Last night my PAWS friends and I went to Cafe Gratitude. (PAWS is my club at USC that supports animals in shelters -- join us on Facebook to volunteer with us!) Nick, our grad student friend, goes there all the time and offered to drive (its far), and Kevin has never had vegan food before.
----> NOT a great place to have your first vegan meal if you're just trying it out...
We didn't realize that it would be super popular on a Friday night for dinner at 7... oops, duh. So they were only taking people with reservations and we had to wait in the back. The wait only turned out to be around 10 minutes which was no biggie, and we got to hang out near all their random merchandise..
It's much more vegan than I am.. if that makes sense? Much more health-oriented, not as casual vegan-friendly. Like, I'm not into kumbucha or detox juices or cooking things with coconut oil because of its specific heat quality. But it was an interesting place! We were seated at a long table with two other groups -- one happened to be USC kids -- and we had an adorable waitress. Everyone at the table thought the best description for her was "granola." That's the kind of place this is.
Of the USC kids, Nick happened to know one of them so we all got introduced, but the group on our other side was super annoying. We were right next to them and had to listen to one man's story about his grandmother and how his cousins are some famous man's grandchildren. It was too close for comfort -- who cares. Their food looked good though! Most of it is served in bowls with the idea being to mix it all together so we got some ideas of what we wanted from the groups on either side of us.
^^ A lot of options.
This is the Cool smoothie! It was easily my favorite thing we ordered (Kevin was clearly more skeptical). It tasted very fresh - much mintier than normal mint-chip ice cream but I was very satisfied with it. This is about the point in time where our neighbor started talking about his family line and all the stupid stories associated with it... hard to ignore when you're sitting next to the guy. P.S. Kevin was a great sport about trying all this vegan food :) Unfortunately, the smoothie was $8.50... so we split one 3 ways. Very expensive. Wow.
It's definitely a nice-looking place and it even has a cute outdoor seating place but that was full when we got there too. Our food finally arrived and it was not what we expected to see. The way their menu works: give everything a normal, familiar name, like "kelp noodles with pad thai sauce" or "curried lentils," but not make it familiar at all. Which is why I wasn't a huge fan of it, and why I wouldn't recommend it to anyone skeptical about veganism. Personally, when I was just getting used to being vegan after being an omnivore all my life, I wanted things that were already familiar but easy to make vegan, like curry, or veggie burgers, but this was very out there.
Here was mine: the Raw hawaiian pizza. To say the least: not what I expected. First off, I expected more food? But I guess it's a fancy restaurant aka they give you small portions but make them look pretty... Not about that. The pizza was fine, but I was glad it was small so that I could finish it -- I didn't like it enough to finish a large pizza. The caesar salad that came with it was mintier than any typical caesar salad, but I definitely preferred it to the pizza.
Hearty, $14
Here was Kevin's. His was kelp noodles with raw pad thai sauce and it sounded really good on the menu. All three of us considered getting that dish but after trying it, none of us really loved it. It was just generally sour, which was unexpected and not like normal pad thai? That's what I mean when I say it's average foods that taste different. I get that it was raw and that probably had a lot to do with it, but it was still unexpected. He actually did eat the whole thing too (what a champ) but it was a slow process.
Terrific, $13
And here is Nick's bowl. It was curried lentils with vegetables which sounded like the safest of our selections, but it also didn't impress me. It was a dry curry, from my couple bites. I didn't try any of the vegetables on top since we just had Nick's leftovers, but he seemed to like it. It was more filling than mine or Kevin's dishes because of the lentils (it looked like brown rice though?) at least, but I wouldn't order it if I went back there. Not anything spectacular
Humble, $14
Overall, we weren't in love with our food. Nick likes it all, he goes often, but Kevin and I were more hesitant to praise it. Not to mention that I paid $22 for dinner (that includes splitting a smoothie 3 ways).
Cafe Gratitude is located at: 639 N Larchmont Blvd and is open Sun-Thurs 8am-10pm and Fri-Sat 8am-11pm. If you go for dinner, make a reservation, it's popular!
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