Where is your favorite raw restaurant?

Aside from restaurants catering to raw foods, where do you go that you can eat raw? For example, where is your favorite salad bar? What restaurant has a breakfast buffet with a large amount of fruit?
Anyone find chain restaurants that they're happy with?

My personal favorite chain restaurant is Olive Garden. I can take anyone there, raw or not and they're pretty happy. I can get unlimited salad for $5. When they offer to put cheese on it I just say no, tell them to hold the dressing and bring me lemons instead and pick out the croutons.
Locally my favorite restaurant is called Pita Jungle. They have a "Fruit and Cheese Fantasia" dish that is fantastic. I just ask them to hold the cheese and make it all fruit. Strawberries, oranges, grapefruit, bannas, cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew, it's SO good. Usually the people I'm eating with try to steal off my plate. When I take my niece there she immediately starts chanting "fruit plate" over and over.

Down here (in Florida), they have "Sweet Tomato" resturants......all you can eat salad, soup (and some fruit!) bar. Heh..heh. It's not very private...but it makes a great compromise for the family! Ha! ha!

-Of course, I eat out anywhere I want....wherever my family or friends are...by just bringing a few apples....or not eating and just having a token glass of water! Ha! ha! My loved ones all know I'm there to see THEM - you know?

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

I got an awesome salad to go at Pure Food & Wine from NYC. Also thumbprint cookies and a turtle. All were high in fat.

I have gotten great salads at most restuarants around here with mixed greens, cucumber, tomato, green onion, grapes, pears, and then some cranberries or pistachios (probably not raw). I usually don't get dressings when out, just because I prefer my own.

[utopiankitchen.wordpress.com]

We have Sweet Tomatoes here in Phoenix too. It's a fantastic place to take kids and I love their salad bar. Not enough fruit though!

I never thought about restaurants in my area. I have one raw restaurants and several vegetarian and vegan restaurants close by!

Ecopolitan: Ecopolitan is a completely organic, vegan and raw restaurant and an ecological shop selling natural, non-toxic home and body goods.

There are a lot of co-ops and even one Organic "Farms and Farmer's Market."

There's also a group that meets, called Earth Save: Minnesota.
- EarthSave Twin Cities encourages a vegan diet for personal and planetary health out of respect and compassion for all beings with whom we share the earth. EarthSave Twin Cities is a local chapter of EarthSave International,
established in 1988 by John Robbins, celebrated author of "The Food Revolution and Diet for a New America."

Many restaurants I go to with non raw family will accommodate my special requests

I find it hard if not impossible to find raw items on Chinese restaurants' menues. They often don't even have salad :/
Japanese places have seaweed salad, but I don't think they are really raw and a lot of pickled stuff (again a non raw compromise).

Otherwise...yep anywhere where they have salad bars is fine with me!

Since I have gone raw I hate eating out! I hate that feeling of looking down the menu and just seeing tons of meat dishes with the token "vegetarian lasagna" dish-and then the only option you're left with often is a crappy iceberg salad.
Sure some places have interesting salads and adaptable dinner choices-but is it organic? Eating raw is important to me but eating organic is perhaps even more important to me.
So the only place I feel safe eating out at is a fairly new 100% raw and organic restaraunt in Orange County called 118 Degrees. It is amazing! If you are ever in the area I highly recommend it! It's in Costa Mesa.... 118degrees.com
Devri

I live in NJ. There used to be an organic restaurant about 20 minutes from where I live called Down to Earth but they closed down months before I started going raw. The other place in Toms River is also closed. I suppose there aren't that many raw people around here. I've tried to see places that serve raw food but there are none, only in NYC. I haven't traveled that far for a raw dish.

An Indian friend of mine said, in regard to salad, "No. We don't eat leaves."

They do cucumbers and tomatoes though. I've found that asking Indian friends what to order in an Indian restaurant is helpful, asking Japanese friends what to order in a Japanese restaurant is helpful, and asking Thai friends what to order in a Thai restaurant is helpful, etc. If I'm going to ask for something on the menu to be adapted or if I'm going to ask for something that is not even on the menu, it helps to know what kind of ingredients the chef/cook will typically have on hand and how aware the staff will be in regard to veganism.

