Chickpea Downtown — Restaurant in Vancouver

Two really frustrating experiences with this truck this summer.

1. They were set up at Deer Lake Park at a concert my partner and I paid a lot of money to attend. We placed an order for 1 item (the falafel plate) while the opening act was still playing. It took over an hour (!) to receive our order, which meant we had to watch a lot of the show from the food truck parking area. I understand that the truck might have been understaffed, or they hadn't expected so many orders - but a heads up from the person taking the order would have been a simple, helpful bit of customer service. So glad to spend almost $200 on concert tickets only to spend the show waiting for four falafels!

2. I decided to give the truck another try recently, and ordered via the website which said it was on West 4th Ave. I got a confirmation of my order via text and email, again confirming that the pickup point was on West 4th and Vine. I arrived to find no truck in sight, and when I tried to call the truck multiple times there was no answer. I called the restaurant and was told that they "have no way of knowing where the truck is" and that they could not help me. So I spent $28 on lunch (including a tip! how generous of me!) and got nothing.

I followed up when I saw the truck on that corner a few days later: the guy working there told me that the website had nothing to do with the truck and he denied that I would have been told to go to this location. I showed him the website and my confirmation messages and he seemed confused. He took my name and number and said he'd get back to me, but that was 10 days ago and I've not heard anything yet. I've had to open a dispute case with my credit card company, which is a huge hassle over some falafels.

I emailed Chickpea after both of these incidents and no one's bothered to reply. Shame on...

We absolutely love chickpeas and had heard good things about the food here; we were extra thankful that they were so close to the convention center for convenience sake. The huge lineup was also a promising sign.

Unfortunately, the food was pretty mediocre and we were highly disappointed. The servings were huge, which was nice, but there was SO much hummus with the "plate" option that it meant most people threw a lot out; it seemed unnecessarily wasteful. (There was literally more hummus on each plate than you'd get in a whole tub from the store.) The chickpea fries were soggy eith grrease and flavorless (except for the grease they were soaked in) and we literally couldn't even eat half of them. (It was legitimately one of the only times I've ever thrown out fresh food.) They also ran out of cups early in the day, but somehow didn't know until after I'd paid. I subbed in more chickpea fries for simplicity since they were the same price, but I should have told them to just keep the money since we couldn't eat the fries anyway. Hands down the worst food we had during our week in Vancouver!! At the very least, save your money and skip the...

The flavours you get from Chickpea are out of this world good! I’ve always wanted to try it and glad I finally did.

I got the falafel platter and the portion was HUGE. I would share it with someone or take the rest home to eat the next day. The falafels were so flavourful and fresh. I wish I took a picture of what it looked inside: a beautiful bright green colour. The hummus was so creamy and delicious. The green herby sauce on top was incredible, added a nice acidity, and paired so nicely with it. Chickpea fries were as good as they say. Salad was refreshing.

I highly recommend for you to give Chickpea a try! If you’ve never had a plant-based meal before, then this is a great place to start. Even my meat-loving husband enjoyed this meal! Chickpeas are extremely high in protein, and other nutrients like fibre that you can’t get from animal-based proteins. I enjoy my meats, but I like to add plant-based proteins regularly for that flavour and...