The Pulse Cafe

Plus: the tofu scramble was amazing, prices were good, if you could follow your taste buds instead of thinking about how natural everything was, you wouldn’t even know you’re not eating meat some of the time!
Minus: not enough waitstaff, potatoes were undercooked, service was sub-​par overall.
Good place to go with Vegan friends. With other groups, keep looking.

Small cozy neighborhood-​joint-​like café where healthy quick meals are served? Count me in!
Tofu scramble is soooo yummy. The scramble tastes a little bit on the salty side by itself, but is such a perfect match for the home fries. And you must get their home fries on the side! Best potato dish i have ever had in the category of cafes.

Oh so very disappointed in this restaurant. Such high hopes for vegan fabulousness!
The sister and I have driven by The Pulse quite a few times and vowed to stop in for a bite to eat. Saturday was the day, with a trip to Buffalo Exchange on the docket. When we arrived, there was no one in the restaurant, except the chef (owner?) having a meeting at a table. Our server seated us with an incomprehensible couple of words, then promptly ignored us for an awkward amount of time. We were starting to think we had to order at a counter?. So confusing. We got up for menus AND helped yourself to water before our server acknowledged us once again. She did apologize saying she felt distracted. Ummm?
We ordered a TLT, Caesar salad, and broccoli with ‘cheese.’ By far, the best choice was the TLT! I tried not to steal it off my sister’s plate! My Caesar salad was VERY wet, although the dressing was tasty (not for date night, however!). The broccoli app was promising, but they left a puddle of murky water in the bottom of the bowl. Avoid, avoid, avoid. Ick.
We probably won’t be back. Sadness.

4 stars for food 2 stars for service. Went here twice this week and enjoyed the buffalo tofu bites and «steak and cheese». Both were really good but dont think ill be back because the service is so slow and horrible as other reviews have noted. Sad bc I really do like the food. They need more staff. Hope the owners read these reviews! Heard they are closing soon though so they probably don’t care. Also agree with another reviewer who would like to see more «healthful» vegan

Quick and dirty review: If you are vegan, and can afford to pay more than you would for your standard diner fare, definitely come here.
Long version of the review:
Writing from the perspective of someone who is not vegan, I think The Pulse Café has a lot of potential, but I think it has some wrinkles. I hope that, despite being in a doomed location, it has time to iron those wrinkles out.
Part of my issue with this place is the cost. I know some vegan ingredients are far more expensive than their equivalent, but this seemed like a bit much. My fiancée and I each got the barbecue burger, which for $ 10 gets you a homemade veggie burger, melted «cheddar,» and two flimsy onion rings. And nothing else. It’s pretty standard fare when you order a burger at a diner, you get something on the side. Chips, fries, a pickle spear, something. This is a burger on a plate. It looks so sad and lonely when it comes out, and when you consider it’s a $ 10 burger, it seems even worse. Now, it TASTES quite good. There’s just a practical part of my brain that looks at a $ 10 veggie burger and thinks, «There is something wrong here.»
On that same subject, there is a line on the menu which says, «Add any side to a sandwich for $ 3.» Usually, a line like that means that the sides costs more than $ 3, but getting them with a sandwich gives you some kind of deal. Not here. Of the 4 sides on the menu, one of them cost $ 4, two cost $ 3, and one cost $ 2. So one is an okay deal, but of course I can add the two sides for $ 3, because that’s what they cost! And if I add the fourth, will it cost me $ 1 more because I bought a sandwich?
Another issue here is the time it took to make everything. We were here with my fiancée’s mom, who got a tofu scramble, and we shared an order of chili cheese fries, which are an appetizer. It probably took half an hour for any of our food to come out, and the last thing that came out was the app. As we waited, we started to speculate whether maybe the food was so fresh that they had to go back and pick the veggies from a garden. It took long enough that we actually forgot that we were supposed to have an appetizer at all.
When the food all came, it was good. It was! I may be complaining a lot about the price and the time and all that, but the fries were good, the burger was very good, and I even tasted some of the tofu scramble and it was very good. If it came faster or for a little bit less money, then I would be whole-​heartedly recommending this place. It wasn’t bad, I just feel like it could have been a lot better.

