Weekend grub: Refuel smoothies are our favourite in Karachi yet

Being on a health run in Karachi may have gotten easier in recent times but it's still a struggle.

Some of us have hearty appetites and it's already difficult to avoid bad carbs and what not. Add to that the fact that most health food is neither filling nor cheap, and our struggle intensifies.

When we heard of Refuel's variety of smoothies and juices, we wanted to find out if it could satisfy the cravings of the health conscious. A good smoothie is supposed to be a meal replacement.

Will Refuel provide a substitute for a meal that's delicious and pocket-friendly? Lets have a look.

Where to go

Refuel Juice Bar has a small premises at Rahat commercial. You'll find it on main Khayaban-e-Rahat, close to Mr Burger outlet.

They also have a delivery option but if you aren't in the Rahat area, you will have to order through the Foodpanda app.

When to go

Refuel is open from 8am-1am.

What to order

We were overwhelmed by the Refuel's range of juices and smoothies, so we decided to check out both.

The owners recommended Refuel's bestseller, the Unbeatable. This is a juice with pineapple, lemon, carrot, orange and apple.

What was impressive was that we could taste every single ingredient without any one flavour overpowering the rest. And that's a big deal when a juice contains carrots, as carrots easily overpower other ingredients.

We had to know what Refuel does with seasonal fruits so we opted for the falsa juice, which is not mentioned on the menu.

Refuel's falsa juice is one of the best we've had. If you had seen our faces right after the first sip you'd know we were blown away by how smooth it was. Usually falsa juice is grainy and there's a lot of texture but this bad boy was smooooth. And we discovered why: Refuel's trick is adding sugarcane juice instead of refined sugar to sweeten the juice. Oh yeah, there's no additional sugar in any of the drinks.

Our main focus were the smoothies, which Refuel has grouped according to their base blends like yogurt, coconut water and even mango juice. All fresh!

We started our smoothie tastings with Berry-licious (a blend of blackberry, strawberry, pineapple, guava, honey) to satisfy our weakness for berry mixes.

This is a smoothie from the 'choose your base' category (we chose coconut water). We were surprised at how thick this smoothie was and we loved the consistency. The tang of the berries and sweet of the pineapple was already a hit combination but that hint of guava was a great addition to the mix.

With the crazy heat these days we figured we should give Royal Mint a shot.

One sip of this yogurt based smoothie (blended with orange, pineapple, guava, honey and lots of mint) and we predict this will be a hit for the summer. The mint is strong and the fruits here make it a fave for the lover of tropical flavours. However, we do wish the mint was a little more finely blended in the smoothie as it affected the texture of the drink.

We were recommended to try Good Vibration and the name is so positive, we thought why not? Good Vibrations has guava, mint, banana, lemon in a base of mango juice.

This one had us surprised that Refuel doesn't add sugar in their smoothies because it was so sweet! Oddly enough it had a very bubblegummy taste and the banana made this a thick shake too. We had someone who was not a fan of bananas in smoothies but even they didn't mind it.

Refuel definitely has some interesting blends, but it also have some products unique to them. They next served us one of their 'twin layered' smoothie called the Soulmate — a product that makes their juice bar stand out from the rest.

The Soulmate isn't a meal. It's two meals... maybe one for those who eat a lot, but our strongest contender was worn out by it, so take a guess. This drink is attractive in its presentation as well! Two different smoothies perfectly divided and layered for the best Instagram picture. The bottom was a sweet tropical smoothie made with mango juice and the top was a zesty blackberry based concoction, And the two together made us understand why this is called the soulmate.

Damage on the pocket

For the products Refuel juice bar has to offer, they are actually pretty good for the price. They have three standard prices; Rs230 for small, Rs290 for medium and Rs350 for large for all their blends.They also offer basic juices with prices varying from Rs100-Rs400. Worth a shot if you ask us!