Asbury Park, NJ has always been a cool town– it has a huge place in rock n’ roll history as the favorite performing location of Bruce Springsteen, it’s right on the beach, the boardwalk has an antique carousel building (picture above is of the carousel at night)… I mean come on, how could this place not be cool?! And in the last few years this boardwalk has totally transformed. Interesting restaurants of all different kinds have been popping up at rapid speed, and the town is really becoming a unique and fun place to go to shop and eat.

Remember a couple of months ago when I participated in the Red Bank Blogger Crawl? A bunch of other bloggers and I teamed up to explore all the great things the town has to offer. Well, over the summer I had the pleasure of being a part of an Asbury Park Blogger Crawl! All of the bloggers involved have written exciting and interesting blog posts about the places they visited, and links to all of our posts will be published in some local magazines and newspapers! Go check out all of these awesome bloggers that participated! :

I decided to fulfill my part of the Crawl at the Twisted Tree Café and Cookman Creamery, and I am soooo very happy that I did!  The Twisted Tree Cafe is a mostly vegetarian and vegan restaurant serving healthy sandwiches, wraps, salads, coffee, tea, and smoothies made with fresh ingredients. The restaurant’s white and wood interior with the menus written on chalkboards gives it a modern and fresh city atmosphere which is something different for beachy Asbury. I was surprised by the minimalistic menu. All the options are simple with lots of raw, pure ingredients. I came here to do my part of the blog crawl a week or two before I left for college on a nice little lunch date with my mom. Since she’s mostly gluten free, this place was perfect for her since they have a lot of gluten free options. She got a bean burger served on a gluten free wrap which was just as delicious as my sandwich! I ordered the Veggie Wrap and a latte with almond milk.

I am not quite sure what might have driven me to get almond milk in my latte. I’m usually a full fat half and half kind of girl when it comes to my coffee, but maybe I was inspired by the mantra of healthiness preached by Twisted Tree, so I went for it! My latte was smooth and creamy and lovely to look at with the almond milk swirling around the ice cubes through that luscious coffee. I didn’t ask for sugar, but it was just the slightest bit sweeter than just regular coffee, so I think that hint of sweetness came from the almond milk! I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it.

My veggie wrap was filled with a smoky sun-dried tomato spread and tons of fresh veggies including avocado, carrots, cucumber, olive, lettuce, tomato, scallions, and sprouts. It was served with a side salad drizzled with a tangy dressing. Simply delicious! I want to come back and try a smoothie (The Tropical Tea smoothie with strawberry, mango, green tea, and pineapple juice looks especially yummy) as well as their homemade vegan baked goods because cupcakes, cookies, and muffins are ALWAYS a good idea!

I love junk food, but when I start a day eating healthy, it often drives me to want to eat healthy for the rest of the day… but ice cream. I really wanted to go to Cookman Creamery. I looked at all the flavors, and the one that caught my eye was the Mexican hot chocolate ice cream! Mexican hot chocolate ice cream really sounded like a brilliant idea. And then I realized… it was in a case full of VEGAN ice cream! How does one make vegan ice cream, you ask? With coconut milk!!! YUM. Brilliant indeed. I guess I can be healthy after all… coconut milk is great for you and, well, chocolate is good for the soul.

It had a sweet but not too sweet chocolatey flavor, contrasted by a nice little kick from the cayenne that makes it Mexican hot chocolate. This ice cream was beautiful. My mom also got vegan ice cream, and hers was Almond Joy flavored! My ice cream barely tasted like coconut because it was overpowered by the stronger flavors from the cayenne and chocolate, but the toasted coconut from the Almond Joy ice cream brought out the coconut milk flavor in my mom’s. Yummm!

Now that I’m in chilly Allentown, PA, I’m constantly missing beachy Jersey summers and walking through wonderful Asbury! Go check out all the great places around this awesome town!

Enjoy! Love, The Perky Foodie