Hong Kong – Life Cafe Organic Restaurant & Bar (Vegetarian/Vegan)

Restaurant: Life Cafe Organic Restaurant & Bar
Cuisine: Organic/Vegetarian/Vegan
Last visited: April 16, 2010
Location: Central, Hong Kong (Soho area)
Address: Metro: Central
10 Shelley Street, Central, Hong Kong
香港蘇豪些利街12號地下至2樓
Tel: 2810 9777
Tel (Deli): 2810 9043
Price Range: $10-20CAD – about $80-110HKD

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 5 (based on few things I tried)
Service: 3
Ambiance: 5
Overall: 5
Additional comments:

• Since 2004
• Popular vegetarian restaurant in Hong Kong
• Located in trendy/touristy area
• Owner from Vancouver, BC
• Serving Western/modern vegetarian dishes
• Extensive/Healthy menu
• high quality, local ingredients
• Home made, everything made from scratch
• Organic daily baking
• Deli downstairs
• Vegetarian/Vegan/Organic
• Gluten free, sugar free options
• Allergy friendly
• Eco-friendly
• Cafe/Restaurant/Bar
• Brunch/lunch/dinner/dessert/drinks/tea
• Serves alcohol and organic healthy drinks
• Plays music from around the world
• +10% service charge
• Open late

**Recommendations: Teas, Organic Multi-Seed Carrot Cake, Organic Flourless Chocolate Cake (but I haven’t tried it)

The Food

Life Cafe Organic Restaurant & Bar is located by the great escalators in a trendy area of Central, Hong Kong known as Soho. It specializes in contemporary vegetarian and vegan dishes and has won the title of Hong Kong’s best vegetarian restuarant on a few occasions. It’s affordable for the area and the quality of food you’re getting and definitely worth a visit while in Hong Kong.

Vegetarian or not everything here is full or flavour and home made with high quality ingredients. I only came for tea and dessert, but I really wish I could have tried more items because the savoury menu looks delicious! The owner is actually from Vancouver, BC so the feel of the menu was all too familiar.

The Atmosphere

Life Restaurant is seperated into 3 levels, although I only saw 2 of them (I missed the roof top patio which I really regret now). The downstairs is their casual cafe and deli where you can purchase sandwiches, soups, salads, organic meats and bottled dressings etc. The upper floor has an Earth toned decor with a hippie feel which is enhanced by the world music they play all day and night. It’s a great place to lounge around and relax any time of the day.

On the table:

Steamed Lavender Organic Soya Milk = 4/6

• $30HKD – about $4CAD
• It does have a strong floral lavender taste and it’s nice and creamy and frothy.
• The brew the leaves right into the soya milk and it’s served nice and hot.
• I just didn’t like biting into the lavender petals they decorated with because they were very bitter.

LSD – Dandelion Latte with Organic Soya Milk – 4/6

• $32HKD – about $4.20CAD
• I was expecting a floral taste, but it actually tasted like a malted light roast coffee with lots of soya milk. It was a very light latte, almost like milk tea. It was still good, but I was expecting to taste “dandelion”, and since I didn’t – I found it a bit ordinary.

Steamed Ginger Organic Soya Milk – 4.5/6

• $30HKD – about $4CAD
• This was very good, although it doesn’t have a strong ginger taste.
• It’s actually very light and not spicy, but you can taste the ginger.
• They brew the ginger into the soya milk, but I think the ratio of soya milk to ginger is much higher.

Sesame Tofu Skewers – 5/6

• Sesame Tofu Skewers with marinated tofu, red cabbage and ginger coleslaw, baby spinach and spicy Thai cashew sauce $60HKD – about $8.50CAD
• Vegan and gluten free appetizer
• It’s a bit expensive for the small portion, but it was excellent!
• Just a bite of this made me want to come try their dinner, but I ran out of time.
• It was firm tofu nicely seasoned and marinated with a bold sauce that tasted like creamy peanut butter but much richer and more savoury.

Desserts

**Organic Multi Seed Carrot Cake – 6/6

• $55HKD – about $8CAD
• This is one of their most popular and famous desserts. It’s what brought us here and I loved it!
• It’s home made with high quality organic ingredients that you can see and taste.

• This is a grown up carrot cake and dessert.
• It’s full of nuts (walnuts), raisins and seeds (pumpkn, sunflower, sesame) and it’s very dense and moist.
• You can see the shredded carrots and the topping is nice and crunchy – the topping tastes like a fresh home made chewy granola bar.
• It’s not too sweet, and sweetened only with agave syrup and/or raw sugar.
• It’s possibly the best carrot cake I’ve had.
• It was served with a home made raspberry puree jam that was naturally sweetened.

Organic Vegan Banana Cake – 4/6

• $55HKD – about $8CAD
• Vegan dessert.
• I like my banana bread/cake to have lots of banana flavour, but this one didn’t have that much. It was still good, but I wanted more banana taste.
• My sister doesn’t like banana and she loved this cake so that says a lot.

• It’s heavily spiced with cardamom and lots of cinnamon and it’s loaded with big walnut pieces and raisins too.
• It’s very moist, and again naturally sweetened with agave syrup and/or raw sugar.
• It’s a very dense cake and it wasn’t too sweet, but I definitely tasted more spices than banana. I wanted to bite into chunks of banana or see the black banana bits, but I didn’t really see or taste any (except for the one on top).
• It was served with a home made raspberry puree jam which was a different but interesting match.

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