What is Herbivore?  Herbivore is a vegan restaurant chain in the San Francisco Bay area.  It has three locations — 983 Valencia in the Mission, 531 Divisadero, and 2451 Shattuck in Berkeley.  It’s a great place to go if you are vegan, vegetarian, or trying to minimize your support of factory farming.  (Or — I’m going to come out and say it — if you’re an omnivore who’s trying to be healthy for an evening.)

The good things about Herbivore — the portions are large, pretty inexpensive (for San Francisco!), and there’s a great deal of choice.

The bad things about Herbivore.  First, the food is not gourmet.  There are no delicately balanced flavor.  Most of the food is pretty uninspired (though quite edible — with a few exceptions).  Herbivore gets many negative comments over at the gourmet discussion community at Chowhound.com.  Herbivore ravioli is not handmade.  The pasta sauce is from a can.  (There are some exceptions — Herbivore’s $7.95 green salad with the $2 optional “vegetables” topping is fantastic — the salad is huge, the dressing is really good, and the $2 vegetable topping is also huge and is not just vegetables but roasted vegetables which are incredible!)  Second, the waitstaff can be a little holier-than-thou.  Third, Herbivore does not make its own desserts, and the desserts are usually either a) old, or b) not available.

That being said, I really enjoy going to Herbivore.  What, you ask?  After all those criticisms?  Yes!  I really do enjoy going to Herbivore as a non-gourmet experience.  I go at least once a week, and I can usually convince my omnivore friends to come with me (especially the ones who are trying to be healthy!).  The combination of large portions and a cheap pricetag can get even the most omnivorous of people in there.  (Though one of my omnivorous foodie friends still resents the ravioli he ordered there.  Let’s just say it was uninspired.  I feel he was being a tad ambitious ordering ravioli at a non-gourmet restaurant that also had Indonesian dishes on the menu.)  As I mentioned before, the green salad with the $2 vegetables topping is fantastic. The smoothie with seasonal fruit, bananas, pomegranate juice, mint, and fresh squeezed orange juice is STUNNING ($4.25).  (It really amuses me that the Chowhound review I linked to above is titled “Just order the salad and the smoothie at Herbivore” — I swear I’d never read that review before, but I agree completely.)  Even better, if you’re in the Berkeley area, the Berkeley Herbivore has a FULL BAR with some great mixed drink specials made from seasonal fruit juice — you can eat vegan food and drink incredible mixed drinks relatively inexpensively for this area.  It’s heaven, I tell you!

Categories : restaurant review