Bay Naturals: where good cooking leads to healthy eating

This is the fourth in a series about the faces behind beloved eateries.

Angela Holmes knows Southerners stand on grub ground fertilized with diverse foods fried, gravy-laded, sweetened and barbecued.

She is the blood of Horry County natives who have made countless biscuits from scratch, raised numerous chickens and fried them, and operated a country-cooking buffet restaurant for more than 25 years.

However, as Southern as she is, her culinary and cultural soul has been yearning and learning how to eat healthier and cleaner since 1993.

“My family was in (the) restaurant business, The Farmer’s Daughter,’’ said Holmes, 49, as she sat in the eatery section of her Myrtle Beach business. “I went from country cooking and buffet to health food. It was a major shift.”

Holmes is the owner and operator of Bay Naturals Healthy Market & Kitchen, with a location in Northwood Plaza in Myrtle Beach and another at North Myrtle Beach’s Gator Hole Plaza. Each place is a realization of Shangri-La for those wanting products and food not marred by preservatives, additives, chemicals, genetically modified organisms, radiation and other undesirables souls don’t want in their bodies.

“People like us because the food we have is so darn good,” said Clay Nance, 49, who has been employed at Bay Naturals for six years.

For newbies, a trip to Bay Naturals is akin to embarking on a treasure hunt in anticipation of fresh flavors and tasty revelations. For seasoned healthy herbivores, omnivores and carnivores, Bay Naturals is apple pie a la mode — a sweet treat that never fails, except the pie is vegan and the ice cream is diary-free.

“I have always been into eating really healthy and super clean,” said Anna-Marie Swad, a customer and former Bay Naturals employee for nearly two years. “I really care about my body, and what I eat affects the way I feel mentally, physically and emotionally. Bay Naturals has healthy vegetarian and vegan options that are delicious.”

Swad has deep olive skin, bright, brown eyes, and luminescent, flawless skin, the latter especially giving evidence to her devotion to her diet. She comes to Bay Naturals at Northwood Plaza often, and on this day, she has her baby boy, Theodore, in tow. As his mom chatted, he enjoyed slurping an organic smoothie called “Full of Fruit,’’ with frozen bananas, strawberries, pineapple and blueberries.

“I love the breakfast burrito,” Swad said. “I get it with sautéed kale added. I also loved all the baked goods, like their coconut lime cupcakes.”

Bay Naturals is open for breakfast, lunch, Sunday brunch and dinner, with prices no higher than $11.95 for meals.

Swad, a 30-year-old Myrtle Beach resident, is among the former employees who were floored by the flavors she discovered and enjoyed while baking and cooking in Bay Naturals’ kitchens.

Vitore Molla, 39, also is one of them. She worked at Bay Naturals for nearly six years and liked working and learning beside Holmes, who was hands-on with food preparation and with assisting her employees.

While working there, Molla did lots of baking.

Folks accustomed to butter, eggs and other dairy products are stunned by how delightful and moist vegan sweets can be.

Carnivores are surprised because they actually love the meatless barbecue vegan wrap, the smoked potato burrito, the hearty lentil soup and other scrumptious vegetarian and vegan stuff.

Yet, carnivores are pleased there also are meat choices. Organic, free-range chicken is featured on the menu as sausage, chicken salad and curried chicken salad, and as other eats. A wild-sockeye salmon burger is a popular selection, and it joins organic turkey that occasionally makes guest appearances at breakfast, lunch and dinner, including as turkey gumbo.

These good-for-you and good-to-you goodies take more muscle than Holmes ever mustered preparing country cooking.

“There is a lot of labor that goes into what we do,” Holmes said. “We are chopping vegetables all day long. You would not believe the amount of potatoes and celery we chop up back there.”

This tiny kingdom of healthy eating was started in the early 1990s after Holmes connected with a pal at a North Myrtle Beach natural food co-op.

Originally, she helped out on the sidelines before eventually becoming fully involved. She credits members of the Meher Spiritual Center, located next to Briarcliffe Acres, for creating the initial health food store and supporting it in its beginning stages.

“That is when the root of the whole store came in,” Holmes said. “Without the center, it wouldn’t have happened.”

They were key in educating the community about natural food in a time when information wasn’t easily culled from Google and other search engines, Holmes said.

Although she was in the country cooking business with her family, she said the change from soul food to clean food was logical.

“It just made complete sense,” Holmes said. “Eating clean, eating pesticide-free fruit and nitrate-free and hormone-free meat made complete sense. But back in the early 1990s, it seemed like this was an underground movement, where people sought this information out because it wasn’t out here for everybody to see and embrace like it is today. With the internet, everybody learned all this information and knowledge at their fingertips. Back then, it was word of mouth.”

Some family and friends were a bit resistant to her newfound food views at first, but they were convinced in time and undeniable taste.

Their tongues are among those still wagging about the appetizing ways that are healthy and make your mouth happy.

Customers can choose to dine outside or eat at the counter or the tables located in the kitchen area, where a huge blackboard has the specials of the day highlighted in chalk. To get to the kitchen, they walk past neat, organized aisles filled to capacity with products and food items you’d find in a grocery store, and many you would not.

An array of vegan perishables and non-perishables, vitamins, spices, candies, cookies, household supplies, water, toothpaste and various protein powders are among the myriad of merchandise available.

Reggie Sanders, a Florence native and Myrtle Beach resident who is a retired Major League Baseball player, has been a Bay Naturals regular since 2009. He loves the place, and like most, he lingers in the eatery area. He digs Holmes style because she does her homework by researching what products can be beneficial to her customers to help them live healthier. He is also a huge fan of the fare that comes from the kitchen.

“The kitchen has fresh food every day,” Sanders said. “You can’t get better quality nowhere. Nowhere.”

Contact Johanna D. Wilson at JohannasCarolinaCharacters@gmail.com or to suggest subjects for an upcoming column.

This story was originally published July 31, 2016 at 10:58 AM with the headline "Bay Naturals: where good cooking leads to healthy eating."