Dharma’s Restaurant

Get anything. You will love it. Everything is delicious. Fresh. Tasty. Huge portions. Fair prices. Funky retro décor. On a nice day/​evening, you can sit outside (i.e…bring your dog). They can make just about everything vegan. Eat. Be happy. Dharma’s.

The food here is delicious healthy and filling. One of the only places in town where I leave feeling fully satisfied and not overloaded with sodium and grease.

Really great food they put the time to do it right and we appreciate that. I just think it would be really cool if they gave the place a themed atmosphere, more like a cafeteria in there. Lol, its all good no matter great place to try if you haven’t yet.

Hit or miss with this place. Usually good food. I like the overall feel of the place too. But occasionally they «lose» your order and you are left sitting there watching everyone else eat at your table.
Some simple customer service would have been nice in these situations (happened twice so far). Basic acknowledgement that they screwed up and are sorry is always a good thing to keep a loyal customer coming back. instead, when asked if my order was coming, they just said ‘looks like it got lost, should be coming out soon’. 25 mins later I was finally eating while my friends were finished and itching to leave.
lame.

It’s nice to have a restaurant with a healthy menu and vegan options as well. I know Dharma’s is an institution in Santa Cruz and therefore I am NOT supposed to say anything negative about it. The food is fine the atmosphere is nice and the staff is friendly. Now let’s talk about the $ 15 veggie burger. I mean seriously. This place is so ridiculously overpriced, I cannot justify paying these prices for simple food. in fact I stopped going there because I felt so offended by the pricing. I think it is exclusively intended for the rich pot grower hippies. As for me I will continue to eat at the hot bar or take out from New Leaf or Whole Foods when I am on this side of town. Downtown there is always India Joze, thank goodness.

Excited to try good vegetarian in San Jose and gave Dharmas a try. To sum it up if you can look past the dingy psychedelic décor, mediocre food, and lackluster service… This is the place for you.
Being in the Bay Area, there is a wide variety of higher quality food places. In trying to serve up so many different genres of food, the quality of food sincerely suffers.
The menu spread over Italian, Spanish, and Thai. I had the Bo Thai Noodles (nothing special but a decent bowl of noodles), the Greek pasta (garlic bread was noteworthy but pasta was lacking in a sauce element and flavor), and the special that night which was tamales (horrendous– lacked flavor, texture… Just genuinely a bad dish).
This is also a walk up and order type of diner and the service was very lack luster. The folks at the counter were impatient and unhelpful. Not impressed, would not return.

Plenty of gluten free options and large portions (maybe too big). The prices are reasonable too.

I am so disappointed!!! The reviews looked so good and I need to eat gluten free. I was excited to have a new place to go where I wouldn’t be sick. I got ½ a cheese gluten free cheese pizza and a garden salad. The pizza was soggy, the sauce was overly sweet like syrup & tasted like cardboard!!! The salad had cucumber that was gross! It was full of shredded carrot. I did not order a carrot salad although I love carrots. The salad dressing was funky! And one if the worst 1000 Island’s I have ever had it is usually the safest bet. I had not eaten all day & was starving. What is scary is I have a groupon for this place and I do not want to have to use it!!!

Had a Groupon and tried it. $ 20 without drinks got me a tomato/​butternut squash soup that was quite good, but needed crushed pepper. Had the ravioli which came with large salad.
I would come again.

Spend your hard earned money somewhere where they can at least be bothered to care. Staff are uninterested in you and the food they are serving you. Nachos? Corn chips with a half pound of cheese on top. Angry guy behind the register messed up your order? Too bad. Every time I’ve visited here it’s been a disappointing example of an establishment taking advantage of folks desire to eat healthy to serve some unfortunate dishes
This star is for the nice, older Mexican gentleman who clean the tables.

The Nuclear Bluff and Rueben sandwiches are amazing. Even their mac and cheese is exquisite their portions are large so you may want to split a meal with a friend or figure on taking half of it home to eat the next day as delicious leftovers.
I eat desserts first. I love their vegan chocolate cake. Their milkshakes either made with real ice cream or with vegan ice cream are also great.
Having Wi-​Fi at a meeting place is always handy.
Everything there is vegetarian with many dishes vegan.

Every time I eat here, it’s good. Whether it is the noodles, Bo thai for dinner or surprisingly breakfast!
We went for breakfast after a long hiatus of visiting. I was a little cranky because all I saw was a lot of tofu scrambles on the menu and the seating kind of reminds me of a convalescent home. I ended up ordering (sharing because it was HUGE), a breakfast burrito not expecting much, tofu, cheese, and potato, and refried beans, salsa etc. It was absolutely delicious! It also came with a salad on the side with very tasting dressing. So, I left feeling full, but light and satiated. ;)
I really enjoyed my breakfast and really I felt like I was in a buddhist ‘church’ kitchen on Sunday with good vibes.
My decaf coffee was so tasty, I ordered two cups, refills are only $ 1.10.

This is an ovo-​lacto vegetarian restaurant that makes virtually everything vegan upon request! And there are many options that are already vegan. Marco, one of the chefs, is also vegan. They also have a large gluten free menu. The restaurant is very casual and located in a shopping mall. It has a «cafeteria-​style» feel to it. You stand in line to order, then choose a table and when your number is called you pick up your food. The menu is huge so it is easy to find something you will like.
I ate there several times during my Capitola visit from breakfast to dinner and enjoyed the food every time. The portions are very large so I’m glad we had a fridge in our hotel for leftovers. Breakfast had always been my favorite meal when dining out until I became vegan. Now I’m lucky if a restaurant offers oatmeal or a fruit plate. So to have options for breakfast was something I really enjoyed!
The vegan options available in Capitola and Santa Cruz are wonderful — from fine dining to casual dining — I felt welcomed! Another nice surprise is if you sign up for their newsletter they send updates to their menu along with a $ 6 coupon. Be sure to add this stop to your list the next time you head to the beach!

