Posts filed under ‘Restaurant Review’
Our Favorite Restaurants
I was inspired today by Kevin and Annmarie’s list of their top 9 favorite restaurants and I thought it was time for me to bring you a list of OUR favorite restaurants!
We really love food. And we really love for other people to cook for us…especially after a long day of driving! When we’re coming into a new area and we don’t know where to go, we almost always rely on the Yelp! iPhone app. The reviews are usually quite accurate…love it.
Here is our list of top 10 restaurants around the country (in no particular order) that we have enjoyed eating at. Most of them are vegetarian, vegan, and/or raw. I have put a * by the restaurants that are not vegetarian. I won’t go into specific details for each one, but each of them use super fresh/local ingredients and are very creative with their dishes.
Kalachandjis – Dallas, TX
Daily Juice – Austin, TX
Govinda’s – Eugene, OR
Red Avocado – Iowa City, IA
Cafe Gratitude – San Francisco, CA
The Grass Root – Tampa, FL
Brasserie Ten Ten* – Boulder, CO
Emerson Grill* – Bozeman, MT
Whole Foods Market Salad Bar – Everywhere USA
The Sprout – Mount Pleasant, SC
And now for our top 10 favorite Thai restaurants! We are Thai food fanatics…I would guess that we’ve been to over 100 Thai restaurants around the country in the past 3 years. These are the places that stand out for us as being amazing at that point in time. 🙂
Titaya’s Thai – Austin, TX
Thai Flavors – Des Moines, IA
Khow Thai – Boulder, CO
Tum Rup Thai -Minneapolis, MN
Joy’s Pattaya Thai – Richfield, MN
Marnee’s Thai – San Francisco, CA
Lotus of Siam – Las Vegas, NV
Malee’s on Main – Scottsdale, AZ
Thai Spice – Omaha, NE
Basil Thai Restaurant – Charleston, SC
What is the name of your favorite restaurant right now (and why)?
Have you been to any of the places we listed?
Mary’s Secret Garden – Ventura, CA
This is possibly the yummiest veggie burger ever made. All veggie, all VEGAN! Even the cheese. Matt devoured this at Mary’s Secret Garden in Ventura, CA, a sweet little vegan and raw cafe near the beaches in Ventura. I ordered some fresh spring rolls and a pineapple & date smoothie, but forgot to take photos. Oops! I ate them too fast.
The cafe featured all vegan food…with much of that being raw vegan. They had such a great mix of food…and they were super sweet with Bella, making her a special noodle dish upon her request. I had read rave reviews about this place, but we almost left town without checking it out. I’m so glad we didn’t…now I wish we would have been there longer so I could go every day. Yum.
A cute little outdoor patio…looking over the park across the street.
It was hoppin’ at lunch time.
A quaint little corner.
Terra Bella Cafe
L.A. is well-known as one of the premiere raw food “hot spots”…and while we were there in May, I wanted to experience all the raw goodness that I could. I had picked up the Spring ’08 copy of “Get Fresh“…a raw magazine that just happened to have an article titled “Raw Guide to L.A.”. Sweet! It detailed all the raw restaurants in the city and surrounding areas. There was no way we could make it to them all, but we picked a few that looked yummy and off we went.
The first restaurant we tried out was Terra Bella Cafe. It’s a quaint little spot just a short walk from the beach…with a front patio full of flowers and greens and a warm interior decor.
The first thing I noticed here was the staff and how friendly they were. We were immediately greeted as “friends”…and they took a special interest in Bella … really making her feel like part of it all. The food here was TRULY amazing. It really was. I’ve been to a lot of raw restaurants, and most of the time, they all have the same taste profiles. But this one was different. The thai coconut soup…oh my. The burger…wow. The caramel roll…loving it.
We also had the chance to meet Melissa and her new head chef, as they were sitting at the bar talking while we were in there. She is a beautiful woman who clearly knows how to run a restaurant. I would go back again in a heartbeat! See all the photos here.
(Side note: Melissa is one of the executive chefs at the Raw Spirit Festival this year!)
Happy Foody 