Manna Grocery & Deli

A must for the healthy eater in Tuscaloosa. This place is great place for lunch and has a good assortment of healthy alternatives.

This place is SO cute, everyone who works here is nice and informative. I have not been here for a couple of years, but in college I would come here all the time and get my health nut fix! If you need a break from fried foods and alcohol, this is the place to go!

This restaurant is mine and my husband’s favorite lunch spot in T-​town. The deli has homemade organic daily specials that they will actually run out of if you don’t get there early enough! On Fridays they have the Soulful Salmon which is amazing! The food is delicious and wholesome. Honestly, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve tried at Manna. They have a nice selection of salads, sandwiches, and other items on the menu. Each day they offer different homemade soups as well! They have wonderful tea and lemonade. The desserts are great, especially when they have the chocolate almond tofu pie! The staff is friendly as well. When you’re done eating, it’s fun to shop in the store.

I could eat here everyday. I love the soulful salmon, African peanut soup, and the butternut squash ravioli. There sweet tea is the best in town! Great atmosphere!

Manna is one of Tuscaloosa’s pride and joy establishments. Family owned and operated with employees who truly love to serve their customers and are well knowledge.
Their deli is a favorite to many and unite a diverse group of great people in their dining area.

This store is like a condensed whole foods. They sell Vega brand energy bars, which is great. The prices are competitive to what a whole foods or whole market would charge.

So many times at healthy or vegetarian restaurants, the food sounds, and maybe even looks, good – but ends up tasting somewhere between bland and just plain bad. This is not the case at Manna. I often order to go during lunch and have never been disappointed – always full of yummy flavor! Today I got the black bean burger with sliced avocado – lovely. And to top it off the people working are friendly.

I’m truly appreciative of this store, especially since it’s the only health foods store in Tuscaloosa. It annoys me, though, that there are no exclusively vegan choices in the deli. I always have to place an intricate order AND pay extra to replace ingredients, even though I’m trading out one for the other, etc. It can really get costly.
It’s also disappointing that they don’t really cater to vegans, but instead to more a more marketable crowd, like gluten free people, etc. I still have hope for this store and I’ll continue to buy from them, because it looks like they’ve been adding some stuff, which is good. I’m just not very impressed.

How underwhelming. My brother brought my father and me here because of the reviews of the salmon. They had the salmon croquettes and I had the turkey panini. At $ 10/​person for lunch, I’d much rather hit up the Jason’s Deli next door. Overall a big disappointment.

In Tuscaloosa once a month for classes. Stopped in for lunch, got a veggie sandwich and vegetarian black bean soup.

Terrible portion size for $ 9 lunch. Bad chicken salad. My friend had a sandwich the size of a postage stamp. Hopefully this isn’t the norm.

Health store on the outside, delicious deli on the inside. If the all-​natural, herbal, and vegan labeling does not repel you by the time you walk through the door, the deli located in the back hosts a delightful selection of sandwiches, salads, soups, and fresh entrees. You feel like everything about this place is too healthy for you, but their deli makes you realize healthy can be tasty too.
I had the fig, chicken, and caramelized onion panini. It’s a small $ 7 sandwich that despite its itty bitty size, you got a sufficient amount of food. However, you should top that off with one of their soups because their soups make you feel even more nutritious and rejuvenated than tea.

I probably dine hear once or twice a year. The food is good, but a bit pricey. I usually order either the special of the day, or a panini. It’s not mind blowingly awesome, but it is different from other restaurants in the area. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad meal, but I have never had a great one either.

I love Manna! Friendly staff and fresh products. I admittedly do not go here very, very often but stopping in is never a disappointment. I especially love that they carry unsweetened dried coconut. I’ve never understood why the majority of grocery stores don’t. Manna also has a really neat bulk foods bar that I kind of like just to stop in and buy a handful of brazil nuts or something for a snack.

If you want something tasty but healthy, I suggest you try the Manna Grocery Deli. They are a great place for a quick lunch that breaks out of the burger rut. I haven’t found anything to beat their Spinach Artichoke personal pizza for lunch.

This is my favorite place to eat in Tuscaloosa. Simple yet tasty food.

This is a freaking fantastic store. I stopped in with the intention of ordering something for lunch only, but then I started walking around and left with two bags.
The front part has the grocery side and the back is the café. What I was really happy with is that they have items that I haven’t been able to find in other stores. There are some natural sweeteners that I have been ordering online because nobody has them, but yay I found them here. No more ordering online and paying shipping and waiting for delivery.
They also carry Bragg Liquid Aminos, which I haven’t been able to find anywhere.
I have been having to go to Vitamin Shoppe to get my gum and mints, and the selection at VS is very minimal… but this place has more choices. So that’s another bonus.
They have several food stuffs from local businesses. I got a jar of pecan brittle made by PieLab in Greensboro, which by the way is amazing. And I don’t even like pecans. For those of you who have not heard of PieLab, here is an article from NY Times.
I also bought a jar locally made tomato goat cheese.
For lunch I ordered the veggie and goat cheese panini, which was pretty dadgum delicious. The veggies were spinach, tomatoes, peppers, onions and mushrooms. The cheese spread was perfect and the grill gave the sandwich just the right amount of crunch.
This place will definitely become a frequent stop for me.

A friend from Tuscaloosa took me here — it’s her fave lunch spot since she’s got 3 kids to watch and feed (and they’re a very kid friendly restaurant/​grocery).
I was happy to try my first crayfish étouffée. It’s hard for me to say how it’s supposed to taste, but compared to the one I had in New Orleans a few weeks later I’d say I preferred this one.
No skimping on seafood, and a nice dollop of grits in the middle. The étouffée was a perfect blend of spices, broth and tomatoiness.
Later, I bought and tried various Kombuchas on my road trip to Georgia. I saw they had tons of health food selections for a tiny store.

Local support keeps me returning to Manna, a grocery/​restaurant that’s stayed afloat based, I surmise, on loyalty. There are disappointments to be had: the selection, victim to demand, is small but workable; your favorite item may up and disappear (even though a few friends and I continued to buy seitan, they took it off the shelves); the café sometimes forgets its purpose and doesn’t cater to veg/​vegan/​organic folk. My suggestion would be to find the items you can’t get anywhere else in Tuscaloosa, or offered by Manna at a reasonable price, patronize, and keep any gripes to a minimum. These guys are fighting an uphill battle (mainly the hill that leads to Mountain Brook’s Whole Foods).

After meal upon meal of fried green tomatoes and fried catfish a girl really needs a little tempeh and carob balls to try to even stuff out a bit and Manna is the spot — pretty much the only spot — here in Tuscaloosa to get this kind of (hippie, leftist, pinko) healthy stuff.
It’s a relatively small health food grocery store, nothing like a big Publix or Whole Foods or anything, and they have an excellent café in back. Often the deli has lunch specials with vegan and vegetarian takes on Southern classics, like veggie fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and banana pudding — That’s a good day! Also their pizzas on pitas are very good.
They pretty much saved me by ordering cases of some of my favorite organic-​y type foods for me while I was there, so that the homesickness wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
Even with their best efforts to steer me in the right and healthier direction, I still left Alabama with high cholesterol. Jeez, just think of how bad it would have been without Manna!