Acaí Bowl

The açaí palm (pronounced "ah-sah-EE") grows wild in the floodplains of the Amazon River and has been harvested by indigenous Amazonian people for thousands of years. The berries — small, dark purple, and intensely flavoured — were a critical calorie source for river communities, eaten mashed with cassava or water into a thick porridge called "vinho de açaí".

In the 1970s and 80s, açaí spread from the Amazon to the coastal cities of Brazil, particularly Belém and then Rio de Janeiro, where surfers and fitness culture embraced it. The Brazilian version — a thick, frozen pulp served in a bowl with banana and granola — became the template for what the world now knows as an açaí bowl. Hawaiian surfers encountered it in the 1990s and brought the format to the US, from where it spread to café culture globally.

Our açaí bowl blends açaí with banana and four berries into a vivid purple base, then tops it with toasted almond shreds, sliced seasonal fruit, chia seeds, coconut, and optional granola. It is a long way from the Amazon floodplain to Stanley Street, but the purple colour and the energy are the same.