Restaurant Review: Annapurna's World Vegetarian Café

Balancing act

By: Laurel Gladden
Published online: Friday, October 14, 2011
Appeared in: Pasateimpo

A strip mall behind a Carl’s Jr., near a shop selling beef jerky, might be one of the last places you’d think to look for a vegetarian restaurant. Yet that’s where Annapurna’s World Vegetarian Café — formerly nestled in Casa Solana — has taken up residence since a fire shut its doors last year.

You might amble across the parking lot beside a guy who’s headed into a neighboring taqueria with windows emblazoned with colorful advertisements for carnitas and other meat-centric dishes. You might think for a moment that you’d rather have tacos for lunch. Resist, if you can. You’ll find that Annapurna’s “healing cuisine” has virtues of its own.

Much of the restaurant’s wide-ranging menu — which includes muffins, scones, breakfast burritos, traditional Indian dishes, salads, sandwiches, stir-fries, pasta, pizza, and desserts — focuses on ayurvedic cuisine, nutritious food designed to balance your constitution. Many dishes are not only vegetarian but vegan; baked goods are gluten- free; and cheese, the only animal-based ingredient on the menu, is made without rennet. The kitchen never uses honey, MSG, peanuts, eggs, or microwaves.

The modestly decorated dining room is open and airy, and a bank of windows provides a dramatic mountain view. Colorful fabric woven through the ceiling beams lends cheerful color and softness to the somewhat- industrial space. Chatter is generally quiet, although the Indian music, sometimes cranked too high, can grate after a while.

The staff is serene, soft-spoken, and polite. Service is a typical counter-ordering affair: make your decisions and pay at the register, take a number to your table, and wait for your food to arrive. Though it’s not requested, bussing your own table would probably do your karma some good. If you’re new to veganism or ayurveda, don’t fret. Though Annapurna’s seasonings are strong and distinctive, nothing is especially spicy — even the green chile has only a mellow warmth. The menu includes a glossary to help differentiate between, say, dosa, chapati, and puri. Or you can stick to more familiar selections, like a veggie burger, portobello sandwich, or pizza.

Annapurna’s menu mentions that ayurvedic cooking aims to incorporate “six tastes in every meal” — sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astringent, and pungent. The mataar paneer, featured in the generous North Indian Sampler Plate, exemplifies that approach. The rich dish of tomatoes, peas, and globes of house-made cheese is intensely tangy, mildly creamy, and well seasoned. The saag paneer — puréed spinach studded with cheese — had a gorgeous emerald hue but a watery-pulpy consistency, and it begged for sweetness, sourness, and most of all, salt. The Malaysian stir-fry, a clean, virtuous-seeming jumble of vegetables and tofu, was surprisingly bland.

Often described as the “ultimate ayurvedic dish,” kitchari is a blend of rice, mung beans, and vegetables. Fans claim it can purify digestion and cleanse your body of toxins. I’m no nutritionist, but I do know thiswarm, roundly seasoned dish is both satisfying and addictively delicious.

Three vegetable concoctions are offered daily. The hearty, earthy blend of black-eyed peas and greens is the sort of dish that could make anyone eager to eat his or her vegetables. In another day’s Green Plate Special, sautéed greens and aromatically seasoned sweet potatoes were wrapped in a tawny chapati, but the salsa and dollop of guacamole was a confusing leap across the culinary map.

The heaping tofu scramble is a protein-rich way to start your day, though it may be too exotically seasoned to be everyone’s morning meal of choice. The breakfast burrito is stuffed with tofu, potatoes, and cheddar cheese — an unusually sharp and salty choice to accompany those aromatic spices. The chai balances spice, black-tea tannins, and milkiness, but it’s a tad sweet for my taste.

Annapurna’s deserves credit for attempting gluten-free vegan baked goods, even if some succeed more than others. The pleasantly sweet zucchini-cranberry-walnut bread wasn’t half bad, though it lacked cohesion and had a chalky mouthfeel. The oversized strawberry-ginger muffin had a nice gingery burn but an off-putting excessive oiliness. The focaccia is a tiny bit tough, though it had a nice crumb, a nutty grain flavor, and a delicate herbal hit from a sprinkling of rosemary.

Eating food strictly for fun has its satisfactions. But Annapurna’s reminds you that food also nourishes you and keeps you healthy. In other words, you are what you eat, as the old saying goes. Wouldn’t you prefer to picture yourself — most days, anyway — as a bunch of lovely veggies rather than a greasy carnitas taco?