Nicki Hamilton grew up with a father who could cook — really cook — so she was no stranger to the kitchen. But when she was struggling with some health issues several years ago she decided to experiment with his recipes, making them healthier and cleaner but still recognizable as wholesome standards.

“I was going to a ton of doctors and taking a ton of medicines but nothing was helping,” she says. “It was 2014, and that’s when I first started to think about food this way. And once I started eating better things started to change.”

At that point she was living here in the city and working in fashion marketing and as a wardrobe stylist, but her husband was transferred to Dallas with Goldman. So she launched her first restaurant concept there — Gather Kitchen — but the couple moved back to the neighborhood before she saw it open. She sold her share of it to her partner and devoted herself to a new concept here. (They now have a 4-year-old daughter and live just across the highway in Battery Park City.)

She doesn’t love the term fast-casual; she feels it implies lunch only and she sees OneSeed as a great option for dinners too — there’s even a discount for four-plus meals. (Right now you can only order online through her site here.) “We want to make people’s lives easier by being a place that caters to the family or the entire team at the office.”

She also doesn’t want her menu to be pigeon-holed into any one specific diet, but many of her ingredients and flourishes — the sauces, for instance — check a lot of boxes: paleo, Whole30, vegan.

The meals are all bowls, and while there are seven basic recipes, anything can be swapped out for anything else — I ordered the Cauli-Fried Rice and Unbound Burrito but added the crispy zucchini noodles to both. There are all sorts of toppings and six original sauces, which she makes using only olive, coconut or avocado oils — no canola or vegetable oils or thickening agents. All of her recipes are sugar-free, and even the chocolate pies, which were incredible, are sweetened with coconut sugar with a crust made from crushed nuts and dates. (Nicki makes her own chocolate.)

“I don’t want to be preachy about what we offer –it’s just good quality food — but it’s very thought out and the people who know about this sort of thing do care about it. I am a foodie, but can’t eat what I want every day because of my health issues. So I am going to put things in front of everybody that I want to eat myself.”

“The focus is around vegetables and having a colorful plate with things people recognize.”

Originally Nicki thought she would open several restaurants, but just getting this one location open made her rethink that, even covid aside. So now she is considering marketing her sauces and already has them on offer in 8-ounce containers; watch for more on that soon.

Fun fact: a one seed berry is exactly what it sounds like: a fruit with one seed, also called a drupe. Think cherry, peach, olive or avocado. Hamilton dropped the berry and OneSeed was born.

OneSeed
111 Murray | West and Greenwich
Monday to Thursday: 11am – 9pm
Friday: 11am – 7pm
Saturday: 11am – 6pm
Sunday: Closed
For order issues, text 646-691-4618
https://www.eatoneseed.com/