Pulse Café, the other white meat???
Well sort of. I mean it is a vegan place. So there is no meat, no dairy, no eggs… so yes, I guess it isn’t really the other white meat, BUT if I were going to eat vegan food somewhere, this place would definitely be it. I left here feeling so satisfied and full and their menu actually had quite the selection!
Zara S. and I started with their buffalo tofu bites and they were pretty awesome. Our server even switched out the sauce for this vegan blue cheese kind of sauce and man were these good. I was glad Zara thought they were a tad too spicy for her, because that meant more for me!!! I definitely ate more than my fair share of those bad boys.
Then I got the enchiladas (a small size was more than enough) which came with a little mini salad on the side, and it was pretty good! I barely noticed it wasn’t real meat and the enchilada sauce on it was very tasty. Zara got their philly cheese steak and she was also very happy too!
But the best thing… was…get ready for it… their vegan carrot cake! Yup cream cheese frosting and all, but completely vegan! It was so moist and so yummy and the perfect ending to our little Vegan exploration for the night! And all of that for $ 28ish including tip! Maybe pulse is the other vegan meat after all!

I was one of two customers on a warm afternoon. Inquired as to whether or not they had iced tea. It took a few people to answer, but eventually yes, they did. Figuring out the price took a little more work, but eventually I ordered their iced tea and TLT (tempeh lettuce tomato).
The iced jasmine tea managed to be both dull and bitter, my sandwich initially brought to the other patron, and… I feel the need to fully express my disappointment in this sandwich. It arrived open-​faced, surprisingly, until I realized it would have completely fallen apart otherwise. Generous enough slices of smokey tempeh strips (Lightlife brand — these are great, buy them and make your own vegan BLT), three of the saddest, thinnest, palest tomato slices I’ve ever seen, and an oversized, unruly slab of romaine. The bread was chewy and soggy with pockets of what may have been sugar or a nut of some kind, far sweeter than you’d expect from the seven-​grain that was advertised.
Bottom line for me was, if you’re going to give the tomato an actual letter in the sandwich, you ought to be able to take pride in it, and it should provide some flavor, some substance. I nearly asked for more tomatoes, but I also nearly walked out in shock. A meaty cut of ripe red tomato might have saved this place for me.
So, an extremely under-​performing sandwich not at all redeemed by the uninterested 5 or 6 staff working to maintain the all-​but-​empty joint. At one point it took two girls in dresses a heck of a time to clear two plates off a nearby table, several pieces of silverware fell and clattered as they chatted and meandered.

I keep telling people I love this place, taking them there, and then realizing that I think it’s better than it is. I imagine it as being AMAZING, just because it’s vegan, but it’s really just decent.
Last time I was there, I got the bacon cheeseburger, and it was good, but it was a lot of money for a small amount of burger. I also got fries on the side, but my friend didn’t want to pay the extra, so he got just a burger. He was disappointed at how little food he got for his money. Meanwhile, my fries tasted like Ore Ida fries from the grocery store. I could make better fries at home.
However, the shakes are phenomenal. If for no other reason than the shakes, I will continue to go to Pulse regularly.
The staff are all friendly and nice, the service is prompt, and the place is clean and pleasant. They’ve been incredibly great about me calling in for takeout 15 minutes before they close and showing up to pick it up with only a minute or two to spare – they are cheerful and friendly to the last.
Getting food for take out or eating there is always a nice experience, but I keep forgetting that the food isn’t the mouth-​orgasm I always remember it as being.

