We proudly openned the doors of our second Café Kitsuné last week.

After a first launch in Tokyo, Café kitsuné has come to Paris; this intimate stand-up coffee bar has a clean design with the charm of a quaint European café. Inside, the concise menu offers a tasty coffee coming from the region of Minas Gerais in Brazil, “Daterra Santa Colomba.” Roasted in London.

Willing to  broaden the offer and give our customers some fruity refreshments, Café Kitsuné also has 4 juices on the menu. But not any king of juices: Cold-pressed juices from Bob’s cold press. These fruity drinks are the most healthy and nutritive you’ll have, due to a specific process of juicing.

Kitsuné Journal met up with Marc Grossman, foundator of Bob’s cold press, so he could enlighten us:

We secretly thought your name would be Bob – where does the brand name come from ?

When I created Bob’s Juice Bar back in 2006, the idea was your basic no-frills juice bar and I felt like it should have a generic American name. “Marc’s” didn’t fit and I wanted to make a separation from myself. I also have a lot of positive associations with the name Bob – Bob Dylan, Bob Fosse, etc. In the beginning people assumed that I was Bob and, more often than not, I didn’t correct them. I guess I liked playing the part, but it was a little confusing. Today, Bob is more the collective identity of everyone working at Bob’s (Bob’s Juice Bar, Bob’s Kitchen, Bob’s Cold Press, and Bob’s Bake Shop)

How does a Harvard graduate, trained cineast takes the path of juicing ?!

As one thing leads to another it can seem rather arbitrary – your film doesn’t get into Sundance, you marry a French woman and move to France, you have a couple of kids and grow tired of your day jobs (teaching English, translating screenplays), you happen to stumble across a cheap space for rent a stone’s throw from your home and, the next thing you know, you’ve signed a lease and people are calling you Bob…But stepping back, it kind of makes sense. The kitchen was always my favorite room, I come from a family of shopkeepers (My mother has a store, my father has a store, my brother has about 20), schmoozing with customers is in my blood and I like creating, but, as it turns out, it doesn’t have to be something as grandiose as film. In fact, I prefer the immediacy of food. And there is a lot of storytelling in the restaurant business.

The extreme quality of your juices is all about the coldpress. Could you  outline the concept ? « coldpress for dummies » style !

There are basically two ways to make fresh juice: with a centrifugal juicer or with a cold press juicer. Centrifugal juicers pulversize fruits and vegetables and then separate the juice from the fiber by spinning the ground up produce at high speeds in a filtered basket. These are what are traditionally used at Juice bars and perfectly suited for making juice for immediate consumption. The problem with this approach is that there is a lot of oxidation and the juices don’t keep very well. The main advantage of cold press juicing, wherein thousands of pounds of pressure are applied to squeeze the juice out , is that oxidation is kept to a minimum, extending the shelf life from hours. It is this technology that has allowed us to provide Kitsuné pre-bottled yet perfectly fresh (i.e., not pasteurized) juice.

In the US, and especially NY your hometown, juicing is a real trend. You were the first to bring juice bars, and especially cold-pressed juices to Paris. 

When I was in college I remember discovering this pop business book entitled “Be First” about how important it was to be the first in a market. I didn’t actually read the book, but the concept always stuck with me – like a mantra. The truth is that making the move to cold-pressed juice was the natural extension of what we were already doing at Bob’s Juice Bar and Bob’s Kitchen. We had been talking about doing a juice cleanse program for years, but it wasn’t possible with centrifugal juicers. When we became aware of the this technology for making better juice that kept longer, we couldn’t resist.

To your mind, why French people never got the idea ?

Depends on what you mean by “the idea”. There were a couple of places making juice when I opened Bob’s Juice Bar – like Boost, a juice/smoothie bar in carreau du temple in the space now occupied by the Fondation Café or Lood, to name a couple that have since closed. My French partner Amaury had been planning on opening a Brazilian-style juice bar when we met. So, I think the idea was out there. What was maybe different about Bob’s was our old-school juice bar approach (as opposed to slick Jamba Juice style smoothie bars that were more the trend back then) and, more importantly, the personality and authenticity we brought to the concept. I did encounter a bit of skepticism or negativity from French people – like neighbors asking, ”Ca marche un peu?” with pessimistic concern. That surprised me coming from the anything-is-possible environment of New York.  But I’m always careful not to get sucked into conversations where everyone agrees that it’s impossible to do anything in this country so you might as well not try.  Yes, the taxes are too high, even the socialist president says so, but France is still an amazing place to be.

Bob’s Juice bar also offers juice cleanses. How does it work and what are the benefits ?

The idea of the BOB’S CLEANSE is to give the body a break from its normal routine in order to enhance the natural on-going process of detoxing with an easily digested non-toxic nutrient-dense, organic diet of juice, nut milk and solid plant-based food. BOB’S COLD PRESS provides the juice and nut milk as well as guidelines for the solid food you consume. It was important to us that our program be based in science, which is why we teamed up with nutritionist Melanie Stephens to design a cleanse that would address some of what we saw as the shortcomings in typical pure liquid cleanses. Consequently, our juices are less sweet than in typical juice cleanses and we include solid food, whereas most juice cleanses are just juice and nut milk. Ours is a powerful, yet gentle approach. Anyone interested can order on line at bobscoldpress.com. We deliver the juices and nutmilks daily within the Paris metro area.

Have you ever done a juice cleanse yourself ?

Yes, several times. It’s a great way to “get back on track” and shake unwanted habits.

Which juice would you recommend for a first time drinker ?

GRASS, a blend that includes wheatgrass among other things. That’s my personal favorite these days. The taste reminds me of honeydew.

Find GRASS  and 3 other fresh juices at Café Kitsuné Paris 

Café Kitsuné 

51 Galerie de Montpensier 

75001 Paris 

Mondays through Sundays

08h30 – 18h30