The Tastiest Juices In San Francisco - Food Trends

Shopping at downtown juice shops for flavor, not nutrients

It is becoming easier to buy a $9 bottle of liquefied vegetables in the Financial District than a $4 coffee.

We consider ourselves agnostic on the miraculous powers claimed by cleansing advocates. So we've been shopping for cold-pressed juices based on flavor.

At Thrive Juicery's week-old storefront in Embarcadero One, for instance, the bottle of magenta Beetastic ($8 for 16 ounces) started off with beets' dusky note, but the emerging sweetness of apple, edged with ginger and lemon, kept it from tasting dour.

The Juice Shop's cute new shack on Pine Street deals in all manner of colorful glass bottles. Here we found the best of the leafy-green juices we tried, Bright Green ($9 for 16 ounces, plus a $2 bottle deposit), which softened the vegetal bite of kale and cucumber with pineapple, apple and lemon.

Our favorite of the many juices we dosed ourselves with? The Jala-greeño ($9.50 for 16 ounces) at Project Juice's stand inside The Station (a storefront in Crocker Galleria opens next week). Neither decidedly savory nor sweet, the translucent, jade-green juice layered pineapple and none-too-spicy jalapeño over jicama and kale.

It was equally good Snoop Dogg-style: spiked with a shot of gin.