The multi-talented Dorene Carle is a walking advertisement for her health style restaurant and takeout: Dorene’s Garden of Eating.
In another lifetime, Carle ran a tugboat for Exxon Mobile in the Gulf. She spent a bit of time at Tyndall Air Force Base too, operating a boat retrieving pieces of target drones from Florida waters. When she got to St. Thomas, she taught music at Antilles and Montessori Schools.
But there was always another side to Carle.
Renowned within the family as a great cook, her mother also worked as a professional chef. Carle said she’d watch her in the kitchen on weekends.
“That’s where I got my love of cooking.”
Later, she picked up pointers from her mother-in-law, who was a master at Italian cuisine. And she studied and became a pastry chef.
Carle has made more than one venture into the restaurant business, including running the Gulf Port Bakery in Florida, and more recently offering specialty dining in her Northside home. But Dorene’s Garden is a whole different thing, and it grew directly out of her personal experience.
“I had a wake-up call eight years ago when I was diagnosed with very severe diabetes,” Carle said. Along with the diabetes came related conditions, including hypertension and high cholesterol.
She decided to take control of the situation, Carle said. “I started researching… It all led to diet.”
Sugar may look like the immediate enemy, but “it’s not just about sugar,” she says. She became convinced that processed food is generally detrimental, and meat and dairy products make up far too much of the average western diet.
She’s leery of fast food and of processed packaged foods, believing “Most of it is chemically produced” and much is laced with fats and sugars.
“That’s to get you addicted.”
If you want to be healthy, “you have to change your style of eating.”
She knows from experience that it isn’t easy.
“It’s a withdrawal,” she says. “It took me two years to do it.” She says she is now “disease free” – and she lost 70 pounds in the process.
She also became aware how hard it is to find truly healthful foods on restaurant menus. The solution was obvious: open her own. So a year ago this month, she opened her restaurant in the strip mall by Fortress Storage, just behind the Roy L. Schneider Hospital in an area replete with private medical offices.
“Nobody else is doing what I’m doing on the island,” she said.
She offers salads, sandwiches, soups, smoothies and weekly specials from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday. The food is “low in sugar, fat and carbs but high in awesome flavor,” she said. Some of the more popular items are a Cajun red bean and rice with kale soup, a curry pumpkin soup and the “detox smoothie” – a blend of kale, broccoli, celery, carrots, ginger, parsley and more. The smoothie has built a following among early morning exercisers.
“Doctors are sending me patients” who need to change their eating habits, Carle said. Most often the problem is obesity, but sometimes there are other issues, such as heart disease or diabetes. Not everyone is able to make the switch to a healthy diet, but some do.
Carle is not a nutritionist. But she said she’s happy to share with her customers what she’s learned in her own reading and in her own experience. She posts articles on a bulletin board at the restaurant; one lists the staggering amount of sugar in various commercial beverages.
“I really wish they taught nutrition in school” in a more in depth method, she said. “We have to start with the kids.” Eventually, she’d like to teach a class herself. “The more you learn, the more knowledge you want to seek.”
For now, she’s more than busy with her Garden of Eating. She runs the business with the help of one cook.
“It’s a seven-day-a-week job for me because I do make everything from scratch,” she said. “I shop all day on Saturdays, probably in every grocery store we have on the island.”
She prefers organic produce. Sundays are prep time and menu planning.
“I change my menu weekly,” she said, to keep the flavors exciting. And she publishes the coming week’s menu to customers via email.
Her efforts were recognized recently by the Rotary East Club which presented her with its Vocational Excellence for Nutritional Restaurateur award. She’s so proud of the award that she’s posted it at the restaurant.
