Veggie and Tea House

It’s been CLOSED for about a month now. Too bad. Will miss those Veggie juices!

I passed by and saw the inviting sign and the white corporate complex that made the joint look legit. For the next few hours, I obsessed about the mouth-​watering «specials» pics I had seen in passing. Finally, I made it back.
Once in, I was further enticed by the restaurant’s pro-​veggie concept. I was gonna’ get my health on while chowing down a Chinese feast, I thought.
My five item bento-​box-​like plate arrived, and though I’d heard a «ding» of a microwave, I told myself, «Nawww, there’s gotta’ be a chef back there.»
The sodium-​free soy sauce should’ve been more than a hint. I bit in: Agh! Ick! Splgggh! WTF? o_​O The food was *taste*-free. And no amount of unsoy-​soy sauce could save this mouthful of raw and crunch and splgggh!
To be genuine, I did warm up to the «healthy» taste of the food. My plate was jam-​packed w/​vegetables and the promise of more seemingly spilling into the middle from the sides. No matter how much I ate, I couldn’t put a dent in the portion.
Between chews, I interviewed the waitress a bit. There is NO chef on duty. And, yes, that was the «ding» of nuked food. The whole radiation concept has got to take away from the fresh vegetable idea. Yes?
We were also given a free Boba drink and a tapioca rice pudding. I don’t recall my daughter ever chucking anything Bobalicious, but «awful» couldn’t begin to characterize the chalky liquid w/​slimy balls boinking around the bottom.
Oddly, the five-​year-​old actually ate the food. Then again, the Hebrews *loved* manna. Indeed, we were full of hope and starvin’ like Marvin by the time we bopped into the V& T. Well, the pictures were tasty.
Back at the hotel room, we chucked the vegetable leftovers and ordered Domino’s.

Tried this place for the first time today and I absolutely LOVE it! Great and healthy food plus wonderful servers deserves a 5star!!! I will definitely come back here again and I recommend it to everyone, not just vegetarians :)

I came to this restauarant thinking it was in old town but it was in a HSBC building on the first floor. I would have totally missed it w/​o my GPS.
Well… the reason I picked this place was bc Maria… my friend is vegetarian. I wasn’t expecting anything fancy… sorta assumed veggies stir fried… nothing special BUT WAS I WRONG! Maria & I were grubbing!
The meal was started out w/​a soy bean soup… kind of bland… but you are supplied w/​soy sauce & chili sauce to make it your own. Everything on the plate was so good. We both got the kung pao veggies w/​brn rice & a spread of shredded cabbage (green & red). The kung pao was so amazing. All the veggies were cooked to perfection. The celery had the perfect crisp when you bit into it while the zucchini was just soft enough to melt in your mouth but still have the skin to chew. The cabbage was was the ideal pallet cleanser… esp w/​the strawbery yogurt dressing. I also ordered the cheese dumpling which was legend… wait for it… dary. It wasn’t the typical wonton w/​cream cheese. This was a cheese, brocolli, carrots DUMPLING with the most yummy spicey sauce. The dessert was tappioca w/​sweet yams.
Like I said… I wasn’t expecting much but this just made veggies even more awesome. :)

Okay, I’ve been to the Veggie and Tea House a handful of times now; time to write a review. Where to begin… I kind of love this place. (Good a place as any to start, right?) The location isn’t so great — it’s totally bare and uninviting and easy to miss hidden at the entry to an office complex — which is why I passed by it so many times before finally deciding to try something new in the area. I am so glad I did. Their food is delicious (I’m a fan of their Cashew Nut Vegetable), and their portions are HUMONGOUS. Before your meal you get hot soup, you get two sides with your order, and tapioca pudding for dessert. And you’re served a BOAT load of food. Literally! It’s served inside a boat! Which I really, really like. Today I ordered my lunch to go, and I felt a little ridiculous (ly awesome) carrying an entire platter of food back to my office. I am so stuffed with deliciousness, and all I want to do is eat more. There’s always tomorrow…

