The Bottom Line
Pros
- Inventive, tasty vegan food
Cons
- Occasionally they run out of certain ingedients: be open to making substitutions
Description
- 2409 South Lyndale Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55405. - Telephone 612-874-7336
- Free parking in the lot behind the restaurant, and on-street parking on the blocks east of Lyndale Avenue.
Guide Review - Ecopolitan Restaurant
Let me disclose a few things upfront: I'm not a vegan. Or even a vegetarian. And generally I cook what I eat.Ecopolitan restaurant serves only organic, vegan, raw food. Raw food is often claimed to have many health benefits, mainly because cooking is supposed to destroy many nutrients in the food. I'm still someone who uses my oven, but I'm a supporter of organic food, and nosy too. So any restaurant that has generated as much buzz as Ecopolitan is one that has to be tried.
The knee-jerk reaction to vegan, raw food is that it's going to be boring. At Ecopolitan, it's not. It's actually more inventive, tasty and interesting than most meat-serving, cooking, restaurants' food. For instance, the Strawberry Marinara. Zucchini cut into pretty spiral "noodles" on a bed of baby spinach, topped with sun-dried tomato sauce, olives, walnuts and strawberries. The plate has lovely colors with the bright green leaves under fresh red strawberries, and tastes - contrary to anything you might think about mixing strawberries and olives - wonderful.
The Spicy Thai Noodles are another hit, and the "Rawvioli", cashew nut "cheese" stuffed into radish hearts in a ginger sauce is bizarre but tastes beautiful. Their smoothies are all delicious, and there's a range of cakes and pies. Uncooked cakes seem as impossible as rocket science but they are as good as everything else on the menu.
Since they use local foods and buy in small quantities, sometimes they run out of certain ingredients, or some may be unavailable. The servers are very helpful about suggesting substitutions.
As well as the restaurant/cafe, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, the Ecopolitan building also has a store, spa, sauna, oxygen bar and art gallery, so allow a little extra time to browse the other products and services Ecopolitan offers, or get some (uncooked) cookies to go.
