Ian Evans and Jon Litz found themselves leaving Las Vegas to spend more time with their families in Buffalo.
After they moved home, they figured, why not start with juice?
Today, Immersion Juice offers fresh cold-pressed juice from organic fruit, vegetables, and herbs in Buffalo’s Ellicott Square Building, and its Orchard Park location. Plus Hamburg Farmers Market, Kenmore Farmers Market, and Downtown Country Market.
Like Renew (pineapple, cabbage, pear, ginger, mint, lemon), Feel Good (carrot, apple, beet, kale, lemon), and Detox (apple, lemon, ginger, turmeric), $12 for a 16-ounce returnable bottle.
Evans and Litz, his partner, started in 2023 “with a little juicer out of a commissary kitchen.”
Consumer response led to a retail location in Orchard Park, then an Ellicott Square Building food stall.
“We kind of do everything upside down and backwards,” Evans said. “We started with a high quality product, not what was going to make us the most money. We really try to make it make sense from there, and serve Buffalo what it needs.”
While the Buffalo diet can mean wings three times a week, that can mean “we oftentimes get up in the morning not feeling well rested, or just feeling really lethargic, or sick,” he said. “As it turns out, it’s largely due to our diets and as Americans, having so much processed stuff in there.”
His grandmother was part of the inspiration. “Before I was born, she had cancer and other factors. She radically changed her diet and lifestyle around, and you know what? She’s still alive and well to this day,” Evans said. “So I got to see firsthand growing up the power of choosing good food.”
In Las Vegas, he helped run a juice bar serving drinks made from organic produce, cold-pressed because heating juice can extend its shelf life, but diminishes its health value.
Making healthier decisions like adding organic cold-pressed juice to your diet is “hard for the average person that’s going to school, has to go to work or has kids,” Evans said. “So that’s where we try to fill a gap.”
“We love our family, and decided that we were in a position where we could maybe bring this to Buffalo and potentially make it a little bit more fun, exciting and approachable, to start coaching the people that we love through making healthy decisions,” Evans said.
“If you’re going in for medical testing all the time, whatever it is, it’s not great,” he said, “and it all starts from a good foundation, which starts with a clean diet.”
295 Main St,, Suite 116, 716-218-0208
Hours: 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. Closed Saturday, Sunday.
5020 Armor Duells Road, Suite 4, Orchard Park, 716-218-0746
Hours: 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. Closed Sunday.
REVIEW: If you still haven’t eaten a Yemeni meal, Kenmore’s Shibam Mediterranean Restaurant is a perfect setting to dig into Yemeni Cuisine 101. Offering excellent cooking, major-league value, and serene surroundings, its fresh bread, oven-braised lamb, grilled kebabs, bubbling stews, and classic Yemeni hospitality should put Shibam on your to-eat list. (Coming Wednesday, for patrons.)
TASTE THE TALENTS: Taste of Ormsby allows culinary students at East Aurora’s Ormsby Career and Tech Center to show off what they’ve learned in an evening of sampling on Oct. 9.
From 6 p.m.-8 p.m., 1010 Center St., East Aurora., food stations will be staffed with young cooks wearing their first toques.
Their menu will include a chocolate fountain with appropriate dipping candidates, bananas foster, mac and cheese bites, jerk tacos, arancini balls, chicken piccata meatballs, and more. to be added. All prepared and served by Ormsby culinary students, free and open to the public.
CORRECTION: Tokens for tastings are $1-$2. (Sorry for the error.)
Want the best Buffalo has to offer? Get Four Bites.
TERROIR SAYS FAREWELL: In Lockport, Terroir General Store owner Jessica Dittly will close her place for good Oct. 4.
“On September 8, 2021, we opened the doors to Terroir General Store with a simple dream: to create a space rooted in community, local foods, and heart,” Dittly posted. “Thanks to you – my customers, neighbors, and friends – this dream became a reality. You brought life into this vision, supported local makers, allowed me to share my food with you and turned Terroir into something truly special.”
Rent increases and other factors led to her decision, but there’s still reasons to stop by, she said.
“We have two Bodega Supper Clubs scheduled for this month and seats are still available to both. I will also be hosting a Harvest Dinner at Buffalo Distilling Company at 860 Seneca St. Buffalo on October 2.
Our final day will be Saturday October 4 as part of the Cozy Fall Book Crawl and we’ll be offering coffee bar drinks, baked goods, and a shop garage sale of odds and ends inventory.”
Remaining hours: three Sundays, Sept. 14, 21, and 28, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Then Saturday, Oct. 4, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
ASK THE CRITIC
Q: Any recommendations for a (Yalley’s African Restaurant) first timer?
- Adam Randazzo, via Bluesky
A: You betcha. The Ghanaian/West African restaurant has plenty of dishes homegrown Buffalonians should dig.
Peanut soup with chicken brings startling peanut flavor with a lick of habanero heat. Jollof rice coats rice grains with intensely flavorful jackets. Fried plantains are caramel-sweet and they count as a vegetable, so it feels like cheating. “Red-red,” blackeyed peas braised in palm oil alive with aromatics, is among the richest vegan dishes I’ve ever enjoyed.
Then there’s the deep-fried turkey tails. Mostly skin and fat, spice-rubbed and fried, deep-fried turkey tails actually became so popular in Ghana that the government banned them as hazardous to the public’s health.
More reading from Michael Chelus:
- Andrew told us that Parker’s Great British Institution has invited mail order fish & chips [Four Bites]
- Hamburg Brewing is now offering handcrafted pop – Bevonda [Buffalo Spree]
- Francesca wrote about the non-alcoholic happy hour at The Rooted Cup [Buffalo News]
- Brian’s Buffalo Beer Buzz told us about a new release from Smoldered Society, Hamburg Brewing’s 12th anniversary and more [Buffalo Beer League]
- Mr. Galarneau wrote about the world class pizza to be found at Jay’s Artisan Pizza in Kenmore [Four Bites]
- Pumpkinville is back! [Buffalo News]
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