I adore this place.
I will admit that it’s pretty pricey, but vegan food in general is pricey. I don’t know if it’s because it’s still considered a yuppie trend or if it really is because vegan alternative foods are just more expensive. Either way I think this place is worth it.
I HIGHLY recommend their vegan shakes. I tried the Vanilla, the Vanilla latte and the chocolate. They were all really delicious, but that is because I don’t mind the taste of coconut milk. If you do, I say try the vanilla late shake, I couldn’t taste the coconut at all in that one. Their Tempeh Reuben is excellent. Their fries are some of the best fries I have had in Boston.

This place is awesome. Vegan comfort/​diner food at its best. My favorite item on the menu is the mocha milkshake, but the TLT (like a BLT) and nachos are close seconds. The prices are also no much higher than regular diner-​type places, which is nice. I’ve been here with both vegetarians and omnivores and no one has left not in love.
I’d give them 5 stars, but I personally find their veggie burgers to be kind of dry and they’ve been out of a few things when I’ve come before (which seems to be a trend among vegan restaurants — maybe not enough food going out regularly to keep a large stock of anything?). So, really, let’s go with 4 and a half stars !

Sometimes you just wanna feel what it’s like to be vegan, eh? I hear ya. The thing about Pulse Café is that it caters to vegans who are craving… well… non-​vegan junk food. If you’re expecting a menu full of raw-​food salads or complex mushroom dishes, don’t come here – try True Bistro in Teele Square instead.
Perusing the Pulse menu, you’ll see such popular vegan items as «Philly Cheesesteak», «Bacon Cheeseburger», «Milkshakes», and «Grilled Cheese». I’m no expert, but I’m confident at least half of those items contain some non-​vegan ingredients.
But those menu items are what make the Pulse Café a great place for vegans and non-​vegans to come together. Treat your meat-​loving friends to a faux Philly cheesesteak and watch with awe as they say, «You know… this kinda does taste like real meat. The fake cheese is pretty gross, though.»
The Pulse is a good place to start; a good place to ease your friends into veganism. If nothing else, they’ll like the french fries, nachos, or fresh-​baked vegan desserts. Just be prepared for a flutter of questions about seitan, tempeh, and how its possible to make a milk shake without any dairy.

OM NOM NOM! I can eatz all your seitan?
OK, lame LOLCATZ speak aside, this place is excellent. The server was super friendly and helpful, and she didn’t judge me as I stuffed myself silly. I ordered the chocolate milkshake and Philly cheesesteak with a side of fries. Holy Toledo was it good! The server said that she liked it with BBQ sauce and brought me a side. I don’t know if I prefered the sandwich with or without the BBQ sauce, but I’m glad that I tried it because this was the best BBQ sauce I’ve ever had.
The only factors keeping me from being here every day is the location (not a bad trek from JP, but not something I am willing to do every day!) and the fact that I don’t want to weigh a million pounds. Sure, I could get something healthier, but if you have the opportunity to eat vegan diner fare, I think you have to take it.
I will be back (and wearing my elastic-​waisted pants)!

How did I not know this place existed? I’ve been coming to Davis Square every other week for years, and usually picking up dinner at the Subway that’s right next door to Pulse. Suddenly I noticed the venue next to Subway is not just a vague Asian restaurant but another vegan eatery. Yay! Suddenly the Boston area is just crawling with vegan eats.
I had the vegan Philly cheesesteak and was not disappointed. It was delicious. I noticed they use a lot of seitan in their recipes (as opposed to tofu or myco-​protein, which are the other commonly used meat substitutes) and I appreciate that. I’m looking forward to coming back and trying a few more of their recipes.

I love this place each time I go.
I hope that Bob Bouley will start a vegan culinary school in or around Greater Boston (it could be a network of vegan restaurants in which the students intern, but with vegan culinary instruction taught elsewhere, also;).
Please do talk up that idea and bring others on board and get them to talk directly with Bob Bouley about his organizing such a novel resource in our region, in Greater Boston.

