The Healthier Place to Eat serves all tastes and diets with ‘simple’ dishes

POCATELLO — A restaurant located right on Main Street in Historic Downtown Pocatello serves dishes that suit a wide variety of tastes with dishes they try to keep ‘simple.’

The Healthier Place to Eat, at 121 South Main Street, serves a wide variety of dishes, including but not limited to gyros, empanadas and falafels. For these meals, Raymond Gouchenour, who co-owns the restaurant with his wife, scrutinizes the ingredients to make sure he’s only getting the best.

“The food that we get in here, we wanted to make it a little bit healthier, and we achieved that by looking at the ingredients on everything that we make and hopefully making it as simple as possible,” said Raymond Gouchenour.

The Healthier Place to Eat opened around 13 years ago, first as a bakery, with Gouchenour’s wife in charge of the baking.

“But then we realized that a lot of people really want to come in for a great meal as well,” Gouchenour said.

The couple then decided it was time to expand their menu.

“We kept some of the desserts that we originally had, and then we started adding to the menu,” Gouchenour said. “We talked with the nutritionist, and the nutritionist kind of gave us some tips and pointers as well.”

One of the appetizers customers can order is the falafel plate, served with housemade red pepper hummus and yogurt tzatziki.

“I like to kind of think of it almost like a 10-piece nugget plate, but it has no meat in it,” Gouchenour said.

The falafels are made entirely out of garbanzo beans and fresh parsley, and the yogurt tzatziki can be made dairy free.

One of the restaurant’s most popular items is the empanadas, which can either be filled with beef, chicken or beans. The restaurant’s lead cook is from Nicaragua, which is where she first learned to make empanadas.

“Those are phenomenal. It’s almost like a little meal pocket, but nice and crispy,” Gouchenour said.

He said that many of his customers who don’t eat meat are happy to see that they still have the option to order an empanada.

“A lot of the the bean or vegetarian people, they get really excited when they can see an empanada on the menu for them,” Gouchenour said.

Another popular item at the restaurant is the gyros, served with a housemade tzatziki sauce, and filled with vegetables and gyro meat, which is a combination of beef and lamb. Gouchenour explained that the sauce too can be served dairy free.

And on the side of the gyro, the restaurant serves house-cut french fries.

“When you order the fries, we cut the potato and throw them right in the fryer, and that gives them a nice, rich taste,” Gouchenour said.

Gouchenour called the experience of eating at his restaurant as an inviting experience.

“A lot of people really like this, sitting here just real low-key, not a lot of noise,” Gouchenour said. “They can sit and visit with each other and then sit down and just have a really delicious meal that they wouldn’t get other places.”