O2 Vegan Cafe

I tried O2 for the first time today and had a very nice experience. I’m vegan and gluten free, so ordering anywhere is obviously a challenge. They were super nice about it and helped me choose something for lunch. I had the chuna on a GF English muffin and, although it did take quite a while to make, it was very tasty.
The café was pretty busy — even busier, I think, than the 2 employees expected. The 2 girls working were both incredibly nice and working very hard but no doubt a 3^rd person would have helped. I thought they did a remarkable job considering the number of orders that all came in within a 10 minute span. Only one girl was preparing food, while the other (who seemed to be new) was taking and ringing up orders.
There’s a nice, relaxed, casual vibe; very unpretentious and unassuming. I will definitely return and hope to bump my review to 5 stars once they work out their staffing kinks.
:)

Had a very yummy Seitan Slam (a kind of vegan Reuben) and enjoyed it a lot — but it took 35 minutes of waiting to get it! (And this was arriving after 1pm, so I didn’t think I was in the middle of a huge lunchtime glut of customers). Ended up dashing out the door, sandwich in hand, and guiltily stuffing into my face in the doctor’s waiting room at 2pm…
So while it was a tasty sandwich, probably wouldn’t pick this place for a quick lunch, ever.

I wasn’t able to try a lot of the food, but was really craving vegan cream cheese on a bagel. Everything is also quite cheap, so I’d love to go again!

Great service from Stephanie. We enjoyed our seitan bomb special, veggie burger and tropical smoothie. For those who have never visited before, all sandwiches are prepared to order and take some time to cookie on the panini press. Since food is prepared fresh, this also means that they will not always have everything in stock since they don’t serve microwaved frozen food. Staff here is wonderful and the café is owned by an awesome family. Would eat here daily if we lived closer. My daughter also liked her whoopie pie, which although not made in house was quite delicious.

I love this place! the food is great the prices are reasonable and the people are friendly. My kids love it too!

I eat there whenever I am in the area which is usually twice a week.
I find the food to be delicious and healthful. The staff is a pleasure to deal with. About as good a restaurant as you could find.

I’ve had both the Chuna melt and the Seitan Slam, and both were excellent! Great staff, great service, and a great place. I highly recommend!

We went in on a Sunday afternoon while visiting Cambridge. The atmosphere was comfy, the staff extremely friendly, and the service very prompt!
I had the Chuna Melt which is kind of like tuna salad, but without the cruelty. The wait was only a few minutes, and I got to chat with the staff while I was waiting.
My husband had the Seitan Slam, and he absolutely loved it. When he eats gluten, he really wants to enjoy it, and this was a very tasty treat for him.
I don’t think either sandwich last ten minutes. We love that O2 Vegan Café is a completely vegan establishment. They are few and far between, and finding one that serves delicious food is difficult! We will definitely be back!

Has a good selection of actually vegan pastries. They are also not just polite, but legitimately nice.

Pros: great veggie burger, entirely vegan, friendly staff
Cons: no service at the table, no knives, chuna melt
I was really excited to go here, as it is the only completely vegan restaurant in Cambridge as far as I go. There are soups, smoothies, sandwiches, wraps, or there is the option of eating a sandwich as a salad, if you do not want to eat any bread. The veggie burger is really good but the Chuna Melt as a salad was very disappointing. I wanted to go for a healthy option, but the salad was really lacking flavor. The staff is incredibly nice but I did have to order at the counter and there weren’t any knives. So I can definitely recommend the veggie burger for a quick bite, but it’s not a great place for a healthy dinner or to really dine out. The prices were very reasonable.

Really, my only complaint is that they’re not open later. When I go to a show at Oberon, I want to eat here but I usually can’t. I love the burgers (Daiya not the house cheese), the coffee (iced coffee comes with coffee ice cubes, which is genius), and the baked desserts (especially the croissants and the cookies & cream donuts)

Fresh little, um, fresh café.
Popped in for a quick vegan sando and iced tea. A soft, chewy demi held BBQ seitan, pickled carrots, cabbage and a so-secret-it’s-scant sesame sauce comprised the Banh Mimi ($ 7), and a tall, sharp and slight sweet ginger peach iced tea teetered just over a ten spot. It’ll still make the world famous Lunch Under $ 10, because taxes are the choking hand of The Man, yo, and are NOT figured in to this equation!
Crunchy, funky staff are completely chill, and while I grabbed lunch to go, the petite dining room had free seats-​a-​go-​go and comp wifi — prime utilities near Harvard Square at high noon. Oh, and those vegan doughtnuts under the cloche looked damned good; I’ve got my eye on you, Sabertooth Bakery.
I can definitely see myself returning for a hangover breakfast sandwich. If by hangover, I mean a bacon coma replete with the meat sweats. And all this from a yoga studio!

