A little over a year in the making and maybe just a tad behind their target opening of fall 2025, Garden Butcher is now open in downtown West Palm Beach and ready to offer residents an amazing range of healthy, delicious dishes.
The new restaurant officially opened on Monday, June 15 at The Shoppes on Gardenia at the corner of South Olive Avenue and Gardenia Street. It features both a beautifully decorated indoor dining area as well as outdoor seating with umbrellas surrounded by lush landscaping.
Garden Butcher is the creation of chef Erin Leeds and the new restaurant is the brand’s second location after the original which opened in 2022 in Boca Raton. The restaurant and its menu were inspired by Leed’s desire to find healthy food for her family. “We wanted to know what we were eating, what we were feeding our family. There didn’t seem to be a lot of places with clean, healthy options.”
Trained at the Culinary Institute of Charleston and having worked at top restaurants like Charleston Grill, Le Cordon Bleu London and The Fat Duck in Bray, England, Leeds is now focused on chef-crafted healthy meals, including bowls, salads, wraps and sandwiches; wellness smoothies, organic coffee and much more.
Crafting clean, healthy and still delicious dishes requires sourcing great ingredients and Garden Butcher pulls from some of the best including Wilson’s Produce, B&W Quality Growers, Fort McCoy Ranch, Little River Produce, Lake Meadows Naturals and many more.
Though they had a soft opening on Friday, June 12, they officially opened on Monday, June 15. For the time being they are keeping their hours at 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. as they get their new West Palm Beach staff up to speed, but will be expanding to 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. by June 20 and up to their full hours of 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in a few weeks.
“I want to make sure we don’t overwhelm the (new) staff… making sure the product goes out perfectly and that everyone has a really great experience,” Leeds said.
Way more than wheat grass clippings (not that there’s anything wrong with that), the menu at Garden Butcher is pure rockstar delicious with bowls like Harvest Chicken made with grilled lemon chicken, organic brown rice, roasted sweet potato, local lettuce blend, pickled red onion, goat cheese and organic cider vinaigrette; wraps and sandwiches like their Ahi tuna wrap featuring Ahi tuna, avocado oil flour tortilla, cucumber, carrot, avocado, local farm greens, yuzu dressing and Siracha aioli; and salads like their Mango Avocado made with romaine and local lettuce blend, cucumber, mango, avocado, shredded cabbage, furikake, toasted almonds and an organic sesame-yuzu vinaigrette. There also plenty of breakfast options along with smoothies and organic coffee and teas.
If you’re a newbie to Garden Butcher, Leeds said their chicken Caesar wrap, Buffalo cauliflower, gluten-free chicken tenders and their organic fudgy sweet potato muffins are “can’t miss” dishes.
In a hurry and don’t have time for a sit-down meal? No worries as Leeds and her team have dishes that are made for grab-go.
Leeds said you can’t miss with their double lemon chicken breast. “You can add it to anything you’ve got at home you want to throw chicken on.” After that she recommends their Buffalo cauliflower. “It’s always been an exciting dish that I’m in love with.”
More than just a feast of taste and smell, even Garden Butcher’s building itself is a visual delight. Occupying the decades old former Trailways Bus Station, the restaurant maintains the ‘retro-cool’ look of the past.
Leeds said they really “… leaned into that vibe. We kept a lot of the interior structure that existed.”
“We kind of tried to keep that retro feeling… such a cool building.”
Leeds said “for anyone who doesn’t really know what Garden Butcher is… it’s the care and thoughtfulness in the menu, about clean eating and sourcing the best ingredients.”
Garden Butcher, West Palm Beach
Where: 501 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach
Hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. until Saturday, June 20; 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. after that and then expanding to 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in next three weeks.
Information: gardenbutcher.com
Eddie Ritz is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at eritz@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Beloved in Boca, Garden Butcher opens restaurant in downtown West Palm
Reporting by Eddie Ritz, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Eddie Ritz, Palm Beach Post | USA TODAY Network
