Alive

This past Sunday I went over my brother David and his girlfriend Amanda's new apartment located in the Marina. After checking out their pad and saying hello to thier dog Pilot, G, Amanda, David and I strolled over to Lombard street and walked towards the wide-selection of restaurants in the area. We stumbled upon Alive first and foremost and decided to give it a try. I had noticed this restaurant recently when driving by since it says, Vegetarian cuisine. You know how some people have 'Gay-dar'? I have 'Vegetarian-restaurant-ar'. Yes, I know that's not a word but this is my blog, so deal with it. I have the ability to smell out a vegetarian restaurant in foreign cities all around the world. Trust me, if you are vegetarian, it's best to stick with me when visiting Japan or Central America. My gift comes in handy. So me and my 3 other temporary-vegetarians sat down at the window table for dinner.

The restaurant has a nice, feng-shui atmosphere. A pretty mural on the wall and some funky artsy-looking lights. It is very, "San Francisco", yet the space is small. We all studied the menu which as advertised, was entirely raw-vegetarian (vegan?) fare. We decided to split a bunch of appetizers, and main dishes. I'm never going to remember all the names, but they were comprised of sushi with salmon substitute(pretty good), pizza's with sun-dried tomatoes, avocado, macademia-cheese on some sort of wheat-thin like crackers(ok, not that great), a salad that Amanda liked, I couldn't tell you what was in it! G and I split the Empress medicinal soup. Sounded really cool, but was disapointing. It was mostly made up of seaweed, with potatoes and carrots. There was another side of fresh spinach with pine nuts which was so-so. Actually we really ordered shiitake mushrooms with goajiberries(sp?) that but I wasn't going to make a big deal about it. The main dishes were (vegan?)lasagna in which they used macadamia cheese instead of "real" cheese and the other was sesame noodles with various side-dishes included which added to the pretty ascetic of the dishes. Everything was interesting and good for you. I just can't say that they were *that* great. Especially for the price, if I'm going to spend $14-15 on a main entry, I want something that is going to memorable for a least a few hours. All that I could remember later that night was that I was feeling hungry again.

My suggestion is to try out Alive for dessert only. You can have a nice vegan dessert which is probably better for your figure anyway and some exotic milk or tea to go with it. I think you would get more bang for your buck. It would also be the perfect restaurant if you have a food-allergy or are vegan. The foods were all free of most allergy-spewing ingredients such as gluten, lactose, sugar, etc. However, because of that fact, I thought some of the dishes were quite bland. On a positive note the drinks were very interesting, and of course, fresh. G ordered almond milk, Amanda ordered coconut juice and I had the carrot-ginger juice. David got his usual, orange juice--surprise surprise.

OK. I just read the reviews on citysearch regarding this restaurant. And this is exactly why I decided to write this blog. I don't think they are very accurate. This is NOT the best vegetarian or vegan fare by any means in San Francisco. Everyone seemed to rave about this place, but I am suspicious of some of the reviews. They seem very posed. Which makes me think the owner wrote the review. G is a big fan of healthy, vegetarian food, but after looking at the amount of food we got at Alive, I thought is this really going to feed a man who weighs over 200 lbs.? It just didn't seem like it was equal to the price. Next time, I'm going to Pluto's for a salad!

3 out of 5 stars as I have a weak heart for vegetarian restaurants

Alive! Restaurant 1972 Lombard St. San Francisco, CA 94123