Service is a little slow and the food isn’t terribly filling. It was tasty-​ish, but nothing to write home about. The Hyper Monkey Smoothie tasted … umm … chalky. Not very good. My breakfast smoothie (hemp protein, coconut milk, banana) tastes way better than this (and hemp protein is not known for its delicious properties). Their version of a Reuben sandwich is decent, but if you go about a mile up the road on Mass Ave into Central Square, the Reuben at Veggie Galaxy is worlds better.
I’m willing to try other items here and I’m sure I will at some point, but probably not anytime soon.

LOVE this place! I’m addicted to the tofu breakfast sandwich, and the baked goods are amazing. Croissants, donuts, cookies, cupcakes, all very tasty things. Service always friendly and I love going there. Two thumbs up!

The staff is friendly and the food is really good!
I love that its low-​key and 100% vegan.
I’ve never had any issues especially with cleanliness.
I just really don’t get the bad reviews.
I think people are so uptight and those Cambridge snots need to just get over themselves.

I’m a vegan and was really looking forward to trying 02 for the options that I usually don’t get when I eat out. However, I was really disappointed to find out that at 1:30pm they were already out of veggie burgers, tofu, AND seitan! How is a vegan sandwich café out of essential ingredients that basically make it impossible to eat most of their options? I ended up getting their Moroccan Chickpea soup which, yes, was good but it was not what I came for. I wasn’t in the mood for cupcakes, but had I wanted one, they only had two cupcakes left which again, I think is ridiculous considering the time of day.

I visited on a weekday, mid-​afternoon. When I walked in, I was immediately disappointed. The café is dingy, run down, and not clean. There was only one customer other than myself.
Despite this, I was looking forward to trying the nachos. However, they were out of cheese!
So I thought I’d try a dessert. They had one donut, 2 runny cannoli, and 2 cookies. That’s it. When I asked the associate, she didn’t know when they had been delivered or how old they were, but that they definitely were not homemade or from today.
I love that this business is 100% vegan, so I hope this day was just a fluke, but I can’t think of any reason to return.

Good food, terrible service!
Our soup, tofu sandwich and veggie burger tasted delicious. However, service was terrrible. There were only few tables occupied and it still took more than half hour to get our food.
I wouldn’t drive all the way to eat here, may revisit if I am in the area.

This review is long overdue but I can’t believe based on my experience that this place is even surviving on Unilocal with a reasonable rating. Horrible staff, horrible food and 30 minutes of my life I will never get back.
As a vegetarian who eats vegan a large percentage of the time, I noticed this place while wandering with my husband down mass ave and just had to try it. I ordered the seitan sandwich, but that was only after the completely incompetent staff found it physically impossible to recommend one single thing on the menu to me. Not one of them could come up with anything that they would eat themselves… That should have been my signal to leave, but no…
Even though 3 people were working, 2 of them disappeared into an office in the back and left one girl to prepare food. It was not very busy (only 1 other family in the restaurant), but the single girl left alone was incapable of multitasking, and could only make one piece of food at a time. 20 minutes later my sandwich was still not in front of me and I asked how long it would be. Rudely, one of the other staff members told me it was on the grill, as if I was being unreasonable. Then I watched the lonely girl worker pick it up off the grill… drop it on the floor. Then stare blankly at it. Still, no other staff members helped her.
At this point my sandwich had to be made again and rushed because I had been waiting so long. By the time it was in front of me it consisted of soggy bread and cold seitan that had the consistency of a rubber eraser. More than 30 minutes after placing my order, I returned my sandwich and asked for a refund. The staff was very angry with my request and reluctantly issued my refund while I did everything I could not to laugh in the face of this sad excuse for a vegan café.
I don’t like to write bad reviews but I feel like this place is being represented way too positively and I don’t want others to have the same experience. There are so many other awesome vegan restaurants in the area and this place needs to serious changes to compete.

Came by after seeing another smoothie shop closed – great happenstance! Got the green bliss and it’s delicious. It’s a little too sweet for my taste but I love love the avocado part!

I’ve never tried the food here but I love their smoothies. I get the spicy monkey and the green one with kale (I forget the name) quite often.
I did try one of their vegan (and gluten free? Not sure) donuts. Umm. It fell apart. Pretty spectacularly. And the flavor was subpar. Unless you have a dietary restriction I would just got to Dunkin Donuts next door for donuts and coffee cakes. There’s also Violettes Bakery downstairs which I’m sure fills that niche.
But yeah, other than that I can’t complain. It’s a bit painful spending $ 6 on one of those smoothies that despite being «organic» is really in no way healthy (sugarrrr)…but man is it tasty. I will probably stop by there again sometime this afternoon.