I really like the vegan pasta con pesto. Unfortunately, this review is not about the vegan pasta con pesto.
This review is about the dharma chili dog. I expected a hot dog that I could conceivably hold in my hand, albeit get a little messy. That’s a chili dog.
What I got was an open face hotdog bun covered in chili and vegan cheese. With a little digging I found the star of the show: a skinny little vegetarian hot dog. The whole package was probably four times as wide as the actual dog.
Under the pile of chili and cheez the bun got way too soggy for me to want to keep eating the dish after I killed off the tiny hot dog.
Also bring your own cup or bottle for water cause the cups they provide are ridiculously small.

Here is the Indian Curry Plate with papadam, tofu, veggies, rice, cashews, really good fruit chutney and raita.
Others at our table enjoy their chili, and breakfast burrito and tofu scramble.

Yummy food and wonderful atmosphere. The old dude behind the counter was pretty rad too. He was like hey guys. Haha. I got a mole burrito that had fat chunks of potatoes and my lover got a burger!
What I loved most was the artwork by Bruce Harmon they had displayed on the walls. He is just so absolutely brilliant and I love his work. Bravo dharmas!

Been coming here for years but first time back in a year since moving west.
It remains the best varied and tasty vegan/​veg place form Monterey to SF/​San Jose corridor
Always great specials and the base menu equally as good.
Got the vegan butternut ravioli today and it was a delight, had to pass on dessert as it was most filling.

This is so sad. I would love to support every vegan restaurant out there, but some of them are just beyond hope. I took my wife out to Santa Cruz for a nice getaway day on the beach. We planned every little detail including a place to grab a nice lunch.
On Unilocal,this place looked amazing, so we have decided to give it a try. First impressions were not exactly great. Restaurant looks a bit rundown, everything just looks like it needs a deep cleaning. This is underlined by a weird musty smell of old furniture.
Unfortunately our experience did not end there. Food was awful. My chow mein was so burnt that it was inedible. I tried couple of bites, but the bitter burnt taste was just disgusting and potato and leek soup was bland and overcooked. Pesto ravioli was swimming in oil and it tasted gross. We left all out food pretty much untouched and left the restaurant.
Nothing is cooked to order, everything just looks like it’s reheated and it tastes like vegan version of Denny’s. What a shame.

Although the prices seem a bit expensive the portions are humungous!
I got a Dharma dog with blue tortilla chips and a Root Beer Float. My Unilocal/​FB pal, BKW, wrote about having homemade Root Beer Floats often and ever since I’ve had a hankering for them. Mmmm… it was worth the calories and too big for me to finish.
Mr Rinky and I shared a Burrito Bueno which came with beans, brown rice, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes — HUGE! It came with a side salad — Yummers and filling!
It’s hard for us to think about eating at any other place in Capitola or Santa Cruz–
we always head for Dharma’s.

A vegetarian 3-​hot dog morning burrito for dinner?
That sounds pretty yuppie trailer park.
It is also definitely what I want.
Verdict: It was the best yuppie trailer park food I’ve ever had.
Not that I’ve ever had yuppie trailer park food before, but I’d imagine if that were a real category of cuisine that it could go all types of wrong. This dish was pretty good. Not mind-​blowing, but it didn’t have meat and it was interesting overall and that’s what I was looking for at the time.
The Official Dish:
3 DOG MORNING BURRITO — $ 11.50
Scrambled tofu, potatoes, onions, 3 tofu hot dogs, jalapenos, red peppers and mushrooms with cheese, guacamole, sour cream and chips.
I will say that it was not, by any stretch of imagination, a burrito. Correct me if I’m wrong, but a burrito should mean that the filling is at least somewhat contained inside of the tortilla/​packaging vessel, amiright? This tortilla was more like a giant dosa with all the filling flopped on top. There was no effort made by the tortilla to contain the contents of this dish, so it looked more like an omelet scramble, but they were able to fit a lot more food on the plate than if it were a burrito so it was fine with me because in my book, more is more.
I also got the…
JAPANESE SAMURAI SOUP — $ 11.95
Soba noodles in miso broth with arame (seaweed), edamame, (soy beans), green onions, tofu, spinach, carrots, sesame seeds, and topped with shredded daikon.
The soup was massive, as it’s $ 12 price tag would suggest, but as far as flavor it was seriously lacking. I tried to eat as much as I could at Dharma’s, but I was dying for a little sodium and spice. I’m sure the dish is healthy as heck and there was no shortage of noodles and fixins, but in the end the flavor just wasn’t there. I took a lot of it home (it ended being 3 meals it was so big) and added some of every spice in my cabinet and soy sauce just to be sure I got 10 times the daily of dose of sodium that a normal human would eat.
I loved the very casual, order-​at-​the-​counter-​and-​wait-​for-​your-​name-​to-​be-​yelled diner-​type atmosphere. It was pretty busy when I came and though the food took a while (it’s made fresh, so that’s a good thing) and it was still somehow starkly quiet with all those people, I like the atmosphere. It felt like eating in a library, which is normally not allowed, so it’s a little rebellious if you have a good imagination.
They seem pretty kid-​friendly given their truly expansive menu and that they have all these animal figurine toys on the partitions throughout the dining area for kids to grab and play with. I was dining alone so I grabbed a dinosaur figure for company at my table and it was actually really nice. Nicer than some of the human company I’ve gone out to eat with, actually.
If in the area, I’d go back and try something different because that menu is huge and the prices for the portion are pretty fantastic. One meal could easily be two or three and though everything I had definitely «tasted healthy», it wasn’t by any means bad and it did make me curious to try more of Dharma’s delights.