when one of my vegetarian friends came to town, i decided to take her here after reading some good reviews. i’m glad i did because the food was suprisingly good and hefty in portion size (for me at least, i’m not a big eater).

it’s a trendy-chic, borderline cafe style ambience, which makes it a nice place to go w/friends or family. it’s not too fancy, but not too casual…just right.

i’ve been to chicago diner too, and i think i prefer karyn’s.

The decor at Karyn’s is very cute. It’s sort of like a semi-fancy cafe with tons of bamboo all over. It feels like the healthy and vegetarian place.

The menu uses some promising words when describing the pseudo-meat so I was pretty excited to put it to the test by going for the Slab of Ribs. I have to say that I was definitely impressed – the texture was the closest to meat than any other fake meat I’ve had but still not quite meat. All the other dishes were pretty good, but the dessert was by far the best. The only issue I had was with our sorta flaky server. She was a bit slow and absent and forgot one of our drink orders.

If I’m ever in the mood of vegetarian again, I’ll come back here in a heart beat, but I think I still stand by my vegetarian strategy of not ordering fake meat dishes….it’s less confusing for my stomach :)

Karyn’s is a mini-chain(?) of cafe/restaurants, beauty products, and well-being center with various health programs. Karyn’s Cooked, a restaurant, is just one entity of her “holistic health” program. I’ve been here a few months ago to entertain a vegetarian friend of mine and it was great!

The restaurant itself is the size of a small cafe – very cute/comfy. We went for a Sunday brunch and although the portions appeared smaller than most places, it was surprisingly satisfying. The cafe style of the place made it so leisurely that we spent 3+ hours there! They politely gave us the check in the end (cuz of other customers in line) but we were thrown off by the amount of time that had gone by! Very homey indeed. I definitely wanna come back to try the regular menu vs. the brunch menu.

we all know the vegan punks with multiple piercings. and we love them.
but what if you’re the kind of vegan donald trump wishes he could afford? then you head over to karyn’s, where the decor is just pretentious enough. and i’ve watched enough “top chef” to know that the dishes are beautifully presented.
a shout-out to the friendly waitstaff — especially that cute guy who remembers me and my life story every time i come in.