THE WASHINGTON POST: I tried Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Kitchen for a week. Here’s what happened.

When you order online from Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Kitchen, it takes about 15 seconds to stumble upon a perfect encapsulation of what all the fascination is about.

“All of our bowls are gluten free. All sauces and marinades are made in-house are free from processed sugars, processed foods, gluten, dairy, corn, peanuts or preservatives. Our chicken is organic and free-range,” reads a PSA at the top of the menu, in a gentle but brisk sans serif font. “Our salmon comes from the fjords of Norway with the highest standards of quality in mind and is Best Aquaculture Practices, Global G.A.P., and ASC certified.” And it is illegal, apparently, for Goop Kitchen to capitalise the G when referring to itself: All the website’s references to the brand and the restaurant appear as “goop” and “goop kitchen.”

Luxurious yet vexing, annoying yet undeniably appealing, Goop Kitchen is an instantly recognisable extension of Paltrow’s Goop, a high-end wellness brand beloved by well-to-do health nuts and backed by common-sense nutrition plus a little bit of woo-woo science. This spring, after proliferating in Los Angeles, Goop Kitchen opened its first New York location - just 20 blocks or so from The Washington Post’s New York office, where I work.

What was it, we Post staffers wondered, that Angelenos seem to love so much about yet another fast-casual takeout chainlet, even if this one does bear the seal of a luminous, svelte actress turned guru? And would it work the same magic on the other coast? To investigate, I spent five days in early June ordering all my lunches and dinners from Goop Kitchen. Here’s what I learned.

Day 1

Dishes ordered: Curry chicken salad summer rolls, Japanese sweet potato soup, Goopfellas pizza, garlic broccoli

Calories consumed: 1,440

Total cost: $US60.35 ($87)

Goop Kitchen’s only pickup location in New York City - a second in north Brooklyn only offers delivery - is a ghost kitchen, tucked into west Midtown between a bunch of Broadway theatres and the Church of Scientology.

It shares the space with other entities named Ben’s Fast Food; Sal, Kris and Charlie’s; Counter Service; Cinnamom Bakery. But when I walk in to pick up my order on Monday afternoon, I can tell exactly who’s here to pick up from Goop Kitchen. Two other women in earthy-neutral floaty skirts, with chic flats and amorphous gold earrings, scan their phones at the entryway iPad. In my bike shorts and Eagles concert tee, I immediately feel like I missed a memo. (Maybe I should have watched Paltrow’s intensely controversial, similarly earth-toned new ad for a luxury Israeli condo an hour from war-torn Gaza a few more times.)

We all get texts that our orders are ready, and we click a link on our phones to make a locker pop open, revealing our green and white Goop Kitchen bags. It’s a fully human-free transaction, inviting all of us to imagine “GP” herself back there, tossing together our rustic-elegant lunch salads while sipping a crisp sancerre.

Goop Kitchen’s opening volley, a pair of curry chicken salad summer rolls, is a formidable one. The rolls are so neat and crunchy, the chicken salad such a vibrant golden yellow. I text my husband to rave about them. A few hours later, he places an identical order for dinner; our friend, a private chef, links up with us after work and orders the Greenest Green Salad. Which is, as promised, a frankly jarring shade of chartreuse.

It’s shocking how fresh the ingredients are, our friend says, and we all pat ourselves on the back for eating so many vegetables today - especially after spending the weekend downing french fries and sloshing beer all over the floor of a brewery while cheering for the Knicks.

It is the Goopfellas pizza, though (meat, “no-vodka sauce” and jalapeños), that really captures our hearts. You mean to tell me this pizza - spicy, salty, crispy, with a “super-secret pizza seasoning” that identifies as parmesan with dried red pepper flakes, mint and oregano - has a gluten-free crust? That this sausage is turkey? It’s better than it has any right to be. As New Yorkers, we are embarrassed to like it this much.

Day 2

Dishes ordered: Brentwood Chinese chicken salad, 7-minute egg, yuzu ginger tonic shot, miso salmon bento box

Calories consumed: 1,210

Total cost: $44.90

It’s so genius of me, I think as I unwrap my Brentwood Chinese chicken salad at my desk (unusually heavy on the plastic packaging, if we’re being honest), to be doing this particular experiment on this particular week. I’m training for a hiking trip in Canada, and this week, my workout schedule has ratcheted up. Perfect time to eat clean, to think about food as fuel.

In hindsight, I realise a few hours later as I struggle on a treadmill, there maybe was not quite enough Chinese chicken in that salad to power my athletic ambitions for the day. Still, after a shower and a replenishing salmon bento box dinner, I feel … amazing. The night is young. What’s next? And is it just me, or are my usual under-eye bags curiously absent this week?

