You can request your own designs of toppings to appear on your açaí bowl at Vigilante Coffee. (Photo by JP Studio Photography courtesy of Vigilante Coffee)
Step aside, drab bowl of cereal. D.C.’s açaí bowls prove that breakfast can be bold and beautiful. Businesses are taking considerable creative license with the original smoothie-like recipe. That means not only artfully-arranged toppings, but different flavor profiles and colors, too.
The traditional açaí bowl’s rich, purple base comes from açaí berries. The fruit, harvested from Brazil’s açaí palm trees, spoils too quickly to transport fresh. So suppliers import it from South America in pureed, frozen form. From there, each shop combines the puree with its own secret mix of fruits, vegetables, juices, and nut milks. That blend determines the frozen base’s flavor profile and its color. Next come the toppings. And o, the toppings! Stores have come a long way from banana and granola, the classic Brazilian combo.
Take Vigilante Coffee in Hyattsville (4327 Gallatin St.), where baristas are as likely to make açaí bowl art as latte art. Owner Chris Vigilante picked up both his açaí passion and his java passion in Hawaii, where he was an avid surfer. The bowls filled him up without weighing him down, perfect before paddling out into the waves. “We set out to re-create the taste of açaí that I fell in love with in Hawaii,” he says. Vigilante’s baristas pay homage to the isles by topping their açaí bowls ($9 for three toppings, 50 cents per additional topping) with peach slices displayed as a palm tree. Guests can also request a smiley face made from fruit and other toppings, or a rose carved from a fresh strawberry.
The rose topping option at JRINK (multiple locations) comes from edible rose petals. “JRINK prides itself on presentation,” says spokesperson Kate Murphy. The Instagram-ready bowls (starting at $11) come with layers of cacao nibs, coconut chips, and frozen fruits. Locations can also add superfoods to the base, including the ‘Shrooms blend, which comes from powdered whole mushrooms. For those days when açaí itself isn’t quite what someone’s craving, JRINK offers its Ocean Blue bowl, a blue-green creation which starts not with berry pulp but with spirulina, a protein-rich extract from freshwater algae.
The Juice Laundry (1331 4th St. SE) offers another color in the bowl rainbow. The customer-favorite Coco Verde ($11) goes green by blending açaí with kale, spinach, mango, coconut oil, and coconut water. Sliced banana and dates top the concoction, but customers frequently add a dollop of cashew butter on top as well, says co-founder Mike Keenan.
For a change in texture from the iciness of a frozen smoothie base, blending in peanut butter is a way to achieve a smooth, creamy consistency and make the bowl more filling. The PBJ Bowl at the juice shop South Block (multiple locations) is the second most popular item on the menu, says founder Amir Mostafavi. For a different nut taste, he recommends topping any of the juicery’s açaí bowls ($10-11) with a sprinkling of hemp hearts, the edible interior of the hemp seed. “It has almost a walnut-like flavor,” he explains.
And if you think açaí bowls are a warm-weather breakfast only, Vitality Bowls in Arlington (1515 Wilson Blvd.) is already looking to fall with its pumpkin bowl, blended with real pumpkin puree. That’s one of several twists on the açaí base available ($9.99-14.99), says vice president of operations Uriah Blum. Guests can swap out açaí for graviola, a dark green, slightly tart fruit commonly referred to in Spanish as guanábana; acerola, an Amazonian cherry; and pitaya, also known as dragonfruit.