First off, décor-​wise, the place really looks more like a café (the kind where you pay for your food up-​front and then they deliver it to you). Tables are sparse with just a vase and dried flowers to decorate. Unlike the other diners there that night, our water was served in mason jars, which other restaurants do for atmosphere (see Tupelo), but here it just looked like they’d run out of regular glasses. Seems like the kind of place where they would have some fun local art rotating through, but the walls were just sort of empty. As other diners have said, the tables are close together so that you’re kind of squeezed in next to folks. (Admittedly it is a lousy space, but still.) So a big «eh» on atmosphere.
Service wise, the waitress was very friendly. After we were seated it took a few minutes to come over with menus, but then she told us she was swamped and running a bit slow. Having been a waitress, I’m a bit confused as to what she meant– did they normally have two folks working there? It’s so small! Eventually some random guy came out and took our order, which was fine except he wasn’t much on personality.
Food:
We got a butternut squash apple soup, which was good (especially after some salt was added), although texture-​wise it could’ve been a bit smoother. The buffalo tofu bites (which took a bit longer to come out) were also yummy– nicely fried.
For main courses, I had a mushroom risotto which was really great, and came with delicious garlicky kale. I cleaned the plate. Also at the table we had a cranberry polenta dish, which also was good. Overall I would agree with other Unilocalers that the food tastes «homey.» Presentation reflects this. The prices for food seemed a bit high, but I also recognize that they’re sourcing with local and organic ingredients, so they probably have a higher cost than most restaurants.
Also worth noting– the place does not have a liquor license and is also not licensed to support BYOB. So it’s a dry meal.
Overall, I would go back here. The food was tasty. However, it doesn’t at all feel like a fine dining experience or something special.

I’m always down to try a place that I can safely order anything on the menu so I was totally down for a date night here where its vegan/​veg friendly.
I’d been warned that it can get busy so my wife and I got there at 5:30 and there were only two small parties seated so we sat right down.
Atmosphere is a whole lot of meh, most of the furnishings looked like they may have been purchased from across the street at the Goodwill store. The table had a solid 2 inches of wobble to either side and weren’t in the best of shape, especially for a newer establishment. Water glasses were old jars that didn’t hold much.
Wait staff told us we could sit anywhere but thats about as helpful as they got, they didn’t mention the specials on the board or recommend anything on the menu.
The tables are stacked right on top of each other so we got to hear our neighbors conversations about how sweet it is to be a govt employee in November because of all the days off and how amazed they were that their friend had only had 5 sexual partners.
We ordered the buffalo tofu app which took seemingly forever to come out. When it finally did arrive it was really good but not worth the price tag which would be another common theme for this place.
After the app we had to wait another lengthy amount of time (to the point that I had to move the car from the one hour meter that we parked at when we got there). The wife got the vegetable paella ($ 15) and I got the rueben ($ 7+$ 3 for potatoes). The rueben was really small and not all that special, it tasted fine but if you were comparing it to the Garden Grille’s the disappointment really sets in. The $ 3 for a TINY amount of COLD sweet potatoes also burned me a bit.
My wife enjoyed the paella but agreed that $ 15 for such a small portion was a little crazy. $ 15 at the Grasshopper would be enough food to stuff you for the night and/​or make a second meal out of it.
Not sure I’d head back here unless someone REALLY wanted to try it, and they offered to pay.
For a place I was really excited about trying, it left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth.
Lets hope the new vegan place opening up the street in Teale Sq will raise the bar a bit.

mmm this place was okay, but after all the reviews I was surprised by how bland the food was! And I had such high hopes. I came here for a Sunday brunch, and the tofu scramble was good texture but bland. The nachos and tofu with beans and sour cream, also bland. French toast, also quite tasteless.
But they are vegan and organic and pretty healthy i think, so props for that. I would like to come back and try some non-​brunch items. Oh also, atmosphere is cute and casual, but very day-​time café-​ish. Actually, almost cafeteria-​ish– a nice cafeteria that is. Not great atmosphere for a date at all, just warning.