Surely, I remind myself, everyone in New York feels amazing this week. It’s Knicks ticker-tape parade week, and 75 degrees (24C) out, and when I pick up my lunches at the Goop Kitchen on 46th, I pass cheery World Cup tourists in kilts as they swarm Times Square, grinning hugely as they buy John’s Famous Hot Dogs from a street cart. (Poor souls; they could be enjoying an unprocessed, preservative-free lunch like mine, for the cost of just four or five overpriced franks.)

But by Wednesday, the Goop Effect is obviously real.

Day 3

Dishes ordered: Summer blackened salmon bowl, organic cucumber soda, dark chocolate & sea salt brownie, Huberman’s organic turkey chili, organic turmeric spiced chicken bone broth

Calories consumed: 2,555

Total cost: $65.00

At lunchtime on Wednesday, the summer blackened salmon bowl, the first true work-lunch slop bowl of the experiment, is levitating a mile above all the other slop bowls in the area (and I consider myself well versed). This has a double portion of perfectly seasoned, not-a-moment-overcooked salmon! It has snap peas that snap audibly when bitten into! Chopt could never. The people eating Sweetgreen one table over in the lobby of my gym are my subordinates now. I’m crunching fresh, firm cucumber slices in their direction while looking down my nose like that Twilight balcony meme, and I’m only briefly annoyed when I notice that the extremely average-size brownie I’m about to eat for dessert is labelled “Serves 2.”

More important, though, is what happens next at my gym: A few hours later, I complete my second workout of the day and feel like I could still run through a wall. So I do! Just kidding. But it’s a tremendous feeling, having prepped adequately for an athletically ambitious day, and without the help of any freaky new-age protein snacks.

Dinner is Huberman’s organic turkey chili (named for the Stanford neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman, who helped develop the recipe, and who I assume is to thank for its surprisingly ample range of toppings) with a side of replenishing turmeric bone broth. Turmeric reduces inflammation, right? I ice my knees and sip broth by the spoonful, ready to believe it.

Day 4

Dishes ordered: Goop for YOU meal (quarter organic rotisserie chicken with “fancy mac-n-cheese” and Greek beets and orzo salad); “The BEST” arugula salad; GP’s Turkey Bolognese; Kollo black tea

Calories consumed: 1,505

Total cost: $57.35

After a long morning of field reporting, I finally sit down to take lunch at home, and Goop Kitchen’s quarter-chicken (the centrepiece of the “goop for You” combo) is so tender and juicy and dreamy that I sigh as I chew the first bite. It’s skin-on, with astonishingly crispy skin … would not have figured GP capable of such culinary raunch. The macaroni and cheese, just as rich and cozy, puts me down for an emergency couch nap.

At dinnertime, though, my husband asks if I want to try that new bar we’ve been eyeing, and to my mild surprise, I cave immediately.

You can only eat Paltrow-clean for so long, it turns out, before you start to crave devilled eggs from hens of indeterminate freedom and processed sugars by the coupeful. We go out for martinis and pimiento cheese dip, and I save the Bolognese and the vibrant green-and-purple salad (arugula with watermelon radishes) for Friday’s lunch.

Day 5

Dishes ordered: Goopfellas pizza, Pepperoni Potts pizza

Calories consumed: 1,565

Total cost: $49.45

The Goop Kitchen pizza was such a success earlier in the week that when a handful of friends gather at our place for a Friday night tradition we like to call the pizza bang-bang - as in, we order pies from two or more pizzerias and enjoy the variety - we enthusiastically announce that Goop Kitchen’s pies will be in the mix this evening.

As it turns out, next to real New York and Detroit-style pizzas with pork sausage and real gluten networks in their crusts, the Goop Kitchen pizzas are not as stellar as we remember. It’s a shame, I think, biting into a crust that I’d swear wasn’t so spongy the last time.

I recall Tuesday’s bento box that was as flavourful as it was adorable; Wednesday’s salmon-fuelled workout that had me wanting to high-five strangers; the hearty Bolognese that powered me through an unexpectedly hectic Friday.

I have, I realise, genuinely loved Goop Kitchen week. But then I remember the other Paltrow antics that made headlines recently: her weird ad with the currently-under-house-arrest Anna Delvey promoting Goop Kitchen’s home delivery option; her comment that she sometimes “substitutes arugula for dairy.”

Poor Gwyneth, I think. The pure majesty of cheese when it’s carameliesd onto the sturdy, oily crust of a Jet’s pizza enjoyed with friends! You can’t send an arugula to do a mozzarella’s job.

Come to think of it, that arugula salad is still in my fridge.

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