Café Gratitude: A legend
Lucky me: I got to eat at not one, but two, very famous raw restaurants in the US. NYC’s Pure was fabulous, so I had pretty high expectations for Café Gratitude in San Francisco.
I knew that Café Gratitude was not fine dining but I heard pretty awesome reviews about their food.
The non-raw boyfriend actually convinced his client to have dinner at Café Gratitude and I was pleased that our group of omnis were open-minded enough to give raw food a chance.
As usual the pictures are awful so please bear with me. We ordered the mushroom bruschetta which was very filling and savoury on its own — the bits of dehydrated garlic and mushroom were punchy and rich (the picture was just too dark to put up here).
Over here are the spring rolls that were fresh veggies and herbs snug inside collard wraps — loved it. They were cool to the palate and tasted light, like Vietnamese rice rolls without the rice paper.
It was my first time trying kambocha and I can’t say I liked it very much. I know it’s supposed to be full of good bacteria but it tasted a bit to cider-ish for my liking.
I had the pesto pizza that was so-so. I couldn’t stop thinking it was just a bunch of veggies and a raw spread on a large flax cracker. Sometimes I think homemade raw food looks more appealing on blogs because you only have a small serving to handle and all the time in the world to work on your creation. I think raw restaurants struggle to stay afloat because it’s such a hard business — fresh food that has to be quickly prepared, keeps well, tastes good, and makes money. Now, that’s a tall order.
The non-raw boyfriend’s raw sunburger was very tasty and he couldn’t get over how filling such a small patty was.
I thought the legendary coconut banana cream pie was lovely. My own version came out like concrete blocks so it was a treat to have something soft and creamy.
The tiramisu was truly the star of the meal. Wow. There was candle on the cake because one of the waitresses was tricked by another customer that it was the non-boyfriend’s client’s birthday. You still with me? Anyway, the whole wait staff sang “Happy Birthday” to him and he was like, “It’s not my birthday.” We had a good laugh over it.
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There were only three raw joints in the San Fransciso Bay Area. Besides Café G, the other two were either closed or too far out, so we went back to….Cafe G a second time!
I was determined to have my fill of raw food before I went back to Tokyo but my second visit wasn’t so great.
The Thai coconut soup was delicious but my Asian kale salad was like a bunch of plastic strips. I only ate 10 per cent of it and waited for dessert to roll around.
The non-raw boyfriend’s raw enchiladas were awesome. They even tasted a bit cooked but it was probably dehydrator magic that made it so soft and melt-in-your-mouth. Wish I ordered that…
To make up for the lack of a yummy entrée, I got the vanilla ice cream with fruit compote for two.
We had to eat it fast because it was melting quickly but no problems there because it was mighty tasty.
If you got to the end of this review, I promise that there will be no more restaurant reviews anymore. More bentos to come soon!
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