An exciting new concept is making its way to Midtown later this month, and there aren’t too many places like it. It’s healthy, it’s delicious, it’s completely sugar-free and yet filled with fat? While it may sound contradictory, New York’s latest health craze has finally landed.
If you’ve never heard of “keto” before, you’re not alone. A relative newcomer to the diet scene, the keto diet has skyrocketed in popularity lately thanks to its proven effects and loyal adherents. Essentially, the way that your body works is that it runs on a basic food source that you provide – carbs (bread, sugar, etc). Your body converts all the carbs you eat into glucose for energy – and when that energy is not fully used, your body converts that glucose into fat as a backup fuel reserve.
The way that keto works is that by depriving your body of carbs and excess glucose, you enter a state known as ketosis, in which you begin burning fat as your primary fuel reserve. By exchanging carbs for fats, keto adherents report a substantial increase in fat-loss as well as a sense of clear-headedness and energy that they attribute to ketosis. A keto diet attempts to induce this process by eliminating carbs entirely, enabling you to enter ketosis easily and without storing excess fat.
As this writer can personally attest to, maintaining a keto diet is not easy in the pizza and bagel capital of the world. For people on keto, going out to eat can be one of the biggest challenges they face, as very few restaurants are capable of catering to the restrictions of the diet. Thankfully for health-conscious New Yorkers, Chef Tiara Leak is planning on opening up one of the city’s first full-keto restaurants.
Chef Tiara first founded InKETOble Treats during the pandemic. Embarking on a journey of health and rediscovery, she began experimenting with the keto diet and was quickly blown away by the results – losing 35 pounds while still eating delicious foods. Like most people on keto, she found that it was too difficult to eat out with other people on her diet and was forced to make all her food herself. Quickly though, she discovered how delicious the food she was making really was, and when it became apparent that there was a desperately needed market for keto snacks – InKETOble was born.
Serving up healthy-yet-heavenly treats like Linzer tarts, strawberry lemonade cupcakes, and brownie batter bars, all snacks are made without sugar and instead employ alternative sweeteners such as monk fruit. Now, Tiara is ready to expand her store to the next level and is preparing to open up her very first brick-and-mortar restaurant at 226 East 53rd Street.
Currently running an Indiegogo to crowdsource additional funds, InKETOble will be opening up as a “casual café” by the end of November. Expanding the restaurant concept beyond just snacks, the new location will be able to serve an assortment of keto meals like alternative tacos and pizza. The new restaurant is desperately needed in the area, and cursory google searches indicate that the demand for quality keto content is steadily increasing. Tiara is getting in on the ground floor of a brand new movement, be sure to join her by supporting her Indiegogo or visiting her store when it opens by the end of the month.
