Annapurna’s World Vegetarian Café — Restaurant in Albuquerque

Well if you like hit or miss dining then this is the place for you. Sadly it seems that every other time we eat that the food quality goes from really good to really awful. Flavors are inconsistent, the portion sizes are inconsistent, the food spread out to the table items are free play left off. It's often painful trying to order. I have had this situation happened to me several times, or I'll be in the middle of ordering and the counter person and it's both been men and women have just wandered off in the middle of me ordering. No explanation no hand gesture of please excuse me, no explanation whatsoever in fact. They will just simply stop in the middle of what they're doing turn and walk away to go do some other mindless task. I'm not sure if long-term exposure to the spices in the kitchen have formally altered the minds of some of these employees, but it's rather shocking to see how this is not just an isolated incident. Also to get food there is painfully slow, it takes so long to get the food out sometimes. I've had simple orders that take nearly an hour to put together. Unless people are having to leave the restaurant and drive to the store to buy fresh ingredients, which may be happening, there's no reason why I should take that long to get a salad prepared.

I think the most disappointing and saddest thing that I've seen thus far is the female owner openly being extremely hostile and rude towards a very nice elderly woman for leaving a bad review on Yelp of her other location off of Central and Yale. The interaction I observed was so disturbing and fact that the owner demanded that the lady leave the restaurant immediately and refused to allow her back ever simply because she posted a bad review. Talk about sour grapes. As the woman explain to her multiple times that she never posted any bad reviews the owner simply kept repeating I don't care you're not welcome here over and over and over again. This is very concerning to me as a patron, because if I feel that I need to voice a concern as I am doing now over food quality of an establishment , that criticism should be taken with a grain of salt and should be opportunities to grow and learn and expand and not an opportunity to be punitive towards somebody. From somewhere that specializes in food that balances out the bodies Energies it's really shocking to see how unbalanced the ownership of this facility is. I mean seriously, come on, what kind of crazy lunatic would permanently ban someone from spending money at their facility just because they thought that they had posted a bad review at some point. My family and I once loved to eat at this place since it is right around the corner from our home, however, given the nasty nature of the owners toward elderly customers and the inconsistency of the food quality I have a feeling I shall not be eating at Annapurna in the near future. In a message to the owner, perhaps you should take your criticisms with a lot more seriousness than your positive reviews, because when we learn from our failures and not from our successes we grow a...

Not fabulous for the price. I had been seeing advertising for this place since moving to Albuquerque 7 years ago and finally went when a vegetarian friend came to visit. The advertising built the place up, but the actual experience was lackluster. I am not vegetarian, but have enjoyed vegetarian fare in Seattle, Chicago and Tucson. We each ordered something different...my 12 year old daughter had the Lebanese wrap with fries, my 15 year old daughter had the avocado taco, my friend had South Indian sampler and I had another sampler. The South Indian sampler seemed heavy on the bread, lacking in color contrast and presentation. The sampler platter I had included a number of stainless steel ramekins of over cooked veggie stews that seemed indistinguishable from one another. The Lebanese wrap had the best presentation of the 4 dishes and seemed the most balanced in terms of meaty seeming cooked veggies paired with fresh raw veggies. I thought the fries were the tastiest of anything we had. They were fresh, hot, crispy and soft on the inside, savorily seasoned with masala, but my daughter, who is usually a pretty adventurous eater, didn't like them or the wrap. My other daughter felt the avocado tacos didn't have much avocado or filling substance; she sorely missed the chicken she wished her tacos could have been made of, as the dish seemed to be essentially a salad in a shell. She was hungry a half hour later. We should have caught on when we went in and there were no other dine in patrons. The atmosphere, food quality and presentation definitely wasn't worth the price. We won't be back.

To clarify, we didn't expect chicken in the taco, but a hearty vegetarian substitute. We were disappointed because we had higher expectations that a world class vegetarian place should be able to make the meal satiating, even without meat.

In addition, my daughter who had the Lebanese wrap, ended up getting violently ill about 10 hours after eating it, which is consistent with food poisoning. So, the only item that appeared appetizing ended up making one in...

It pains me to have to write this review as I LOVE the Santa Fe location, where the food is fresh, plentiful, well-prepared and tasty. The first time I visited this location, I ordered the cauliflower tacos on chapati, excited for my Sante Fe experience here in Albuquerque, but when I cracked the box open in my car (due to covid you couldn't eat inside), there was only two sad limp tacos inside, with a shocking dearth of filling. There was so little food in the box the staff was able to stuff a to-go container of rice in the box with the tacos! At the Santa Fe location, the box is always plump and stuffed with taco! For the price, $11.00, I was left quite disappointed but gobbled them up anyways--just an off day I thought. I revisited the Santa Fe location a couple weeks later and again was super satisfied. Well, I tried this location again last night, this time eating in the restaurant, and again I was presented with tacos wrapped in poorly prepared chapati--dry, flat, stale, more like an Old El Paso corn taco shell--with maybe three small cauliflower florets in each. I ordered the quesadilla to go as well, and when I finally sat down to eat it at home, it too was so flat, so skimped on. This place is obviously struggling and attempting to save on food costs. To top it off, I had a piece of the pecan pie too, and wow, it tasted like it had been up there for a week, stale, difficult to cut and super chewy. Finally, the staff seems more interested in their cellphones than paying attention to the customers. I guess it is time to search out a new vegetarian place in...