Zeal — Restaurant in Boulder

This restaurant is just terrible. I will go through the dinner for you. After waiting about twenty minutes to place an order for food and drinks, the waiter left without taking our menus or asking me what size dish I wanted. This was my first time (and last) eating there and there are multiple sizes listed, but he was distracted and left before I could say anything. The menus would remain on our very small table for the entire meal. He also didn't know what beers they had and had to check.

The beers arrived promptly; mine in a wine glass and my girlfriend's in a pint glass. The food runner explained that it was a different ABV. I found this surprising, since if you're going to serve someone a beer in an asinine glass you should probably inform them beforehand. For reference, her beer was Asher IPA at 7%, mine Upslope pumpkin ale at 7.7%. This is a stupid thing to do as a restaurant. I found out from the check that I paid a dollar extra for the dainty pleasure of raising my pinky during sips.

My Lamb braise was decent, but not especially good. About half of the carrots were under cooked, and the "yellow curry" sauce tasted like sweet yogurt which is guaranteed to disappoint anyone who actually orders something described as curry (though I'm sure there was a pinch of turmeric in there). I will give credit for the sweet potatoes, quinoa, and lamb being pretty tasty. Overall, it was edible but not great. My girlfriend's trout was overcooked, and her Brussels sprouts were badly done and under cooked. There was an excellent sauce underneath, but not good enough to save the poorly cooked food.

We ran out of water just as we began our entrees and received no more for the duration of our stay. I saw adjacent tables receive new carafes twice. It's a good thing they brought me adequate beer (right?). It was very clear that our waiter needed to be flagged down if he was ever going to come back. I really wanted to leave as soon as possible, but my girlfriend wanted dessert. We ordered a passionfruit "trifle" which was amazing! This is the only reason why there are two stars here. It was tart and refreshing, not overly sweet. I was still pretty unhappy because I knew her dessert order would increase our stay by about thirty minutes, which it did. Had I needed change, I would probably still be in the restaurant.

In short, if you're going to spend 50-60 on a decent meal, do not come here. Go to Sushi Zanmai or Oak, etc... In fact, you'll receive much better food for less at Sherpa's or...

Before we express our dissatisfaction with Zeal in general, we would like to give them credit for using some organic ingredients (even if it's unclear as to what degree), and for accommodating such a wide variety of dietary preferences. We're glad that customers eating vegan, raw vegan, macro, paleo, and other diets can all dine here with relative ease.

That being said...

We aren't sure who the 'enthusiasts' are that Zeal's food is for, but they're certainly not us. After dining here, we were anything but enthusiastic about the dry cardboard loaf that made up a disproportionate majority of our sandwiches, or the bland Bibimbap Breakfast Bowl covered up with yeasty, clearly over-fermented housemade kimchi.

What we ate here epitomizes the flavorless, unpalatable health food that so many people have come to expect from places that serve raw nut burgers on sprouted seed 'buns', but Zeal has somehow managed to apply that under-salted, cottonmouth-inducing style to dishes that are ordinarily known to be the exact opposite of that.

To make matters worse, Zeal is guilty of one of the most commonplace 'casual healthy restaurant' menu crimes: the classic 'grass-fed smoke screen' – wherein a restaurant gives you specific details regarding their 100% grass-fed beef so that (now, put at ease) you pass over the poor quality of their chicken, shrimp, and pork (with Zeal's supposedly local, pasture-raised bacon being an exception). Though we appreciate the beef, we don't appreciate the bullshit.

After eating at so many of these faux 'sustainable' restaurants across the country, we should be harder to fool at this point, but we're ever optimistic that our cynicism is unfounded and that surely this next place will be the thoroughly well-made, well-sourced, honest restaurant we've been dreaming of. Perhaps next time.

At the end of the day, Zeal is just overselling itself. The food's alright, and it's made with better-than-average ingredients, but it's taking too many shortcuts that leave it in no way deserving of its title.

Note: We recognize that the owner of Zeal reads and responds to a lot of these reviews. Understand that our own zealousness is not intended to sound malicious, and that we do appreciate Zeal's ultimately good intentions (as we hopefully made clear in our introduction), as well as the sincere concern the owner's...

This review is long over due unfortunately. My partner and I just had the veggie burger, vegan Mac, rainbow curry and the Tom kha soup. Everything was extremely bland — like EXTREMELY. It tasted as though someone just put all of the ingredients together and called it a dish but never tasted it. There is NO love in these dishes... For what you actually get, the prices are outrageous. For instance, my partner got the rainbow curry... it was 5 extra dollars to add chicken... only 4 small slices of chicken. The chicken looked like it had come out of a package with grill marks on it. I’m not sure if they grilled it themselves or not, but again, absolutely no flavor. Just a tiny piece of chicken heated up for an additional $5 while the rest of the meal consisted of long cut up unseasoned vegetables and rice in a very unappealing sauce for $20. Each dish was this way. The veggie burger tasted like a mushy chickpea — bland, bland, bland were the flavor notes I received. It was pretty upsetting to say the least. To spend so much money on what you think will be healthy quality food and you end your meal absolutely unsatisfied. I’m just amazed at the poor execution along with the extremely unfair pricing. -If you want higher quality organic food in the area with a similar menu, just go to thrive. The food feels alive loaded with lots of love and care. This is not that. (Just an honest person in the community. I have no association to thrive). We were reminded why we haven’t eaten at zeal in almost two years. Hopefully this message is taken into consideration to step the game up. But as of now we will not be returning.

Oh and here’s a though, maybe pay your cooks more and you’ll serve better food which will in turn call in more happy customers.

Response to owner: Thank you for your response but unfortunately the lavender lemonade was not that dope. It would’ve been if it wasn’t $4 for what looked to be 12 oz or less in an unusually short cup. The lemonade did taste good but again... why does it feel like Zeal is trying to skimp in every area to save money? It’s lavender, lemons, sweetener and water. I think at least a 16 oz is worth $4. What you give, you get and you’ll see that if you make some adjustments to your establishment. I’m sorry, but I really can’t say one positive thing about the meal we...