Emily "Mutaaaaants!" C.'s Profile

What a great choice for vegan/vegetarian diners in the north coast. There are only a couple options, but they were *good*: not your boring pasta primavera or out-of-the-freezer gardenburger, no sirree. I went for the entree: vegan version of a baked yam with black bean chili on top, served with housemade bread (awesome), fresh mixed green salad, and roasted cauliflower. So flavorful, filling, perfectly cooked. So nice not to cook at home!

What in the vegan/vegetarian friendly Japanese restaurants have we here?! OK, so I think we avoided trying this place because their website is permanently under construction and, well, if you're vegan you like to check the menu to see if there's anything that looks remotely doable for your dietary choices. But I'm glad we did.

Of all the choices, we ended up picking a whole bunch:
--tofu steak -- really tasty
--grilled eggplant -- ditto
--potato croquettes -- surprisingly flavorful with great texture
--shiitake mushroom thing -- my boyfriend liked this so much I only got one bite (it was a lovely bite)
--grilled whole head of garlic with miso paste for dipping -- so simple, but so nice. I don't usually think to cook up a head of garlic just to snack on, but probably I should! Miso is a great go-with.
--yagodofu -- fresh tofu, typically served in a fish broth with ponzu sauce (contains bonito), they made it for us with a much milder non-fishy liquid. The tofu was very good, though it was overall mild and not a standout.
--seaweed salad -- average, but I like to have something green, and seaweed is probably more nutrient-packed than spinach and I like it.
--avocado roll -- fine
--inari -- fine
--healthy roll (avocado + that rehydrated sweet-ish squash stuff) -- surprisingly tasty and balanced

Boyfriend also got the natto spring rolls, but I don't like natto and I'm sure he'll write his own review.

Our server was very helpful in ensuring our choices didn't end up with fish broth or bonito or anything like that. The food arrived quickly. We got there around 6:30, I think, and it wasn't busy quite yet, but it was packed by the time our plates started arriving.

Anyway, vegetarian Japanese food fans of San Jose, don't be afraid like I was! You have choices here. Oh, so many choices. It is not cheap, but you can probably order more efficiently -- I think we could have done without 2-3 of the above and still ended up very full.

Where else are you going to get killer cheap vegan eats and a freaking fantastic hand-poured coffee? Perfection. It's a separate business -- separate lines, if it's busy (and it was for the Barefoot birthday/grand opening!) -- but worth it, same as the main Barefoot cafe.

Great coffee TOTALLY goes with jerk tofu and brown rice. Who needs a pastry? Yum!

Of the natural foods stores I visited on the Big Island, this may have had the best selection of actual ingredients. The produce looked nice and seemed very local -- it should be, it'd have to compete with the farmers' market just around the corner -- and there were a number of needed items on sale. Not cheap, of course, but it got us started. A lot of the fresh/prepared foods had some expired or near-expired containers in the front of the cooler, which we failed to notice until we got back to the house, so learn from our mistake and check before you pay.

This review is for the location under the Island Naturals name -- I don't know when it changed hands.

It's a very small store with a vegan- (and raw-, and gluten free-) friendly prepared foods section, deli, sandwich and smoothie bar, etc. You can find some staples here for the usual island exorbitant fee, plus a lot of snacks and local treats packaged to bring home. The produce looks pretty good and seems to feature a lot of local goods, but the selection is limited. We stopped here after eating dinner at Annie's to get some hummus, tortillas, and simple produce (tomatoes, sprouts) for quick lunches during our stay, then again on the way to the airport for breakfast (a little tofu scramble and gluten-free samosa from the $7.99/lb. hot foods bar; OK cup of Kona coffee) and a sandwich to bring on the plane. The bill was $38 for two of us. Hmmm...

The food was good -- not a standout, but good. We had green papaya salad, jungle curry (red curry sauce made without coconut milk), and pineapple fried rice. They note on the menu that almost everything can be prepared vegan (using the word "vegan"), so we asked for that specifically. I did not detect any fish sauce, so yay on that front. The curry sauce felt a little thin and soupy to me -- it's not the lack of coconut milk, because I've had this dish elsewhere and the sauce isn't so runny. The beverage options aren't very exciting -- no fresh juices, and BYOB (if you're into that).

Tasty and filling, even if it is a lot of dough to drop for sandwich and fries. There is ONE vegan entree, but it is a very tasty one. The ingredients are very fresh and well-prepared. I enjoyed the purple sweet potato chips, too.

It's about time I added my review...

I've been seeing Mercy twice a week since June. I regret not a single minute or cent spent here. I hate going to the gym. I suck at working exercise into my routine (besides walking to and from public transit). I am, generally, fat and a little bit lazy. But when Mercy tells me to do something, I do it gladly, because it makes me feel BETTER. My back used to hurt all the time, and nothing I could do made it better. Mercy helped me fix that. She gave me the tools I needed. She always has something new to try. She's fun as hell to talk to -- even if I sometimes have to stop: "OK, hold on, I gotta concentrate on breathing and doing this crazy movement!" It's two hours of my week I get to concentrate just on what I'm doing and not stress about work, etc. I would (and have) recommended her to friends, or gotten her advice to give more local recommendations to friends in other places. I'm super glad she's in Milpitas, because driving to Los Gatos or Willow Glen or Sunnyvale is a pain in the butt from where I live (y'all can't hog all the good stuff!). She's flexible with scheduling and responds quickly to email.

By the time Wednesday rolls around, I'm itching for my appointment. (And as I write this, I'm coming off a week-long vacation that meant three missed appointments, so I cannot WAIT.)

Oh, and don't forget Joules, the studio mascot doggie! She's a sweet pea.

It's great that they are strictly vegetarian, but would it really be that taxing to, say, make the soups with a nice vegetable oil instead of butter? The food was tasty and fresh, and the adjacent grounds and art gallery lovely, but it was not very filling if you are vegan and can only get a salad and the hummus sandwich (sans cheese). The soups are not even creamy or cheesy -- just made with butter. Use a good oil and make this stuff friendly to all comers (well, except maybe the nut-allergic).

It's beautiful and a testament to the power of nature, regardless of whether you can see lava actively flowing (we could not -- at the time we went, the visible lava flow was outside the park, with a Hawaii County viewing area set up at the end of Highway 130). Nature isn't static -- the conditions change from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. The park's website is full of very useful and typically up-to-date information about closures, sulfur dioxide levels, and where lava is flowing (if anywhere).

After driving to the Jaggar Museum and checking out a few of the viewpoints just off the road -- it was closed beyond that due to sulfur dioxide levels -- then headed the other direction to embark on the 4-mile Kilauea Iki trail. It took about two hours and trekked through rainforest (no rain, but we did see a flock of nene), and straight across the crater surface. Your perspective changes gradually as you walk the trail -- when you begin, the hikers on the crater surface are small as ants, then you get down there and the rocky flows are huge and full of subtle color and texture changes, with tiny plants beginning to grow out of the cracks.

After the hike -- the ascent back to the trailhead exhausted my lazy ass, I'll admit -- we drove down Chain of Craters as sunset approached. We enjoyed some amazing vistas along the way, including the road's abrupt end at the sea arch. The lava flow's plume was visible in the distant, but no active lava in the park itself.

If you brought a bike, you might want to bring it here -- my boyfriend was bummed that he didn't get to bike this park.