Kate Ungashick, Wendy Casale, Kimberly Blouir, Nick Szkeres, Executive Chef Scot Jones

By Julie Clark Robinson

The VegiTerranean on Akron offers everything I like when going out for a good dinner. You walk in the door and immediately start to melt into its cool vibe.  My eyes lingered over an ambitious martini list, but since I wanted to actually taste my food, I decided that a Pear-Ginger Sake-tini would have to wait for another visit.  Wine it was.  My chardonnay was promptly followed by a warm and especially moist pesto focaccia with artichoke dipping oil.  It was time to look over the menu and see what the buzz is all about.  I’m not averse to a good vegetable here and there but I’ve yet to go a restaurant and not at least get some pollo with my penne…some carne in my quesadilla, you know?  But it wasn’t the lack of meat on the menu that surprised me; it was my desire to try it all.  So, between my husband and I, we pretty much did.  I started with grilled artichokes, which were good, but it was the lemon caper aioli and roasted tomato and red pepper sauce that came with them that won me over. My husband ordered hot (and I mean HOT) banana peppers stuffed with herb risotto.  I made the better choice.

As you can imagine for a vegan restaurant, the salad offerings were impressive, but we skipped right over them because we wanted to try the entrees with “pretend meat” (my husband’s term, not mine).  Technically, the chicken and meat dishes are made with a product called Gardein™, a soy, wheat and pea protein combination that look amazingly like the real deal. So my “strip steak” over white bean roasted garlic rosemary mashed potatoes, looked exactly like I expected it to.  The “meat” was charred to perfection and I was surprised at the similarity of the texture.  My husband’s roasted red pepper linguine was homemade, as is all of the pasta at The VegiTerranean, which is a major plus to those of us who consider marinara sauce a vegetable. We also ordered one of the pizzas, a “chicken” pizza with wild mushroom and basil pesto. I think you could pull a fast one on someone and replace their chicken with Gardein chicken and they might be halfway through their meal before they say anything, if at all.

The best part for us was the dessert. I don’t know if that’s because we’re carnivores at heart or if the dessert was just that amazing.  We had the best coffee we’ve had since honeymooning in Barbados fifteen years ago.  We shared a rich, dense, dark chocolate cupcake with a raspberry sauce and ordered another cup of coffee.

Will we come back? Definitely.  It will undoubtedly be on our list when my vegitarian sister comes to town too .  The bar at the VegiTerranean is a great place to meet friends for drinks and we’ll swing by again for dessert and coffee after a movie or a play. I’m glad that Northeast Ohio has such an authentic offering for the vegans among us.

The Vegiterranean is open Monday through Saturday 11:00am – 10:00pm.  Check them out online at www.thevegiterranean.com.