We discovered The Carrots Vegan restaurant while compiling organic restaurants for the eSvasa Yellow Pages. So when we went to Bangalore to participate in BioFach (India’s only international level exposition on Organic Food & Lifestyle), we decided to check it out.

While neither my partner Suruchi nor I are vegan (or even vegetarian for that matter!), we were both curious to see how pizzas, pastas, curries and especially desserts; can be made vegan, and if they can actually be tasty enough to warrant dining out!

Description:

This is the first vegan restaurant in Bangalore, and is centrally located in Koramangala. It’s spacious and has a non intrusive, yet welcoming & helpful staff. The restaurant has friendly & casual atmosphere, simple interiors, a rack of organic products for sale, and some books on veganism, good health & organic food to browse through. In the menu, they have tried to use organic ingredients (of course it’s near impossible to be completely organic ☹), their main stress is on using local produce, and 70% of the produce is from within Karnataka.
No MSG or taste enhancers are used, and deep frying is a strict no-no, in fact, hardy any oils are used in cooking; in fact cold pressed oils may be drizzled on pizzas for flavour!

Food:

We were there on a Sunday, so we got to try the buffet.

We hit the soup & salad bar. The choice of soups included Roasted tomato soup (which unfortunately for me was too sour) and an amazing Potato and Vegetable soup, which was very balanced and made a perfect appetizer with the extensive bread basket. Two out of three dips (mint & cumin humus and spicy masala salsa) were fine, but the ‘mayonnaise’ was too runny. It would be better if it were just called a nutty cashew dip, as it was actually nothing like the real thing. There were three varieties of salad - broccoli salad, mushroom salad and asian salad, and all were all individual tasty.

Pizzas and pastas are also made available on request (included in the buffet), and the white pasta was a full on flavour attack – creamy vegan sauce, the scent of basil and completely spell bindingly delicious! The pizza with a generous serving of cashew based cheese and threads of tofu was tasty – I didn’t expect to find a vegan pizza as this! The cheese was not the usual cheesy taste, but it was tasty and delicious all the same.

To drink, Suruchi had a delicious mixed fruit juice, while I sceptically went for the soy milk chaach – which to my delight was amazing!

The starters were varied and included grilled tofu & falafel, zucchini fritters, steamed vegetables & roasted papad.

Finally we reached the main course!

I skipped the multigrain chapatti and vegetable rice and went for the red rice, methi matar and dal mushroom. Suruchi tried the vegetable rice with sambar, and gave her meal a big thumbs up! Again, for both of us, the food was a little less spicy, but great on flavour and variety. The nutty red rice really made the dal come alive for me. There was a new Moroccan dish, which wasn’t listed in the menu, but was too sour and piquant for my taste.

We devoured the dessert selection – mini cupcakes (mmm...), an amazing mousse-consistency chocolate ice cream which blew us away (it had coconut milk as a main ingredient!) and a panna cotta.

We ended with the masala chai – absolutely smashing!

Prices:

While the buffet charges were Rs 499 per person (including selected drinks), the average bill per person is about Rs 400 when you order ala carte.

The positives: Healthy food, cooked with minimal oil, and using local produce (trying to use as much organic ingredients as they can)... what’s not to love! The staff is wonderful and helpful and the setting is perfect for a lingering casual meal (they do take some time to cook fresh food!).
I was glad to know that all food was made in non stick or ceramic dishes without ANY oils. The only oil in our meal was the cold pressed extra virgin olive oil that was drizzled over our pizza.

The negatives: Most dishes were slightly under-seasoned, but that’s not anything to hold you back. The Indian selection, especially in the main course was too homey for my liking – I would like to see some more exotic or continental dishes completing the buffet.

Comments & Rating:

Carrots is a vegan paradise, and even for non vegans, it’s a wonderful opportunity to explore an alternative concept of healthy foods. They can change the dishes to cater to specific dietary requirements/ allergies.

Verdict

Rating:

4/5
Definitely worth a go; don’t miss it!

** You can buy organic teas, infusions etc at the restaurant as well.
** You can also connect with eSvasa and order the eSvasa Organic Yellow pages here ☺