Tucked off the beaten path in West Greenville, Sun Belly Cafe nurtures a plant-based lifestyle.
“It just evolved” is how Deborah Bouts describes her unlikely journey from working in economic development in the environmental field to owning a vegan restaurant. It all started after she moved to Greenville from Atlanta for her ex-husband’s job in 2006 with their two small children.
A yoga practitioner, Bouts soon began teaching at 90 Degrees Yoga (where she could bring her little ones). There, she heard her yoga students grumble that they had to pick up fast food to get to yoga and home after work. Bouts answered their need for quick, healthy food by installing a refrigerator in the yoga studio and stocking it with healthy soups. As demand increased, the yoga instructor suddenly found herself doing meal planning.
After four years of meal planning and catering out of the DHEC-approved kitchen she built in the yoga studio, she began looking for a larger commercial space. In 2015, Bouts and her second husband purchased a former salon building in West Greenville and opened Sun Belly Cafe a year later.
The cafe owner’s love of healthy, whole foods stems naturally from her Mennonite mother and Quaker father. “There was an emphasis on eating from the earth,” Bouts, who’s been following a vegan diet since she was a teenager, recalls. “[My parents] raised almost everything that they ate.” Years later, she took courses in Ayurveda (a natural system of medicine developed in India over 3,000 years ago) as part of her yoga training. The experience further opened her eyes to the healing power of food.
From Picasso to Sun Belly Cafe
Launching a cafe, she confesses, was a leap of faith. “I feel like Western society has lost its connection to being part of the food cycle, so this is our little way of connecting people to the farmer who grew the food, and to appreciate the beauty of it, and to have more nutritional value.”
The cafe’s name recalls a quote she came across in a college art class. “When Picasso was asked where he got his inspiration, he responded, ‘from the sun in my belly.’ And I thought, if I ever have a restaurant, I’m going to call it Sun Belly. So much of your joy comes from following your gut instinct.”
At Sun Belly Cafe, everything on the changing menu is vegan, plant-based, and gluten-free. Menu items are inspired by bounty from local farms and riffs on family recipes. “Cauliflower corn chowder is my grandmother’s recipe,” says the self-taught chef, “and the pumpkin carrot bourbon-soaked-raisin bread is my mom’s recipe. Those are special to me.” Other menu standouts include the Autumn Crunch Salad, overflowing with vibrantly colored cruciferous vegetables tossed in a maple tahini dressing, and a grilled Butternut Squash “Steak” served with field-fresh vegetables. Nutrient-rich Mushroom Pho, a comforting Vietnamese-style broth filled with Dark Spore wild mushrooms, vegetables, and rice noodles, is one of the cafe’s most-ordered dishes.
In addition to serving lunch Monday through Friday and dinner every other Wednesday, Sun Belly offers meal planning and catering. As Bouts puts it, “We try to keep up with what’s going on in the community that we serve and do our best to meet their needs.”
1409 W Blue Ridge Dr., Greenville, 404.309.7791, facebook.com/SunBellyCafe
Photography by Andrew Huang.
