Vegan MoFo Day 3: Restaurant Review: Acorn

When I first heard about Acorn opening up in Vancouver I was super excited. There are not many vegetarian fine dining restaurants in Vancouver so whenever something a little nicer than the Naam opens up I'm super excited. It's great to have a nicer spot for a celebration dinner or a date perhaps. 

Acorn has vegetarian, vegan, raw, and gluten free dishes! BOOM. Speaking my language. They mark every item on the menu with codes to indicate if there are vegan, raw or gluten free options but all are vegetarian. Whenever I go to a restaurant where I can eat everything or almost everything on the menu its super hard to choose. LOL It's like Christmas!  Thankfully I went with 3 girlfriends, one of whom is vegan and 2 that are semi-vegetarian. So we all agreed to order different items and share. MY FAVE! I love trying as many items as I can off a new menu. So here goes it:

Ladies night!

Apple

I didn't try these delicious looking balls (shocking I know) but they have cheese inside. I know I know, its VEGAN month of food, but I had to show the picture. They looked wonderful and the plating is beautiful. And the comments from my non-vegan friends were awesome. 

Artichoke

This was tasty. Kind of like a hummus but with artichokes. It does not come with enough croustini's but they will give you extra. The pate was light but flavourful. 

Beet

In terms of plating, this one is my fave! Looks SO gorgeous. I love the red and yellow contrasting colours. I love nut cheese so the addition of macadamia nut cheese is to die for, along with an odd pairing with grapefruit sorel was WONDERFUL! I loved that. I love combining ingredients that are unusual. It worked very well in this dish and the cider glaze was like icing on the cake.

Zucchini

Again, plating in this place is just fantastic! Every dish is so beautiful. The colours are vibrant and contrasting to make them pleasing to the eye. I quite enjoyed this dish as well. The sauce was a cashew rose sauce which really complimented the zucchini noodles. It was rich enough to add a lot of flavour but not so much that it overpowers everything else. I'm not a fan of olives, but not a big deal.

The special (potato salad)

I liked the use of the different types of potatoes in this dish. It also had avocado which I love. Super colourful and a nice spin on a potato salad. It wasn't homely which is what I think of potato salad. Its usually all mayo and egg but this was nothing like that. It was good but not a dish that stood out for me.

Mushroom

This was my fave entree of the night. When I saw king oyster mushrooms on the menu, it didn't even matter what else was with the dish. I LOVE oyster mushrooms and they are not utilized enough. It says spelt on the menu but mine was done with quinoa. The peppercorn sauce was SO yummy!!! I didn't waste one drop. lol It was powerful and complimented everything else. Freaking fantastic.

Rhubarb

My first choice for dessert was obviously chocolate and peanut cuz that is one of the best combo's ever but I still wanted to try another dessert. The other vegan option was the rhubarb so my friend Marina and I shared both. And to my surprise, the rhubarb was my fave. I didn't even think I liked rhubarb but apparently I do. The sorbet and rhubarb combo was so satisfying. The tartness of the sorbet went amazingly well with the rhubarb. I ate it all. lol

Peanut

This was obviously good but not awesome. Basically anything with chocolate is good. It gets me every time. Its hard to complain when ur eating chocolate. But it was not what I was expecting. It was a little hard and not as flavourful as I expected. Kind of light in terms of both chocolate and peanut. The coconut whip was delish though. But the dessert itself was kinda just average. 

So overall I liked Acorn a lot. The food is REALLY good. Like I said, if you have a celebration or need to take a date somewhere a little nicer that a burrito joint than here it is. But don't think you're going to get great service. That is my one complaint. Service was crappy. I almost wanted to strangle the bartender. He was not nice. Not friendly at all. The server was a little better but still attitude was really lacking there all around. As long as ur ok with some average at best service but some good food then you'll be fine. 

Oh yah, no reservations which is kinda typical these days in Vancouver but also, they won't seat you till your whole party arrives. I think that is total BS. Its one of those places. 

Peace

xoxo

K