East St. — Restaurant in Nelson

TLDR: I hate to do it to a city's only vegan restaurant, but we literally could not finish our food, it was not good, nor fresh.

Food: we were so excited to find an all vegan restaurant in such a small town. Unfortunately, it became clear right away that the high ratings come from a lack of competition (or maybe they just had a bad day). However, we ordered coffee and a chai latte. The coffee was bitter and tasted old. We also ordered nachos, breakfast scramble, and chickpea fries. The nachos had a pool of grease in the bowl we've never experienced with nachos before making the entire bottom greasy and soggy. The "cheese" was quite bland and every ingredient tasted canned. The chickpea fries had no seasoning and looked great but tasted like nothing, we tried one and left the rest. Lastly, the breakfast plate was just there. The tofu scramble did not have any liquid aminos, nutritional yeast, or black salt to make it taste "eggy". It just seems like tofu and turmeric with nothing else. Overall, very sad and we had to go get food elsewhere, leaving hungry after paying the bill.

Service: nice, but seemed very distracted. We visited after opening so we were one of only two tables, so it wasn't like they were busy. Service was average.

Atmosphere: a very cute interior that got our hopes up for the overall meal. Probably one of the nicer interiors for a vegan restaurant...

Groovy restaurant with lots of space, amazing food and nice staff. The food is vegetarian, gluten free and often vegan. I am not a vegan but i really enjoyed trying the meat alternatives. This place serves wonderfully unique food, some things that stood out were: fried banana blossom, amazingly diverse flavours of cheese-cake e.g pinaple lumps and beutifull presentation. The intetior is modern and indie, it has a good drinks menu and breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and desert meals. It has wheelchair access and is just off one of the main streets so easily accessible. It has toilets, an open kitchen and both indoor and outdoor seating arrangements. It has a kuds menu and is family friendly. It really stood out because of it's unique decorations, the menus were carefully crafted into old record cases, the walls are covered in fake ivy and lights and there is eye catching color throughout the sight. I totally reccomend this as a good place to go with some friends or family to enjoy a fun and delicious night out, thank you East St Cafe for our...

I was very much looking forward to dining here as I had on previous occasions which I had enjoyed very much. Unfortunately on this occasion both the service and food were well below par and nothing like earlier visits. Service was not good and the restaurant was not busy when we were there. I ordered the Burger of the night. All this consisted of was a white child size bun with one oversized lettuce leaf,a slice of canned pineapple,a little red cabbage pickle and some pieces of brown thin fried shavings of what I am guessing was supposed to be hemp chicken pieces. I also ordered a side of kumara fries this was a small portion of 8 chips equating to $1 per chip! This meal was totally unsatisfactory and I went home hungry. My friends meal wasn't much better of which she left half there when she would normally have eaten all. I have never had to complain about a meal out ever and least expected to write about it. Sorry but standards definately skipped since my...