El Jardín De Jazmín - Vegan & Gluten Free Restaurant — Restaurant in Lima Metropolitan Area

As a highly rated vegan restaurant in a definitely not vegan country, I really wanted to like this place. I've been eating a plant based diet for 12+ years and love to check out veggie friendly restaurants when I travel. My wife has family in Peru, and we invited them to join us to experience one of the few plant based restaurants in the area, but we left extremely disappointed.

Let's start with the service, because this was just AWFUL (and while I understand that the quality of service is not expected to live up to that in a country like the US, this was bad, really really bad). After being seated, it took 20 minutes for the waitress to come over and inform us that all of the drinks we had decided on were out of stock - all that was left was beer. So we ordered both our beers and our meals. For the meals, we asked what the server recommended, and three of us went with her recommendation (what she deemed the "most popular") - one of the champipapas dishes - and the rest ordered a few other dishes (one of the veg burgers) and appetizers (the bread sticks with guac and a mushroom appetizer).

Fast forward 25 minutes - we still have not received our beers, or any food for that matter. The waitress stands idly by the counter hunched over on her phone. We were starting to get very annoyed when finally, the waitress comes to our table with two of the beers and says that unfortunately that's all of the cold beers of that variety left - she can swap them for a more expensive beer (which she of course charged us the full price for). At the same time, the food starts coming out (and not all at once). The appetizers, especially the mushroom one, were actually quite good. The hamburger was also really solid. But three champipapa dishes, the "most popular" dishes on the menu, turned out to be large platters of 95% salty potatoes and 5% mushrooms. The portions were huge but it was all potatoes, and while they were edible it was just way too much papas.

To cap it off, at the end of our meal I ask for the check. 15 minutes go by and the waitress still hasn't brought the check, so another individual at our table calls her over and asks for it more firmly. She says she's bringing it over. Another 10 minutes go by. For a small cafe this is absolutely ridiculous. Over the course of this experience we spent around 45 minutes to an hour just waiting for service.

I should also note - the bathroom light was broken so I had to pee in the...

The customer services here leaves much to be desired... I came in one afternoon at random and despite sitting at my table with a closed menu for a while the hosts just ignored me. They really need to work on that. I read that someone else got ignored here too and thought, "well oh it probably won't happen again, and if it does, it surely won't happen to me" but it did. It wasn't till I was gathering my things to go that they finally began to take my presence a bit more seriously and they were attentive after that. The food here is pretty good though. Can't say i'll be back for sure though.

Edit: Came back a second time a month later and I will never return. The experience was of a night and day difference. The first time I came it was mid day, but the second time I came was around 7 pm. The waiter was attentive and the food was still delicious and there was even live music playing (it was a Friday). I really enjoyed my second experience save for the part where after leaving I was puking my guts out and my ass turned into a faucet. I will never return to this place again. I hadn't eaten for 6 hours and then came here. Then 1 hour after leaving (and eating absolutely nothing else) I get absolutely sick. Vomiting at 3am isn't how I wanted to spend my Saturday morning. Never again. The only thing I had differently was this salad thing. I don't think they intentionally made me sick but this is the second time I've had an issue with this place and these past two days have been horrible for me because of them. They improved there service though so there's that and I really appreciated that part. It's just this place isn't worth the gamble. Now they just need to improve their sanitation and keep things consistent. There are other places though for clean, healthy vegan options and...

I am vegan so I try to find good vegan food when I travel and this place was perfect. Very cute restaurant not too far into the city from the coast. Easy to walk to. Google maps took me right to the entrance. There was one server and he sat me. I didn't try to speak English because I try to practice speaking Spanish whenever I can. I asked for a table for one. I didn't have a reservation and he sat me right away. The table had a thing full of napkins on it which is perfect for messy eating. He gave me a menu and after looking it over a for a while I ordered a lot of food. I had the cauliflower wings as an appetizer, the black bean burger with guacamole and chips on it (astral burger), and a lavender lemonade. They were out of Kombucha, but hopefully they will have it again soon. The cauliflower wings had a delicious sweet barbecue sauce on them and came with carrots, celery, and a dipping sauce. Fried cauliflower is always really yummy. The burger was huge and it came with a side of fried potatoes that were lightly salted. I managed to eat everything and it was so good! The guacamole is very fresh and tastes amazing with a black bean burger. The chips added a nice crunch to the whole thing and the bread was very soft, but not spongey. The potatoes were a nice side dish, but I struggled eating them because I was very full at that point. The lavender lemonade I think is really a limeade. It's very tart and not very sweet. It is what I was expecting. The lavender was a really nice mix in with the tart lime. I could have drank a million of those they were so good. I asked to pay and they brought over my bill and the card reader. I gave him a tip on the card reader as well. I used my phone to pay with the...