UNTAMED KITCHEN

Hoppen Hierarchy:★★★⭑

Fast casual stop with health-conscious bowls and salads

Perfect For: Casual Dining; Lunch; Takeout; Vegan Options

Standout Dishes: Fried Rice; Loaded BLT Salad; Chimichurri Steak Salad

When going out to eat, it’s generally accepted you’re sacrificing one of two things: taste or health.

Generally it’s the latter, as restaurants typically use fatty cuts of meat, mayo, sugar, and copious amounts of butter to add flavor to dishes. It’s an accepted tradeoff—if you’re ordering a ribeye or a sloppy burger, you’re going to need to hit the gym a little harder the next day.

There are the rare restaurants that go the other way and attempt to offer healthy meals, but they tend to be bland and uninteresting. You know you’re doing good for your body, but your tastebuds are more bored than a 6-year-old at a four-hour opera.

And then there’s Untamed Kitchen.

This fast casual spot off the corner of 15th & Farnam (downtown Omaha) seeks to thrill flavorful meals that thrill both your tastebuds and your fitness coach. It’s a tight line to walk, but the bowls and salads coming out of this spot are not lacking in flavor.

Owner Alex Harrington has long been passionate about living a healthy lifestyle and, as the owner of several locations of Pickleman’s Cafe, is familiar with the business of opening restaurants. So when he partnered with Clayton Chapman, the five-time James Beard Award nominee formerly of the beloved Grey Plume, it became clear Untamed Kitchen wouldn’t be another run-of-the-mill healthy eatery.

The restaurant serves to offer health-conscious bowls and salads in an extremely steam-lined manner. You can order at a kiosk or the front counter and have your bowl within minutes, or you can make your selection online and pick it up from a stand just inside the doors. It’s similar in speed to Chipotle, but at a fraction of the calories.

The first indication that Untamed Kitchen is something different is the Fried Rice Bowl (pictured in the header photo). It should come as no shock that, typically, fried rice is terrible for your health, awash in oil and fat even before the other components are added.

But this version, a combo of white and brown rice and quinoa stir fried in avocado oil, is light but still has that umami and salinity. It’s delicious, and the other elements bring great balance: sweetness from pineapple, savor ones from juicy chicken, and earthiness from the large, meaty mushrooms. And the garlic aioli is the rug that ties the room together.

The other bowls don’t pack quite the same flavor punch, but still have plenty of interest. The G-Cue Bowl combines brown rice with a distinctly unique ginger BBQ sauce, which adds an earthy slight warming spice to the sweetness of typical BBQ sauces. Carrots and broccoli help round out the bowl, while sunflower seeds add nice crunch.

And the Harvest Bowl, with sweet potato puree, crispy sweet potatoes, and plump blackberries, has great natural sweetness. Sharp cheddar and a vibrant, herbaceous chimichurri bring balance.

The salads have plenty of life at Untamed Kitchen, too. Typically when eating out, a salad is a concession that you’re settling for a bland meal in hopes of not wrecking your health goals. Either that or the greens are so drowned in fatty dressing than they’re no worse than the burger your dining companion ordered.

Untamed Kitchen’s salads are hearty and interesting without blowing up your diet, as the Steak Chimichurri Salad shows. The chimichurri is bright and acidic, accented with pops of funky blue cheese. The steak is seasoned well and cooked to a bouncy tenderness, and the balsamic dressing, while lightly applied, gives the entire dish a bright, zesty flavor with a pleasant sweetness.

And the Loaded BLT Salad is bursting with flavor, starting with the crispy, salty, plentiful bacon. The meat is accented by a fresh lettuce mix, tangy homemade ranch, creamy avocados, and a punch of acid from apples and cranberries. Walnuts add a great crunch, and it should be noted that any salad or bowl can be ordered as a wrap.

The five salads and five bowls are all quite unique and highly customizable, meaning you can get something very different each time you come in. There are also five smoothies, ranging from the fruit-forward Superfood Smoothie to the more rich All Day Chocolate.

And given the convenience, flavor, and health benefits you’ll get from eating at Untamed Kitchen, the additional cost isn’t prohibitive. This eatery seeks to break the code on eating out, and its flavorful bowls and salads bring something new to the Omaha dining scene.