Restaurant Review Friday — Beets Living Foods Cafe
7th May, 2010 - Posted by carsi - 1 Comment
Katherine and I went over to Beets Living Foods Café today for lunch to try out something new–it’s a raw and vegan restaurant on West 5th. I had been wanting to go there for awhile, and I was excited to try out some funky foods. Because of traffic, we were not able to have our meal there, so we placed our to-go orders at the counter. All our food was packed in compostable containers, even the plastic cover for my soup, so it was good to see a restaurant being environmentally responsible. The atmosphere is also very nice–lots of sunshine and modern décor, and everyone working there seemed helpful. They were not, however, very efficient. At one point, Katherine counted 10 customers and seven employees, yet we still had to wait quite awhile for our meals.
Beyond that, the food was pretty overpriced for very small portions. After glancing at the menu and seeing the pricey options, I opted for a soup and the salad sampler. I ended up paying $13 (with tip) for three small 2 oz. samples of salads and a tiny cup of soup. I realize that having high quality fresh veggies can get expensive, but they don’t even state that the food is organic. At least at Daily Juice, another fairly expensive vegan raw restaurant in town, some of the produce is organic and the portions will leave you reasonably full.
Let’s get past the slow service and the expensive menu and get down to how the food tasted. The Curried Carrot Soup was the highlight of my little meal–it was cold, but the garlic, ginger, curry, and carrot flavors worked well together, and I wished that I had ordered more. Plus, it had a bit of a kick. My salads, however, were a bit underwhelming. The restaurant was out of the Tex Mex Cabbage, so I replaced it with the Cabbage Kraut, which tasted a bit like pickled cardboard. The little cup of Sprouted Lentil Salad was very bizarre tasting, which is a lot coming from me since I am pretty open to most foods. I’m not sure why, because I like lentils and tomatoes and a lot of the ingredients, but it just didn’t taste that great. Maybe it was the vinegar? The best of my three salads was the Kale Salad, which was simple and crunchy but lacking in pizzazz.
My little lunch
After reading some of the reviews on Yelp, I realize that I should have tried one of the full entrees, like their versions of a pizza, burger, or chalupa, or some of the desserts. Expensive though they are, they get rave reviews online. So, in sum, I will go back and give their entrees a chance, but for now, I say if you want the most raw and vegan bang for your buck, I’d stick to Daily Juice.
1 Comment
Hamburgler
May 7th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
gross.
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