Once you walk in the door, you know you’ve entered another world. It looks like earth, it sounds like earth but oh, it’s not… Staffed by almost annoyingly positive people, these dudes and dude-ettes really walk their talk- the raw food way!!! While you may find yourself snapping cynical just to balance all this quirky happiness, Cafe Gratitude really is a mood lifter, if a bit heavy on the New Age mojo.

While I love going to eat here, I harbor the firm belief that raw eateries cannot realistically be compared with other restaurants, i.e.. those that have the audacity to cook their food. In my opinion, raw cuisine cannot be compared gourmet cusine because, even despite the laudatory efforts of Roxanne, it just isn’t that good…yet. So until then, raw restarants can only be judged within its own class- that of “raw food”. That being said, the raw meals here are good, with some dishes being shockingly tasty considering what is or.. isn’t in them.

Service note: happy they are…fast they are not! They are especially slow with take out, so if you are ordering to pick up, get ready to wait.

NUT ALLERGIC PEOPLE – BEWARE! Many of their dishes, and all of the cheeses, are made with lots raw, soaked organic nuts. Most of these nut heavy dishes are very hard to digest and even though they are raw, will hang out in your stomach many hours after the meal. So if you are not used to digesting large amounts of nuts, (and unless you’re a squirrel or a raw foodist -you’re not ) be wary of ordering any meal that has nuts or seeds as the main ingredient.

Another dietary note to be concisous of is that these are NOT calorie light dishes. To make up for taste and low protein content, a raw food diet tends to be heavy on nuts, salt and oil. While all the nuts, salt and oil used at Cafe Gratitude is organic and of the highest quality, there is often a lot of it. But fear not, they are ever helpful and will leave off oily dressings or suggest a low fat dish if you are watching your weight.

A big part of ‘eating raw’ is learning how to combine foods, something that unfortunately, Cafe Gratitude doesn’t do that well. Seasoned raw foodists will have to request substitutions when they order but the rest of us really won’t notice.

An unexpected surprise is their raw, cold pressed, organic expresso. Apparently, it is so good it’s almost touching the divine and has many non-raw foodists totally addicted and swinging by every week to pick up their organic caffeine fix. A little goes a long way, so get some of this super rocket fuel for your programming friends and save another soul from slumming at Starbucks.

Good dishes- Chocolate pudding- very yummy, tastes just like the real thing but richer. Faux Miso soup- also very good and warm but make sure to ask for the shitake mushrooms and sea veggies- it’s too plain without them. Live pizza- as long as you close your eyes, it tastes surprisingly like the real thing, but very filling- you won’t be able to finish it. Thai noodle- does not taste like that Thai place down the street, but is good as it’s own dish.

Bad dishes- Live sun burger- heavy and dry. Live fudge and live chocolate truffles- totally gross. My raw friends disagree with me on this, but these nasty brown nuggets remind me of those cardboard flavored carob thingys that my mom kept bringing home in the 80’s and never got eaten. They are not only cement dry but they are stuffed to bursting with dates. As well as date flavor, date sugar and eau de date essence. ( I have since found out that dates are like crack to raw food people. And no, I don’t know why.)

So do not believe the beaming dread-locked girl who tells you how great the truffles are. Run. Run away fast.

Cafe Gratitude is a fun place and eating there is definitely an experience worth having. It’s like being back in time at the height of hippy love-sixties, just repackaged for the new millenuim. For that unique expierence alone, it is worth it to go- at least once, even if the idea of raw food goes against every fine food belief you have ever had, honestly, just go, soak in the eco-friendly vibe, get a coconut smoothie, sit back and be, man…. just be! :)

Rainbow note: are you kidding?! Of course it’s gay friendly here! – It’s so gay friendly that some of your straight friends will probably want to experiment after a few hours of hanging out at Cafe Gratitude- it’s THAT liberal and accepting. :)

You probably wouldn’t think that organic, vegan, mostly raw food would be that good, but you’d be wrong. Like, big-time wrong. The food here is awesome, particularly the savory Bhutan rice breakfast thingy. I wasn’t overly thrilled with the key lime pie I had for lunch the day before (yes, I went twice in two days), because it was kind of oily. I think chocolate might be a better bet, as my mocha was muy delicious. The dish names are fun, too.