Raw Kitchen

"Mind Blown"

Chinese New Year is round the corner and H wanted to organise a catch up with the girls before she goes to Malaysia to collect her red packets. H chose Raw Kitchen a vegan cafe as our lunch spot, not because she's vegan, in fact she loves her meat, but because Urbanspoon had high ratings.

A vegan diet is a type of vegetarian diet that does not use any animal derived products, no dairy, no eggs, no meat. Raw kitchen strives to showcase plant-based cuisines using raw and pure ingredients, all gluten, dairy and sugar free (processed sugar).

Raw Kitchen use to be located on South Terrace in Fremantle but moved to a larger venue off High street. The venue is huge and has an industrial, RAW, organic and hipster vibe to it, loving the recycled piano decor, the mini gift store in the corner and sea container gallery. H made reservations for us, but unfortunately we were all late and our table was given away, they gave us a bigger table instead. WIN! it was too big that another group shared with us LOSE :( jks. there was plenty of space in between both groups so we could still talk dirty and they won't be able to hear us *not that we do*.

Interiors and wait staff with cute aprons

Piano decor

Looking through the menu, it is amazing how the dishes they offer are vegan, we ordered the much raved about nachos, pesto pasta, zuchinni pasta and mushroom pizza all to share and to wash it down, I ordered the blue moon smoothie consisting of blue berries, lavendar, banana, agave (nectar from the plant agave used as an alternative to sugar) and handmade almond milk. I'm very impressed that they also use their own handmade cashew, macadamia and date milk, rice milk and organic GM-free soy.

Our table spread

Raw nachos: dehydrated hand cut corn chips, walnut, refried 'beans', fresh tomato salsa, guacamole, cashew sour 'cream' chives $19

The Nachos was hands down everybody's favourite dish, downside would be there was a terrible crisp to dip ratio, we were left with alot of dip left, we even asked for more crisps.

live zucchini pasta: raw tomato sauce, mushroom, kalamata olives, avocado, basil, cracked pepper $22

raw pesto pasta: pink radish, fresh basil, avocado, sundried tomato, capers, baby spinach $23

First slurp of the zucchini pasta and I loved it, I was so impressed by how spaghetti looking these zucchinis were, you could easily fool a kid, this could be the answer to getting picky kids to eat their vegies. I don't quite know what the powder is but whatever it is the flavour was all there. Compared to the pesto pasta, everyone agreed that the tomato base was more to their liking, but both dishes were impressive, the pasta was also made out of zucchini. It's a good thing we shared our dishes, I don't think I can finish the whole plate of pasta without feeling abit sick, perhaps too much healthiness?

Wild mushroom pizza: shitake, marinated field mushrooms, cashew cream, pesto, truffle oil, enokis, pickled onions $28

Mushroom pizza

Everyone enjoyed the pizza, this would probably be second after the Nachos. Eventhough I'm not a big fan of shitake mushroom, I gobbled this down easy. The pizza base was different, it looked like flat bread but didn't quite taste like flat bread. I need to find out. Mushrooms were very mushroomy *Er Derr* so they definetly nailed that aspect of the dish, I think the addition of truffle oil enhanced all the mushroom flavours and that probably explains why the pizza is $28.

Blue moon smoothie (front); Morning glory (middle), Red velvet (back)

My blue moon smoothie had a dominating banana flavour, I couldn't quite taste the blueberries and there was an after taste that I wasn't familiar with, it could be from the almond milk or the agave, I don't quite like it but it didn't stop me from finishing it.

The service was mostly good, our first waitress who took our orders was very sweet and helped us with her recommendations, the man who brought our dishes through was very friendly and was also happy to take photos for us, unfortunately when we asked if we could have more crisps, the third lady coldly said "I'll have to charge you for that" I mean we didn't expect freebies and she didn't even tell us how much more, it could be a bazillion dollars, it also took a very long time for us to finally get it. Could have been a 10/10 with service.

Overall, our experience was mind blowing. call me narrow minded but I am one who loves my cheese and meat and never quite understood how one can be a full time vegan (unless it's allergies/ethics), I am now enlightened, vegans can still enjoy great food and we definetly left with a healthy and refreshed feeling.