In no way am I even remotely close to being a vegan. I love my bacon, my pork chops, my steaks, my lamb and chickens. I really do, but while in Davis square, in search for a fairly healthy lunch, I proceeded to make my way to the Pulse Café to check it out.
I had heard pretty good things, but mostly from vegans. Let’s face it here, there’s little competition in this sector of the food industry, and Clover Food Truck aside, I have had little experience with vegan food such as tempeh, seitan and whatever else they use as a substitute for real meat proteins. While Clover Food Truck has managed to make some pretty tasty seitan bacon, I was intrigued and proceeded to make my way to this modest, little restaurant.
I decided to check out the delicious sounding buffalo tofu bites which came with a chunky miso dressing and some celery sticks. I also grabbed a seitan and eggplant parm, which came served on a baguette. I asked to get these two dishes to go and awaited at a table for the food to be ready while drinking a glass of OJ. The restaurant was near empty and the staff was chatting in the background while they were prepping the food in the kitchen.
A few minutes later my food was ready to go. I paid and proceeded to head home to devour the food. The prices for the food were fairly reasonable, it cost me approximately $ 15 which isn’t bad considering the amount of food I had. The tofu bites were quite tasty and although the sauce did a fairly good job at mimicking a blue cheese-​type of dressing, it tasted nothing like it and didn’t have the same consistency — such is a common problem with vegan food: tastes similar but the texture never feels the same. But then again, the sandwich was pretty good as well so…
The food was not short on flavor and tasted healthy. I felt great after eating it and digested it painlessly. I can see the appeal to this type of healthy food and would have no problem returning there in the future. One quick note though, I did notice that the restaurant didn’t appear to be all that clean. It felt dirty and could have used a quick dusting but that aside it’s well located and they serve pretty good food.

So I went here with friends after hearing about it and then reading about it in the Boston Globe. It was a great article and there was another one about «he-​gans» (man vegans) that got me all excited about trying this place because they interviewed the owner. Well, we got there at 8 PM and we still waited like 45 minutes, which was fine b/​c I had good company and I knew ahead of time that there would be a wait. The place is very small, but we got seated earlier than might be expected b/​c we were willing to sit in a two seater table. A lil squashed, but hey, I liked the people I was with!
We ordered the polenta with mushroom ragout and the nachos to start. The polenta was not that great and we all decided we wouldn’t order it again. The nachos were good, but all of us eat dairy, so really, real cheese is better.
For entrees I got the tempeh reuben which was pretty good. Others got curried tofu, also tasty, and a seitan dish. All were good, but not great. Maybe it’s b/​c I’m from LA so I have lots of great options there, but I really wasn’t blown away which disappointed b/​c I had heard such good things. Sigh. And I had read about these deep fried ‘calamari’ mushrooms, but they said they stopped serving them b/​c they only used the mushroom cap and therw away the stems, so it was not financially feasible to serve them. Then why didn’t they just serve the stem too?
Anyway, it was just fine, though I wouldn’t really go back.

One thing I loved about this place was I didn’t get the feeling that it was pretentious. It really felt like a small, cozy neighborhood resturaunt, they just happened to not have meat. People seemed friendly, and I only got an odd stare when my date commented «can we stop at starbucks» as we left.
The whole «we’re out of this, sorry» line has to get very old for the waitresses. However, it does mean that the food is fresh, and they’re not throwing a ton of stuff out every night.
The Menu is a bit limited, but considering its all vegan, and half is glutten free and every item looks appealing, its hard to complain about that.
My meal started off a bit weak. I had a mushroom appetizer that was quite frankly mediocre. But, as the main courses came out, this was quickly forgotten.
The «jerk» style tofu was not truly «jerk» style, but it was full of flavor, and perfectly cooked, mostly perfect. I had a seitan that was served with a side of creamy (though no cream, not sure how they did that) mash potatoes and fresh broccoli. It looked and was about as filling as a plate of steak and potatoes.
The service throughout was quick, extremely friendly, and the bill at the end was surprisingly small. For Vegans, people that just want to do their part to reduce how much meat they’re eating, or just the culinary inquisitives, this place is a must stop.
I can’t wait to go back to try the Nachos.