I didn’t patronize this place for a long time because it is practically hidden in an office building complex and it looks like a café that exists for the office workers. However, it is not a quasi café at all!
This place is a veggie heaven. My dish and all there dishes are low calories. I ordered the sauteed tofu plate that rand it at only 296 calories.
I thought that my plate would be some small jankity thing, but it wasn’t like that at all. The tofu serving was generous and had a nice spicy kick. The rice was a decent serving and then you picked two sides. I ordered cabbage and carrots and they gave me this amazing dressing that went over the cabbage. And before the plate came out of the kitchen, they served me a bowl of soup and their special tapioca pudding. All plates come with a free cup of tapioca pudding. All this for under $ 10.00! And the other cool thing is the plays have been labeled with a healthy function. For example, my plate helps manage blood glucose. All the plates, as it turns out, were crafted by physicians not some McDonald’s burger flipping chef. You can taste the quality in every bite. It was simply scrumptious.
And I added a milk tea boba to the order to make the meal perfect.
I love that this place is one block from my apartment. I’ll be going back a million times.
I was concerned that it might close because of it’s location and there was a lack of patronage. So if you are reading this, and you like veggies at an amazing price, get up and go visit them because I’m going to be angry if they have to close. Come on locals! This place is worth your appetite and easy on the wallet!

Anyone who thinks the food here is bland has been eating at McDonald’s too much. This place serves real food — not the food-​like substances sold at chain restaurants. Once you detoxify your body and mind of that sugar-​salt-​fat mass-​marketed crap, you can appreciate Veggie and Tea House. This is whole foods with actual NUTRIENTS! (You know — the reason why humans actually need food.)
This place is in a rather strange location on Colorado Boulevard next to HSBC Bank so it’s easy to miss, but once you find it it’s a nice little treasure trove of healthy dining. True, the menu is a smaller version of the San Dimas location, but there are many selections and everything is very fresh (and served quickly).
The portions are about twice the amount of food I’d normally eat at lunch. You get soup, brown rice, two ample servings of veggie side dishes (choice of bean sprouts, pickled carrots or spicy cabbage), a big helping of the main dish, and a small but delicious cup of coconut-​tapioca dessert. Also provided are various condiments — soy sauce, plum sauce, a bit of sambal (red garlic-​chili sauce), and what-​not. If you want flavor, you got flavor.
However, this place is no Pei Wei. If that is what you want, have fun with your stroke/​heart attack/​cancer/​diabetes. (You think I’m joking? Read The China Study.)
My favorite dishes include:
* Imperial rolls — steamed rice paper rolls filled with veggies
* Steamed noodles — similar to fried noodles but not nearly as greasy and fatty as what you’d get at Panda Express
* Lettuce cups — iceberg lettuce cups filled with jicama, pine nuts and other veggies in a slightly sweet plum/​hoisin sauce
* Sauteed tofu — fried tofu and veggies stir-​fried in a light sauce
The service is also incredibly nice and helpful. You order at the counter and pay, but they bring you your food and keep your drink cup refilled without having to ask. This place is very high-​prana.

Noticed this the other day and thought I’d stop by — I’ve been to the San Dimas shop a few years back, so I recognized the name immediately, and I was excited to see a new vegetarian restaurant nearby — overall, Pasadena is kind of a wasteland for good vegetarian /​vegan food.
I’d really love to like this place, but personally, I think it’s fairly mediocre. I’ll probably go again anyway because it’s convenient and close to work, but the food is pretty uninspired. It’s not exactly bland /​flavorless, but the flavors are kind of generic. I get the idea that they prepare everything in advance and just serve it up when you order. I do like that they don’t rely too heavily on mock meats and that they grow some of their own vegetables.
The menu is too unfocused — it’s like a generic pan-​Asian kind of menu. I believe the chain is Chinese /​Taiwanese owned, but the menu features dishes from all over the place, none of which seem to be particularly authentic or interesting. And for what you get, the prices seem a little high — I paid $ 10 for a lunch plate with 2 sides, a bowl of bland bean-​sprout and vegetable soup, and a small coconut-​milk and sago dessert.
The day I visited, the brown rice was unforgivably dry for an Asian place (tasted like it had been spread out on a baking sheet after being cooked).
Overall, I think this place is not likely to win a lot of converts to either vegetarianism or healthy eating. Hopefully

