New restaurant Reviver redefines healthy fast food

Restaurant redefines healthy fast food

Many fast-food restaurants are adding healthy options to their menus, but you may feel like you’re missing out on the good stuff. One restaurant in New York City called Reviver aims to have every option on its menu be nutritious and balanced

Many fast food restaurants are adding healthier options to their menus – but those dishes can make you feel like you’re missing out on the good stuff.

So what if there was a quick spot where every option is nutritious and balanced?

That’s the goal of one restaurant in New York City called Reviver, which is turning to science to define healthy fast food. There, customers can order healthy restaurant-quality food, cooked to order in four minutes or less.

"We didn't want to just be another restaurant claiming healthy as a marketing word,” Todd Horowitz, co-owner of Reviver, told FoxNews.com. “We wanted to have substance, so we want to define what a complete nutritious meal would be."

With a history of heart disease in his family, Horowitz was inspired to team up with his life-long friend Chef Scott Leibfried and licensed nutritionist Monica Reinagel. They stuck to four food principles to ensure each item on Reviver’s menu would be balanced, nutritious, clean and pure.

"We really set some very hard and fast targets for ourselves. Every meal has the optimal amount of fiber, for example, of omega-3 fats, and also fruits and vegetables, proportionate to the number of calories that you are eating,” Reinagel said.

The food is also rated with a “Reviver Score,” which is based on 10 key nutrients that optimize health.

Chef Leibfried said cooking within the four food principles was a challenge at first. Having worked in high-end kitchens such as those at the Four Seasons, he had to rethink all the dishes.

"Normally people receive the flavors and the layers of flavors through salt, through butter, through heavy creamy dairy seasonings, and we just had to think about our process a little bit differently with where we were going to get the flavor from,” said Leibfried, head chef and co-owner of Reviver.

Reviver serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, and prices range from $3 to $12 a dish. For more information, visit ReviverNYC.com.