1972 Lombard Street, SF, CA | website | DPH score: 100 | Closed M, T
It’s funny how one thing seems to lead to another… one week it was vegetarian, this week it’s raw vegan cuisine. Debbie innocently inquired whether I had ever tried raw food, which is pretty much like throwing down the gauntlet as far as I’m concerned… Soon we had plans to try Alive! on Lombard, as I remembered sampling a delicious vegan chocolate mousse at their booth in the SF Ferry building.
Alive! specializes in raw vegetarian cuisine that is 100% vegan and all of the ingredients are organic. We were dining in very unfamiliar realms constrained to vegan (completely excludes animal products of any kind) and raw (all preparation of food stays below 112 degrees f) and I was very interested to see what we would be eating. Well, obviously I was expecting it to be uncooked plant foods, I was curious to see how they were prepared.
We were greeted by a willowy thin woman with very short pale hair that was tinted pink on one half and golden yellow on the other half. She had safety pins through each of her ear lobes, and several small silver rings piercing her lower lip. I noticed the letters spelling out the words sick and well tatooed on the backs of each of her fingers on both hands and she was dressed simply in black. We started off with an unoaked Chardonnay from France while we looked at the menu, a little nonplussed. Based on the assumption that we were going to be eating uncooked vegetables, we were thinking that we would require lots of food. Cody (who is currently rail thin with hollow cheekbones because he is on a health kick and is therefore unfit to make these types of decisions) disagreed, but we overruled him with grim determination.
We started with Rapini King Trumpet Mushroom Salad with an Almond Miso Sauce. This was one of the most memorable dishes because the richness from the miso really gave it depth and flavor and an almost buttery texture that went really well with the mushrooms.
Green Beans with Spicy Cherry Sauce, chopped vegetables and lettuces with green beans.
The dressing was astringently complex and spicy, it really woke up my taste buds. It was distinctly different from the salad salad, but still the green bean dish was really a salad.
The Sushi was an interesting mix of zucchini, cucumber, carrots, avocado and shiitake mushrooms wrapped up in sheets of seaweed. There were dabs of … ground up stuff that was pungently savory and added slightly creamy texture. At first glance it looked like tofu, but I don’t think it was although it was pasty and light colored. It was a blend of things that were delicious.
It looked like sushi and the accompanying wasabi made it seem more like sushi, although they didn’t serve it with soy sauce (it really is hard to let go of how you think things should be sometimes).
Herbed Cashew Cream Sauce with Garden Vegetable Ribbons topped with King Trumpet Mushrooms, Capers and Avocado. The combination of the cashew cream sauce over the long ribbons of mushrooms and zucchini was delectable and helped to distinguish it from the many plates of chopped raw vegetables that we had at the table.
This is their version of Fettucini Alfredo
The Thyme Parsley Walnut Pesto Raviolis looked like another big plate of salad, especially because it was on a bed of lettuce
At first we were dismayed, but after tentative exploration we discovered that there indeed were raviolis, although more of a conceptual representation… thin slices of beets (in place of the sheets of pasta) containing a delicious filling. It was hard to tell whether the pesto was in the dressing, or part of the filling in the ravioli.
Salad with Hummus served with crisps made from dehydrated vegetables and flax seeds. The dressing was delicious with bits of kalamata olives and sundried tomato and I think I heard our server say that the hummus was made from zucchini…
There were some florets of something that tasted like cauliflower but was more elegantly formed. However, by this point of the meal, I think we had had enough salad and while this had its own distinct characteristics it was lost in the shuffle of redundant chopped vegetable textures. I had problems seeing the forest for all the leaves.
The Blackforest Chocolate cake, was a rich dense chocolate mousse made from cacao and avocado and topped with whipped young coconut and dried cherries. The whipped topping was very dense and pastelike with very little flavor, and at first I thought it was crisco… but I could discern a slight hint of coconut. The chocolate part was very good.
