Rise Above Restaurant — Restaurant in St. Catharines

Disclaimer: this is a review by a non vegan diner.

My girlfriend and I dined here for dinner on our anniversary night. While neither of us were vegan my girlfriend was very pro vegetarian and vegan movement and wanted us to diversify our culinary experiences so why not this wildly well reviewed vegan spot in St Catharines?

We ordered the Saucy Seitan for appetizer, with sriracha line sauce. The sauce was waaaaay too salty. Combine that with the bit of heat from the sriracha, felt like I was eating chunks of salt. Texture wise it was alright.

For our mains, my girlfriend had the Scallop Linguine while I had the BBQ Deluxe Burger.

The linguine would've been alright had the sauce not be overly thick and dry. It made the meal feel heavier than it should've been and hard to swallow, just felt sick eating more and more of it. Hard to recommend.

The burger was rather unflavourful. I'm not sure if it was because of the overly salty appetizer that killed my taste buds but I honestly could not taste anything but the bread, the onion ring, and the small drizzle of BBQ sauce. Like I see what I'm eating but I'm not tasting anything. Just a general mush. Again, cannot recommend.

Along with the burger came the potato wedge supreme (wedges with some cheeze spread and sour cream replacement, and some garnish). Again flavour was rather uneventful. Taco Bell fries supreme tastes better.

We were both left pretty disappointed by it all. With the overwhelmingly positive reviews (+1000 reviews!) I thought it would've left a positive impression on me, as per what a great vegan cuisine could offer. Unfortunately it wasn't the case, and I don't see myself coming back here.

But hey the vegan donuts across the street were...

Quite off the 403 - we made a stop here on our way to New York from Toronto. It's a good place for an all-vegan brunch/breakfast but only if you have a good amount of time in your hand since the service is quite slow.

Food: We went for a Cappuccino and a Tea Latte to begin with. This was followed by a small Curried Sweet Potato Salad, Potato Wedges with a Poutine Upgrade, and Crispy Seitan Wrap. The Tea Latte was good. The cappuccino was okay. Crispy Seitan Wrap and Curried Sweet Potato Salad were great. Potato Wedges with Poutine Upgrade - you can hardly get it wrong. Overall, the food was really great. The portions are quite generous too - we didn't feel hungry for next 4-5 hours after that. Before leaving, we also got a Vanilla Blueberry cheesecake packed and it was absolutely delicious.

Ambiance: It has scarce natural light and the internal lighting isn't enough to keep the place bright. So, quite a dark ambiance - I would love to see more light in here. Otherwise, the interiors are quite artistic with many paintings on the walls.

Service: The staff was very friendly. The service was actually very slow compared to the number of customers they had at that time. So, it's not a place to go if you are in slightest of rush - be there when you have a very good amount of time at your disposal. Having said that, the quality of the food quite made up for the sluggishness of the service.

Overall, one of the best places for Vegan food around the area - even if you are in Toronto, it is worth driving down here for a relaxed brunch. Parking outside on street as well as a paid parking lot just across the street which...

Owner asked us why we tipped so little (he actually hustled outside of the restaurant after we'd already left). Our meal had been fantastic up until that point, we have been before, fantastic vegan food and great atmosphere and service, so please trust me when I say the tone/demeanor of this question, though phrased politely, was interrogative and rude. Here is the story: Their policy is that they do not accept debit transactions on 7+ more people at the table, so not everyone brought enough cash (who carries cash anymore, let alone to cover $100+ meals?). I had told my party of people to bring cash for this reason but not everyone was able to get to an ATM in time. We did leave a tip with what we had - literally we were scrounging for change to cover the bill and tip, so we found this question very rude, ungrateful and just plain annoying. You can have the best vegan food in the world (which they just might have!) but as soon as you show attitude or provide bad customer service you immediately go to a 1 star rating in my books. It turned us all off from ever going back. We absolutely would have tipped more if we all had access to our funds in our debit accounts. If you want more tips, accept debit transactions on large parties. I know it saves time so you can shovel more people into your restaurant to make more money, but then you come into situations like ours and embarrass yourself and lose customers. Huge shame because it really was a...