Orchard Grocer — Local services in New York

Orchard Grocer is a small vegan deli. the shelves are stocked with a limited variety of vegan-friendly grocery / pantry items. there's a small counter and menu-above where you can order vegan sandos + some sweet eats and vegan soft serve. i've had the sandwiches like the grilled cheese in prior years and those have been good and satisfying (4-star quality).

finally, tried the vegan soft serve a few weeks ago and had high hopes...but the soft serve missed the mark in terms of overall quality and flavor. ordered a vanilla soft serve but it barely tasted like vanilla but tasted more like cashews bc that's one of the ingredients in the soft serve, itself. there was not a hint of vanilla flavor, at all, just the cashew flavor. nothing against cashews--they are fine and all but they don't like vanilla. the other issue with the soft serve was that it was more like an icee / slurpee consistency than soft serve smooth. there were small frozen ice chips throughout and tasted less like ice cream...and more like ice cream blended with ice. not terrible, but not very pleasant to eat either. kept thinking maybe it's just the top of my soft serve cup, but i spooned through the soft serve and it was small ice chipped throughout. maybe they should allow you to sample the soft serve beforehand. maybe they should allow you to sample the soft serve beforehand? hopefully this was an off-day for the soft serve...but the soft serve was 2 stars at best. i rounded up the review to 3 stars--to give this place the benefit of doubt. the service was...

I came here specifically for the ice cream because I've been craving soft serve and as a vegan it's kind of hard to find. I've had the oat milk based soft serve from 16 handles and I find that to be really good. I did like their ice cream but I felt like the sprinkles we're too hard and why they had to be a dollar extra felt kind of crazy. I got a strawberry and a vanilla twist and I didn't feel like the strawberry or vanilla flavors were very prominent. If you asked me to blind taste test the strawberry ice cream I might have not been able to tell it was even strawberry flavored. Tasty ice cream yes. But nothing exceptional. And I looked through the store and they do have a really wide variety of vegan niche products but most of it is just processed food that you could probably get on Amazon for a lot cheaper. It's kind of nice having everything on display to look at but definitely not worth the 50 to 60% markup on most of the...

The food here is absolutely phenomenal!! Stopped in after shopping for shoes at MooShoes and tried the Miles, the Monty, and a side of their Mac and cheese, and everything was exceptional. My partner had the Miles and said it was the best breakfast sandwich he’d ever had, and I feel the same about the Monty (I’ve had about a thousand Italian-esque heroes and this one was at the very very top of the pack). It was just beautifully built, with the perfect amount of everything to create a perfect bite every time. I literally haven’t stopped thinking about it! The Mac and cheese was delicious too, it was topped with smoky, chewy, bacon-y mushrooms that were just delicious.

They also carry tons of great vegan items from frozen meals, to pantry items like sauces and condiments, to salty snacks and candy (any other vegans miss sour cola bottles!?). What a great spot!! Can’t wait to be back for another Monty, and to try their...