ok, so to be fair, this review is about the San Dimas location… but REALLY glad to know they’ve opened another in Pasadena…
we became BIG TIME fans of theirs when they had a place in Irvine (I still have dreams of their steamed bamboo roots…). went to the SD one several months ago w/​my cuz and his missus to introduce them to the genre — and as I remembered, the veggie balls were some of the most amazingly orgasmic food I’ve ever put between my lips!
You just can’t get fresher, healthier food than these folks serve up and I’m quite frankly shocked the SD store hasn’t been reviewed (at least that I could find…)!
their grilled squash is very flavorful, their fresh cole-​slaw-​like salads are yummy, their marinated carrots et al are just lovely, and their ‘cheese balls’ are top notch.
also got a stuffed-​veggie-​something that the sweetie really grooved on, but can’t remember what it was, exactly…

I got the tofu dish. It comes with some rice and a ton of steamed veggies. The sauteed tofu was pretty good, but everything else was bland and uninspiring. Kinda pointless to give a big plate of food, if ¾ of it is unappetizing.
I wouldn’t come back to this place. It’s a cool concept that they source their vegetables from their own farm, but the cooking and flavoring needs drastic improvement. Try My Vegan near California and Arroyo for great tasting food, or Bean Sprouts in Arcadia for great food without onion and garlic.

After hearing about this new veg*n restaurant in Pasadena, I checked out the website and saw 28 very yummy looking dishes. They don’t use MSG, artificial colors, flavors or preservatives AND they grow many of their own veggies at their 400 acre farm in El Centro, CA. I was very excited to try V&TH, but was very disappointed by the result.
V&TH is located on the street level floor of the HSBC bank and Kaiser Permanente vision building. It’s in «no man’s land»… too far east of Old Town and too far west of Pasadena City College. The restaurant is very large with high ceilings, but the layout is more like a coffee shop and only seats 18 people. The front counter is empty, other than a few random whole vegetables sitting where trays of food should be.
Unlike their San Dimas location, they only have 8 of the 28 items. Eight — Steamed rice noodles, steamed king pao veggies, steamed cashew nut vegetables, steamed veggie cabbage rolls, steamed sauteed tofu, steamed imperial veggie rolls, fried house veggie rice organic, and veggie cheese dumplings. Each item came with brown rice, raw cabbage, and two «salad» choices: red cabbage coleslaw, pickled carrots, marinated bean sprouts. Notice the trend? Practically everything was steamed, raw, or pickled. Prices range from $ 7.99-$ 9.50.
Portions were large and filling, but they lacked flavor. Healthy food doesn’t have to be boring!

Hot right off the presses… or…umm wok as the case might be. This place just opened and impresses that savvy, locovore, vegan persona that so often crops up in these lean, mean times.
I must admit that what drew me into this place was the «free meal» advertised from 11÷01−11÷07 between the hours of 3−6pm. Thus, I was a bit shocked to find the place nearly empty.
Wow.
This place has been unyelped and I’m it’s lucky first.
We all have a first time.
The place is pretty small and unpretentious. It reminded me a little bit of a subway, but you’re coming for the healthy food so cast aside all those foo-​foo notions of hipster vegetarian restaurants… wait…most vegetarian restaurants have struck me as… umm…reductive in décor so i guess in this arena it’s more of the same.
Anyway, that cast aside, the food tastes like my mom’s. This place (like it’s San Dimas counterpart) dons a menu festooned with vegetables harvested from a farm located somewhere near San Diego (as divulged by the worker). This stuff tastes really fresh and not processed, so I think if the location doesn’t work against it, «Veggie and tea house» might stand a fighting chance against all of those other fancy schmancy Pasadena establishments.
I had the #13, the tofu. It was delicious. Just to warn you though, one ingredient that is not included on the list is the dangerous, spicy red pepper. I happen to love spicy food so this didn’t count against the flavor factor but if you’re sensitive, I might request them to leave out the peppers. It was served with pickled carrots and cucumbers and a purple cabbage coleslaw. The purple-​cabbage coleslaw is not vegan, so you might want to let them know if you are beforehand.
I also tried the veggie cheese dumplings and the noodles. It was all good and i kept tasting that fresh vegetable… taste.
Menus have calories listed… often a death sentence for many a mainstream restaurant, but here… the calories are worn like a badge of honor.
I really want to see this place succeed.