My vegan friend Jo recently committed herself to a strictly raw-food diet (a lifestyle promoting the consumption of uncooked, unprocessed, and, where possible, organic foods, as a large portion of or all of your diet).

She keeps telling me how fantastic she feels. I’m a food-loving omnivore and shamelessly enjoy hunks of rare red meat and a burger every so often. Jo says the purest raw food diet is a vegan one but I am most certanly not giving up my carnivorous ways. I love sashimi and its healthy so Ill just do raw fish.

So, okay, she has me almost convinced but I feel the need to do some research before I make up my mind. This is definitely food on the fringe. There are only two restaurants in Jozi that serve true raw dishes: The Greenside Café and Lucky Bean in Melville. If you’re a raw foodist, you can order off the menu at the latter and they’ll prepare an authentic uncooked dish for you, theyll evn make a raw food dish that isnt on the menu for you.

At The Greenside Café, owner Dimitri Gutjahr has a raw foodist special on his menu. He makes the most spectacular raw desserts, such as his mango and vanilla tart, which I fell in love with for its melt-in-the-mouth topping and deliciously textured crushed almond and coconut base. Says Dimitri, “In New York and LA there are strictly raw food restaurants where people are queuing to get in. The trend in these places is to create gourmet cuisine using raw food. At my place, which is essentially a new-style vegetarian and vegan health food restaurant, we like to stay on-trend, hence the introduction of raw food to my menu.”

Ingrid Litman, who works at the eatery and has been an 80 per cent raw foodist for five years, agrees with Dimitri when he says that going raw means your kitchen (restaurant or domestic) changes completely. Throw out your oven and microwave and replace them with specialised appliances such as a dehydrator, spiraliser and high-speed blender. Ingrid has a business called Raw Alchemy (079 419 9790) and runs raw food workshops in Melville. But it is a little overwhelming to imagine gutting my kitchen in the name of the uncooked diet.

My anxieties are eased when I attend one of Brittany Kesselman’s food preparation classes. Brittany is a self-trained vegan and raw-food chef who owns a business called Jozi (Un)cooked (084 200 3400 in Observatory, which is Joburgs first raw and vegan food company, offering raw and vegan catering, food preparation classes and takeaways. She says the most essential item you’ll require when converting to a raw-food diet is a top-notch food processor. She also says that ingredients are easily sourced. “For fresh organic fruit and vegetables, I usually go to the Bryanston Organic Market , the Jozi Food Market in Parktown North or the Blubird Whole Food Market in Illovo.

Plus, Woolworths and Pick n Pay also have organic produce. You can get raw nuts and seeds – an important part of raw food preparation – in bulk from fruit and vegetable shops.” For the more unusual ingredients such as raw cacao, coconut oil or agave syrup, Brittany goes to health food shops. “They’re everywhere, but I particularly like Fresh Earth in Emmarentia and Fruits and Roots  in Bryanston.”

I keep wondering if variety is lacking in a raw-food lifestyle. “No,” says Brittany, “I think eating a raw diet actually forces you to be creative. You can create all sorts of wonderful dishes, either to mimic cooked food (such as a delicious raw lasagne), or just to bring out the flavours of fruits and vegetables. There is such an incredible diversity of plant-based food available; its just a matter of using your imagination.”

I realise this when I taste her three-course Sunday lunch: raw sushi with a sweet tamarind dip (the rice is replaced with grated parsnip, which is surprisingly delicious and adds a nutty flavour, and works perfectly with the avo, sprouts and seaweed wrap); Asian rainbow salad with a mango dressing and, for dessert, raw chocolate ice cream made from frozen bananas, intensely flavoured raw cacao and sweetened with agave syrup (a sweetener extracted from a cactus).

After flirting on the fringe of Jozi’s uncooked, I speak to Jo again. I want to know how easy it really is to become a member of the fairly rare raw-food tribe. “The biggest obstacle is that very few restaurants have authentic raw food dishes on their menus. The perception is that raw food is salad, which it isnt, especially since most raw foodists are vegan and many salads contain cheese and often meat. It’s easy to convert to a raw-food diet, though, because you can start by simply adding more fruit and greens to your ordinary diet, and then progress at your own rate.”

By Laurel Pretoruis