On a recent morning in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, Amanda Chantal Bacon was full of energy and confidence as she made the final preparations for the opening this weekend of a second location of Moon Juice, the cult cold-pressed juicery she started two years ago in Venice. Dressed all in white, she spoke softly as she stacked strawberry-rose geranium bars on plates and arranged rows of deep violet crystals on shelves. "There's some love-based relationship there," she said of the act of preparing food for strangers. I want people to drink in green juice and beauty. Chantal Bacon was not always the portrait of health she is today. She spent her childhood in New York "living at half capacity," plagued by respiratory problems for which doctors prescribed various antibiotics to little effect. One day, while shopping with her mother at Integral Yoga Natural Foods on 13th Street, an Indian man stopped her in the aisle. "He had me stick out my tongue and looked at the whites of my eyes, basically giving me an ayurvedic diagnosis," Chantal Bacon recalled. She followed his advice and her condition improved within days, an experience that forged a lasting appreciation for the connection between good food and good health. Time spent living in Argentina, Uruguay and Italy - where she'd make pilgrimages into the hills around Florence to meet the legendary cheesemongers - enhanced her appreciation for elemental, ingredient-driven cooking. In time she found her way to California, eventually cooking under her mentor, Suzanne Goin, at the celebrated L.A. restaurant Lucques. Her juice recipes have a chef's finesse. There are alchemical combinations, like watermelon, tomato and lime; and whimsical concoctions, like a fennel frond blend that somehow tastes like a morning hike in a nearby canyon. But the Silver Lake location also has a kitchen to produce an enticing new menu of raw foods. There's a vanilla chia seed pudding topped with electric-orange bee pollen that looks like a bowl of river-tumbled stones, like a molecular gastronomist's take on oatmeal. A soft shallot and herb cashew cheese with a "green juice" seed cracker transcends the idea of eating healthy. It would also pair well with a glass of syrah. And that's the point, according to Chantal Bacon, who sees her menu not as a gateway to an alternative lifestyle but as a way to balance and supplement real-life eating. "I believe in food as art and entertainment," she said. It's not about telling people what they should and shouldn't be doing. The Silver Lake shop, housed in a former escrow office in a strip mall, has been utterly transformed in homage to the midcentury modern architecture that dots the nearby hills. Chantal Bacon collaborated with the local craftsman Eric Lamers, who has restored homes by John Lautner and Richard Neutra, on the white-on-white oak palette. The designer Michael Boyd created the clean-lined, colorful cafe seating, and countless others from Chantal Bacon's circle of friends contributed elements to the juicery, which she hopes will function as a sort of clubhouse. That sense of community is why Chantal Bacon thinks of Moon Juice as a boutique that happens to sell juice rather than a cafe. "I'm stoked when people come in and don't buy anything," she said. They're just asking about ingredients, asking how to make something at home. This is the zone where people get lit up and get turned on. 2839 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; moonjuiceshop.com.