Nirvana Tea House & Cafe — Restaurant in Millis

High quality, DELICIOUS, affordable vegan & gf food in Southern Mass?! What?! It sounds too good to be true, but it's so real. The people here are lovely and the food is so delicious I suspect it would please even the bro-est of kegstanding tailgate bros. So affordable compared to basically any restaurant in the area & filling portions, plus a lovely shaded patio where you can sit with dogs. The interior ambiance is very zen, as well. Food comes just like in the pictures, if not more robust. Their dragon bowl & chai rank among the best edible things in Massachusetts.

Edit: minus 1 star because, despite me being a long time customer & it never being an issue before, someone there - I think the owner, possibly? - hassled me about my service dog. Who was well behaved, quiet, still, bothering no one, lying under the table. Some other snobby patrons were muttering about dogs in restaurants. She wasn’t shedding everywhere or drooling or chewing on furniture. She was a model of good behavior, bothering no one, helping me, and I still got side eyed and ushered out by this guy despite being a long time customer who spends a lot of money here, is laid back with their occasional mistakes. I’d tip lavishly as well if the place allowed tips, because there have been some truly spectacular staff here at times. But this guy in every way but outright (illegally) stating it, made it clear my dog wasn’t welcome. We usually sit outside as a courtesy but it was winter & no outdoor tables were available.

So I haven’t gone back since. It just left a bad taste in my mouth. Zero respect for the fact that we were regular good customers and my dog was perfectly behaved. I can see, rationally, as I wasn’t alone, there might be a question as to why the dog was needed when a person was with me. I was dropping the person off and had been alone all day and would be again after lunch. The dog is necessary for day to day medical alert purposes and I couldn’t leave her home in this case - needed her the rest of the day while alone. I guess we could have skipped lunch but there was, as I saw it, no reason to. She’s legally allowed inside and is good as is required by law. So the whole thing was just lame & though a minor irritation, I’ll honestly not go back because of the discomfort and embarrassment of this random man coming over and lowkey harassing us (out of line) after what had already been a hard, crazy day, based on a side eye from 2 ignorant animalphobes who straggled in, probably not even as regular customers.

Also, I wish they allowed tipping, but I understand why they don’t. Not allowing it is better for customers but it sucks for service industry staff who realistically probably can’t be making more than $15/hour, I’m guessing, which is just not that much these days. Having worked in the industry formerly, I think this is more a gimmicky quirk of management that isn’t very sensitive to the needs of workers. But I may be wrong on that, so that’s just a side note.

This was a 4 star review but I docked it one the more I thought about it, because honestly, we won’t be back and more than a year later, I’m still annoyed and frankly fed up with being targeted as a minority. There’s just a point where you get fed up, and I used to think, “Oh, there’s one of those problem people who likes to raise a fuss and get entitled!” but honestly, you just get fed up with these passive aggressive bullies trying to run you around because you have some kind of disability or health issue that they don’t understand. I’m not trying to a pain in anyone’s butt, just trying to have a normal life & I’m endlessly considerate and apologetic for myself all the time, and today I’m changing this because I’m so tired of it. We did nothing. We were awesome. This is...

I was really excited to try Nirvana, but had a surprisingly negative experience. There's a sign at the door that says "Please wait to be seated." So naturally, I waited to be seated. When someone found me waiting, they acted a bit put off and said I could sit wherever I want and should seat myself. Ok, I went ahead and did that. When the same person eventually came to start taking my order, I asked about two teas, and they said they hadn't tried them. Not the end of the world, but it's helpful when servers can provide some insights. To be fair, this person seemed new/inexperienced. The other staff people seemed to have more confidence. I ordered three items, not realizing the portions would be as generous as they are. The fresh fruit parfait with cashew cream was delicious! The other items -- hash brown and nachos -- came totally undercooked. The hash brown was cold/mushy. Tasted like an undercooked frozen hash brown. The vegan meat on the nachos was also totally undercooked. I tried to eat a few bites, but I could tell that it might even be a food safety issue. I waited patiently for someone to come check on how my food was so I could let them know. No one came, while I watched servers be attentive to all other tables. I continued to wait, and eventually got up to let someone know about the issue. At that point, I didn't have time to wait to send it back to the kitchen, and I was also just turned off by the poor preparation, the poor service, and the flies circling around my table. The woman who I spoke to confirmed she'd take the food off the bill, but also made a poor excuse that "everyone came in at the same time." Not helpful, and also not really fair to say, as I saw clearly that other tables were being better attended to than I was. Not sure if it's because I was alone, and don't want to believe it's because I'm not a white person, but those are the two things that distinguished me from everyone else being better served. Thankful that they took the food off the menu, but really dissatisfied with my experience and...

I’m visiting my family from out of town for Mother’s Day. We decided to have brunch here as all of the mothers we were celebrating are vegan/vegetarian. We made a reservation for brunch and were seated pretty promptly. Unfortunately, although we were seated quite quickly, it took about 30 minutes after we sat for our waitress to arrive to our table, apologize for the wait, and take our drink and appetizer orders. It took another 30 minutes for us to actually get all of our drinks and our one appetizer. We waited for another 15 minutes before sending one of our party members to ask for our waitress so that we could order our entrees. We were told that somebody would be over immediately and waited another 10 minutes before we sent somebody else to ask again. We were then told that they were not aware that we wanted to order more food and then our waitress came over. She let us know that there were a lot of items not available due to lack of ingredients and that she would bring over the manager. The manager then came over to tell us that the kitchen was actually closed and that we would not be able to order anything from the menu which we were very irritated about. This brunch was something that the mothers of our group were excited about. One thing that I will say is that they did not charge us for the drinks and appetizer that we did order because of how long we were waiting and they offered us pastries for no charge. Although they did offer us the pastries and did not charge us, we were and are still quite upset because some members of our group enjoyed coming here in the past and had expected more than what we got. We also are confused as to why they couldn’t have let us know beforehand that the kitchen was closing so that we could put in our orders earlier. Not sure whether other members of our party will be coming back here but I definitely...