The Verdict

So, gluten-free, vegan pizza from The Joint Pizzeria proved too much to resist - twice, in fact. We ate it for dinner two nights in a row, and I'll cherish my pizza reunion for months to come. Peppers, roasted garlic, caramelized onions, pesto - does it get any better than that?

For our last lunch in Victoria, we went to Mo:le, a vegetarian-centric restaurant on Pandora Street, which showcases Victoria's commitment to beautiful tattoos and good (if expensive) food. I had a salad and tofu saute, which was totally delicious in a Thai-spicy way. Dan had a curried tofu scramble and pesto breakfast potatoes: Oh, if his parents could see him now!

Mo:le gets gold stars. Green Cuisine, on the other hand, gets no stars. It was very disappointing - bland, over-cooked, over-priced vegan food, sold by the weight, buffet-style. It does get some points for its extensive gluten-free desert section; it loses points for the general meh-quality of those goods. The strawberry and apple crisp, I'll admit, approached orgasmic.

Green Cuisine is heralded as one of Victoria's top vegetarian-eateries, and my disappointment with it felt all too familiar. It was the same sense of bewilderment I've struggled with here, trying to understand Vancouver's Naam-devotion.

I've given The Naam a very fair chance. I've eaten there again and again, compelled by one zealous recommendation after another to return, despite disappointment. After all, any good restaurant can produce a bad dish, once in a while.

Well, I've given up. The Naam is NOT a good restaurant. I suspect that it was, at some point - it must have been, to secure the adoration and fidelity of so many eaters and restaurant critics.

The food isn't terrible, and it is nice having an entire menu of vegetarian dishes to choose from - but ultimately, the dishes lack both intensity and subtlety. The flavours blur more than mingle, the textures tend towards mush, and the ingredients are robbed of their potential to impress with careless composition. Every dish tastes a little too much like the last - it's the flavour of laziness and stunted creativity. Like Green Cuisine, The Naam is taking its success for granted, while other, much tastier restaurants are denied their due.

Fuck The Naam, and fuck Green Cuisine. They give vegetarian food a bad name.

Other food highlights from our trip: a soy matcha latte from The Solstice Cafe, and its cold, fast-food Starbucks cousin (mm, melon syrup); Boylan's Gingerale and Root Beer; the perfect afternoon snack, a "Monster Pickle" from a cafe on Government Street; and the exciting purchase of smoked Lapsang Souchong green tea (wiki that madness) from Silk Road.