Most people are flattered if you ask them for help with your navigating their culture. (Food being a part of culture.)


Lee


[www.dhamma.org]

You can ask for a salad with no dressing, just lemon slices, just about anywhere. And do like David Mason, bring some fruit in case they don't serve any.

Yeah if I'm going somewhere with SAD folk such as family, I pretty much don't depend on the meal for my main calories of the day. I either load up on fruit before or after the meal, so that at the restaurant I can be totally delighted with whatever I get. I ask the waiter if it's possible to put a plate together of a green salad with whatever raw veggies they have available. Then at least I can chew happily and be social. In my experience oftentimes the waiter and chef step up to the challenge happily and the chef impresses me with some kind of gorgeous presentation of veggies.

That being said, I have to put in a plug for Alive restaurant in San Francisco, my favorite raw restaurant. It is absolutely awesome and the chef Leland is a sweet man who enjoys chatting it up with fellow rawies.

Love,
Uma

sometimes when my family goes out to dinner, and they want to invite me, they go to soup plantation (this salad bar place) because it has all kinds of foods including a big salad bar.

it's nice of them.

There is a Thai place 5 minutes from my house that rocks my socks into another world. There are mango and papaya salads that aren't even normally made with dressings--just herbs, garlic, chilis, etc. (I'll allow myself these things in small amounts). So many of the dishes are FRESH, it's nothing to ask them to hold the meat/dressings, and there's still a world of flavors to be had!

Other places... "Green salad, no dressing, extra veggies, please."

Although, I work at a very SAD restaurant, and I will NOT eat the salad there. The food isn't always hygenically rotated, people's hands are in it all the time, there's plenty of cross-contamination with cheese... not a good thing. You really have to think about the quality of the food, what else is on the menu--if there is cheese everywhere in everything, and the majority of dishes are thrown in the microwave, ready-to-serve, I'd recommend being very wary of what goes on behind the doors in salad-production.

I've also worked at snobby, upscale places, too, and if they usually boast things like "organic greens," $3000 bottles of Rothschild wines, or some kind of culinary integrity, your order will be taken a bit more seriously. I quit one of those jobs because everyone was insane... but I'm very skeptical of other places since I've been exposed to such INCREDIBLE kitchen standards.

I did work at an Olive Garden where the salad bar was very clean and well-maintained. And every other middle-ranged (nice, somewhere between upscale and fast food) has been relatively clean and very accommodating to vegan requests.

I love raw food restaurants, back when I was transitioning to raw. They are so great aren;t they?

Tree if Life cafe is my fave.

There's a restaurant here in Minneapolis called QCumbers and they're amazing!

The largest, freshest salad bar with all raw ingredients that I've ever seen. I loved it before I went raw. Now it means even more to me. They have a very small hot bar, too. No menu. It's kind of like Old Country Buffet but it's 90% salad/raw and 10% cooked foods. Very reasonable, too.

I'm a big fan of Souper Salad too. I don't know if that's everywhere, but here in Phoenix they're all over. They have a great salad bar and plenty of fruit. I would go to the breakfast buffet at JB's because they have tons of fruit but I crave all the other bad for me stuff they have there. The smell of cinnamon rolls is just too much for me.
I read Steve Pavlina's 30 days raw blog and he said Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas has an awesome breakfast buffet with tons of fruit. The pictures he took made me HUNGRY. My parents live up there and they never know what to feed me, so I think next time I go to visit we will go there for breakfast.

I am fortuate enough to have family that loves and supports my live food venture. I requested for my Mother's day outing to go to "118 Degrees". Can I tell you the place is AWESOME! My daughter and son-in-law, not yet raw, but I'm working on it-just loved it. I have been to a few raw food restaurants and so far this one is tops. I'm working my way to the rest of them. I'm going to Evolution and Juliano's next month while on leave. If you get to Southern California be sure to visit the OC-your taste buds will love you for it. You won't regret it. And, of course while you are there spend some quality time on the beaches.

Namaste!