Artie’s Paleo OnTheGo Comes Clean

A CrossFit chef dishes up the good stuff.
7.7.2014.ArtiesPaleo

While working out at downtown gym CrossFit Nap Town, former culinary student Artie Stevens was introduced to the Paleo diet, that caveman-esque, meat-centric regimen—championed by fitness fanatics—that nixes processed foods, grains, and legumes. Stevens, who had struggled for years with drug addiction (even while studying at the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute) and finally got clean at a residential program run by Wheeler Mission, decided to leverage his cooking skills and new fitness interests into a business—Artie’s Paleo OnTheGo.
Stevens delivers full meals that follow the trendy program to 19 gyms in the metro area. “We’re bringing familiar foods into a natural way to eat it,” Stevens explains. “You’re going to have some trade-off: This isn’t going to be the sweetest honey-soaked, butter-glazed piece of cornbread, for example. We bake a paleo ‘cornbread’ out of almond meal.”
Customers order online, choosing from about four $13 options, and then retrieve the plastic containers of food at their respective gyms. (You don’t have to belong to a gym to order, but you do have to pick up at one.) Menu choices usually center around a meat or fish, like pecan-crusted mahi mahi with coconut-cream glaze, zucchini noodles with meat sauce, or grilled pork chops smothered in maple-bacon jam—each served with sides like citrus slaw, mashed sweet potatoes, and other temple-fueling cuisine. Stevens’s backyard barbecue chicken, more subtly flavored than traditional barbecue, might be missing that familiar bite of extreme sweet and sour. But the “clean living” recipe will leave you full without feeling weighed down—something you will appreciate midway through your 20 box jumps and 50 air squats. 317-997-0916, artiesonthego.com

This article appeared in the July 2014 issue.