Because once you start, it’s a deep rabbit hole and its a very immersive rabbit hole. You can’t just read about it.”