NYC's Best Small Health and Wellness Boutiques

After becoming fixated on matcha while traveling in Japan for our October issue, the DEPARTURES staff scoured New York for the top powdered green tea latte. It can be found at Chalait, a coffee shop that just relocated from the West Village to NoMad, with a second spot to come at Chelsea Market. Matcha’s unique health benefit: It may have up to five times more of the calming amino acid L-theanine than regular green tea.

File this under: why had no one ever thought of this before? Last fall, former film executive Ellie Burrows, 32, and meditation teacher Lodro Rinzler, 33, founded MNDFL, a Greenwich Village drop-in meditation studio that is modern, nonreligious, and not two hours per session. Guided practices are 30 to 45 minutes and based around themes such as breath, intention, emotions, mantras, and movement. Guests can reserve one of 22 cushions in advance online, taking away the counterproductive stress of rushing to meditation class to secure a spot. Up next: MNDFL is collaborating with the uptown Park Hyatt New York on a new spa menu that offers both private and group sessions. Frenzied Midtowners, rejoice!

Krissy Jones and Chloe Kernaghan, both 28, believe that yoga shouldn’t take itself so seriously. At the founders’ light and airy Chinatown studio, Sky Ting Yoga, expect flows to be fun. Both Jones and Kernaghan come from dance backgrounds, which they cross- pollinated with aspects of Vinyasa and Katonah yoga to create a new hybrid method focused on physical and emotional well-being. On the radar: Their new Tribeca studio is set to open this fall.

New Yorker Basu Ratnam, 29, wanted to start a healthy Indian restaurant that served food reminiscent of his Calcutta-born mother’s light and fresh cooking—not the heavy stuff that’s usually associated with the Americanized version of the country’s cuisine. As luck would have it, three years ago Ratnam was seated at a dinner next to restaurateur Phil Suarez, the longtime business partner of Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Ratnam pitched Suarez the idea for a quick and casual counter-service Indian spot. Suarez took the bait, and from there Ratnam brought on BluePrint Cleanse pioneer Irwin Simon and former Urban Outfitters CEO Glen Senk to help get it off the ground. Now at Inday, which opened last summer in NoMad, diners can build a to-go bowl with a base (shredded cauliflower, organic basmati rice, fermented organic quinoa) and a protein (turkey tikka meatball masala, grilled salmon, short rib curry) and top it off with such foodstuffs as pickled cucumbers, coconut chutney, and sprouted lentils.

Dr. Robin Berzin, 35, has brought healthcare into the 21st century at Parsley Health, her membership-based practice focused on functional medicine. It’s more of a club than a doctor’s office, located in a WeWork space in Gramercy Park. Parsley Health doctors run exhaustive blood work, genetic tests, and more to create customized self-care plans that are implemented by a health coach and tracked on a digital patient portal, which also makes supplement refills a breeze.

For both an apothecary-style vitality bar that serves herbal tonics, elixirs, and teas based on the principles of Ayurvedic, Chinese, and American folk medicine, and a remedy bar with loose teas and herbs, look no further than Naturopathica. The Chelsea home of the botanical skincare brand is the brainchild of master herbalist Barbara Close. There is even a sizable hidden spa sanctuary with six treatment rooms behind the small boutique’s back door. We recommend the Bio-Energy Lift Facial. Arrive early to your appointment—or stay afterward—to use the meditation room.

On a quiet street in the West Village, CAP Beauty is a clubhouse for all-natural beauty junkies. The store got its start as a website that sold a large but well-edited selection of 100-percent-natural products—but really high-end ones, nothing New Agey. CAP, which stands for “clean and pure,” gained so much traction that founders Kerrilynn Pamer and Cindy DiPrima, both 46, opened a brick-and-mortar location last winter.

Products range from brands with cult followings, such as May Lindstrom skincare, Rahua shampoo and conditioner, and RMS makeup, to more obscure labels that are nearly impossible to find elsewhere in the United States, like British skincare line Pai. For those interested in “transitioning” (yes, that’s what chic hippies call making the move to natural products), we recommend visiting CAP’s three-room spa for The Facial treatment with an aesthetician who will prescribe an individualized product regimen.

It’s worth noting that a year after opening, despite a nontoxic-beauty fever pitch, CAP still doesn’t have any real competitors in the city other than Credo Beauty (9 Prince St.; 917-675-6041; credobeauty.com), a popular San Francisco transplant that debuted across town in Nolita this summer.

In New York, the hot tables to score right now are at hotels. In the Financial District, The Beekman, a Thompson hotel, finally gives the neighborhood what it needed: a place to hang out, thanks to restaurateur Keith McNally’s Augustine and chef Tom Colicchio’s Fowler and Wells. Aby Rosen’s 11 Howard hotel, which opened in SoHo in early spring, has chef Daniel Rose’s buzzy French spot, Le Coucou. Midtown’s Le Parker Meridien serves an Indian prix fixe at Indian Accent, and Covina, at Gramercy Park’s Park South Hotel, has an excellent Mediterranean menu. On the Upper East Side, keep an eye out for The Lowell’s new French restaurant, Majorelle, managed by Charles Masson, formerly of La Grenouille.