The Plant Whisperers

With two trucks and a pop-up store ready to open, chefs Amy and Hannah Pickle finesse plant-based food into a delicious and happy place.

by

Remember that interminable stretch of September heat when 95-degree days and no rain turned cooking dinner into a daily chore? That’s when I tote home a brown paper bag packed with Raw Girl dishes: mung bean pasta with tomatoes and pesto; watermelon gazpacho studded with almonds and croutons; scrumptious Tuscan vegetable soup with the taste of fall; and for my afternoon pick-up, raw almond butter cookies, two to a pack.

At home, I line up my purchases and make a plan. Gazpacho for dinner with chilled rosé and cold pasta for tomorrow’s lunch. In the freezer, I snuggle the quart of vegetable soup next to hamburger buns and think how the plump silver pouch, the company’s go-to packaging, looks like space-age astronaut food. And those almond butter cookies, molded into mini-muffins with syrup and dates? I eat them right away, a new guilty pleasure, like peanut butter from a Jiffy jar, scooped up with a spoon.

For almost 10 years, Raw Girls Amy and Hannah Pickle have enticed the city’s healthy eaters with smoothies, cold-pressed juices, shots of exotic elixirs, and plant-based entrees, both raw — their original mantra — and now oftentimes cooked. Certainly, I know the Raw Girls distinctive rainbow food trucks parked in Midtown at Cooper and Peabody and in East Memphis beside Hollywood Feed. But except for an occasional soup or juice, I am new to the Raw Girls brand. Curious to know more, I meet Amy and Hannah for coffee at City & State, the couple’s new partner at a pop-up storefront in Germantown’s Saddle Creek shopping center.

The pop-up will feature Raw Girls entrees, beverages and curative shots, along with Lisa and Luis Toro’s coffee bar and curated artisanal gifts. The store is set to open in October, and Amy and Hannah are exuberant. They talk about electricians and grab-and-go refrigerators and white-washed walls. In one moment, they are business owners focused on details and numbers. In the next, they are a humble tumble of wonderment at their personal and professional success. “Our souls long to help people,” Amy says. “It’s not enough just to make good food.”

The couple certainly didn’t foresee their circuitous paths a decade ago. Although both were raised in Memphis, Amy lived away from the Bluff City for decades. She worked first as a software engineer and then as a CIA-trained chef in Chicago and New York City. In San Francisco, she cooked with Chef Judy Rodgers at the famed Zuni Café, an experience that still shapes her cooking today.

Hannah was a master yoga teacher with an East Memphis studio on Mendenhall. She had-been juicing since the birth of her son — now 17 — and was knowledgeable about raw food diets and the medicinal qualities of nutrient-rich superfoods. She taught a superfood workshop, and Amy, who had returned to Memphis to care for her grandmother, attended. “The workshop was all about throwing together gross things in a blender to make you feel good,” Hannah recalls.

Afterward, Amy showed up with her take on raw cantaloupe soup. “It was so delicious, it blew my mind,” Hannah says. For Hannah, the gift was more pragmatic. “I only made it because I liked her,” she says, laughing. “But I also loved the challenge of making this weird stuff taste good.”

As the couple’s relationship grew, so did their business. Amy taught Hannah how to cook. Hannah taught Amy about the healing properties of Ayurvedic medicine and ingredients like shilajit, a decomposition of plants from the Himalayan mountains. At friends’ requests, they started juice cleanse deliveries. Next came cold-pressed juices, raw foods, and eventually, expanded menus with cooked entrees like Tuscan soup, a hearty combination of seasonal vegetables, roasted ginger, and fresh herbs. The menus, which have evolved over the years, reflect the couple’s travels, lifestyles, and curiosity.

“We hit a cold winter where eating just raw foods didn’t feel right,” Amy says. “I wanted something more comforting, like lentil soup.” Hannah concurs: “For the most part, we do for our business what we feel called to do for ourselves and our family. What happens on the truck happens first in our kitchen at home.”

Customers of all kinds support the couple’s culinary finesse and positive approach (no healthy food preaching here). Home deliveries of cleanses continue to thrive, as do sales of cold-pressed juices. (Between the two trucks, customers buy 400 bottles of juices a day.) Food production is constant with no shortcuts. “Every day, I cook for six or seven hours,” Amy says. “I make 10 gallons of medicinal broth, 10 gallons of Thai broth, five gallons of vegetable soup, five gallons of dahl. It’s crazy.”

Intrigued, I make arrangements to visit the Raw Girls kitchen, tucked in the alley behind Mollie Fontaine. When I arrive at the wood-frame building with bright yellow doors, the kitchen is bustling. Five cooks, all women, have been busy since 6 a.m. prepping ingredients, all cut by hand, and packaging food for deliveries, which move from kitchen to trucks throughout the day.

At the 16-burner stove, Thai pho broth simmers in large stockpots, and fragrant herbs and spices — cloves, garlic, fennel, lemongrass, star anise, Thai chili, and thick chunks of cinnamon stick — waft through the kitchen, a soothing culinary lullaby.

Before I leave, Amy hands me a carton of steaming hot broth, and I breathe in the goodness as I walk to my car. By the time I’ve driven two blocks, the broth is gone, consumed in big happy gulps. It is restorative, like a homemade bowl of chicken noodle soup. Only this broth — plant-based, no bones — feels lighter and brighter with a taste that lingers. Hannah’s heartfelt praise of her kitchen staff and the food they make also stays with me as I make my way home. “Our staff is wonderful, big-hearted and kind and delicate with the food, and that’s on purpose,” she says. “We want a peaceful kitchen, and we want that feeling to translate into all the food that goes out.”

Raw Girls

Popup: 2055 West Street, Germantown

Midtown food truck: 242 S. Cooper St.

East Memphis food truck: 5502 Poplar Ave.

Food: Salads, soups, and entrees — both raw and cooked — are vegan and gluten-free, but seasonal and chef-driven to taste delicious.

Drinks: More than a dozen cold-pressed juices make up the beverage menu, along with superfood smoothies and cure-alls like charcoal lemonade, a popular remedy for hangovers. “Charcoal pulls outs poisons,” Hannah says. “On the weekends, we sell out completely.”

Extras: A recent collaboration with Lydia’s Healthy Edibles brings more baked goods to Raw Girls, including ginger cookies, dinner rolls, and carrot cake.

Up Next: As the weather turns cool, look for broth bars in the trucks, with add-on shots such as Thai coconut milk.

Pam’s Picks:

Hummus toast, curry dahl, French lentil soup, and CBD brownies.

Prices: Food and broth ($7-13); baked goods ($3-7); beverages ($9); juice 6-packs ($49); shots ($3-5).