Rasberry Almond Cheesecake was exploding with the tart flavor of pureed fresh raspberries. The crust was made from ground nuts.
I can’t imagine the work involved in preparing these dishes, as each dish had quite a variety of fresh ingredients, but they all ran together after a while and it seemed that we had just enjoyed plate after plate of salad. I will say that after a big meal and a glass or two of wine, my energy level was higher than usual and I didn’t nod off on the BART ride home.
Debbie said with dismay that it was the most expensive salad she had ever had…
rowena said,
September 11, 2007 at 7:37 am
I was beginning to feel a bit queasy when you began describing the willowy thin woman but you do the menu justice with those fantastic photos! What a colorful experience — like high-end grazing!
foodhoe said,
September 11, 2007 at 4:29 pm
lol, our server’s appearance was a little distracting, but she was friendly and professional! I guess that is part of the experience of eating at an alternative restaurant, it was very interesting!
Chubbypanda said,
September 11, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Whoa! That’s real wasabi, not the imitation stuff from powder. Good to see they’re going all out.
I like Raw Food. Need to find a good place here in SoCal.
foodhoe said,
September 12, 2007 at 4:37 pm
yep the real deal, it better be live, not dehydrated stuff! It was an interesting first for me – I’m intrigued, so you know that means I’ll be out looking for more… seems like socalians take up the trends more, so there must be many to choose from.
Raw Vegan Restaurants said,
September 14, 2007 at 10:38 am
Nice review – the food looks delicious, especially the strawberry cheesecake. Beautiful photos too!
Raw Vegan Restaurants said,
September 14, 2007 at 10:40 am
Alive’s version of raw sushi is really unique. And I like their Salad with Hummus too.
TrevorS said,
September 15, 2007 at 10:58 pm
There are only a few raw food restaurants in the Bay Area, so a few more to try out are La Vie in Santa Cruz (http://www.lavie.us/) – I recommend the raw pizzas and the smoothies. And there are several branches of Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco, San Rafael and Berkeley (http://www.CaféGratitude.com ) – try the sampler plate (excellent crackers, salads, dressings and a superb fiery avocado soup), the drinks (mint chocolate chip smoothie made with hazelnut milk) and the warm “sushi bowl” (red bhutanese rice, nori, veggies and a sesame-ginger dressing). Leave room for dessert.
foodhoe said,
September 17, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Raw Vegan Restaurants, thanks! I want to go back to try their soup and bring Mr. K back cuz I know he’d love it.
Trevor, thanks for the info. I definitely want to check out Cafe Gratitude, especially since they have an east bay location. Your recs sound delicious!
Food said,
January 3, 2008 at 2:19 am
[...] A blogger compiled some great thoughts on Raw/Living Vegan Cuisine at Alive! Restaurant Foodhoe’s ForagingHere’s some of the intersting bits [...]
Ray said,
February 19, 2008 at 6:48 am
Tried Alive! and it was great. Alive had an excellent variety of salads, which is not really unusual for a vegan restaurant and actually desirable for a “raw” vegan restaurant because a true raw vegan diets consists of lots of salads. Alive! does have an excellent variety of non-salad items. The trick is not to order one salad after the other (King Trumpret Mushroom Salad, Green Been Salad, Mediterranean Salad). Alive! does have an Asian influence which mean lots of vegetables.
If you’re an omnivore and went to an omnivore restaurant, would you want one meat dish and a lot of salads? Probably not, you would want a variety of meat dishes (chicken, fish, etc.).
“What’s this? Lobster! Well that just another meat dish like the seared scallops we had earlier Let’s hope the grilled Salmon that’s coming up isn’t another meat dish”
foodhoe said,
February 19, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Ray, good point. I am very intrigued by the concept of raw cuisine as I am of veganism, but for me the merging of the two really minimized my options. I think baby steps are good for me, I’m a very undisciplined eater!