A Beachy Mango-Basil Smoothie

featuring the sleeper ingredient your smoothies need.

Before we get into smoothie land, I wanted to let you know that I’m having a big ceramics sale, on my Instagram stories, next Monday at 12 PM EST. (If you didn’t know: I also make ceramics!) Lots of mugs, one-offs, experiments, FUN things. First come first served, come on by.

There’s a place called Brothers on the Rockaway boardwalk that I’d known about for years but only visited for the first time this summer. It’s primarily a coffee-and-smoothie outfit, surfing-coded and soundtracked by music that sounds like the saltwater offspring of Mort Garson’s Plantasia. TAKE IT EASY DUDE, a bumper sticker on display reads, quoting Terence McKenna, BUT TAKE IT!

Today I am not here to push shrooms on you but instead a smoothie recipe or two, and whatever supplements you crumble in there is your business. The smoothie menu at Brothers is thoughtful but concise, far more exciting that your traditional Whole Foods fare: there’s a chocolate-cherry number i call the horny smoothie because it has maca in it, there’s a spin on the standard banana-nut rubric with some good burly chai whizzed in. And then there’s my favorite, a smoothie with mango and basil and cashews that tastes like the godly act of quenching a thirst built from sun and sand and seawater repeatedly crashing over your face. Easy to say a mango tastes like sunshine, in part because of its tropical provenance but also because of its ability to make your taste buds feel bathed in juicy light. Somehow, the addition of basil only amplifies that effect—like sticking out your tongue and placing it beneath a happy lamp, full blast.