Crudessence

In an effort to expand my horizons in the word of veganism, I decided to drag my husband down to one of Montreal's most known vegan restaurants: Crudessence. Not only does Crudessence serve vegan only, the food is also completely bio, gluten free, and "alive". Alive meaning raw, or at least mostly raw.

We dined at the Crudessence on Mackay (there is also one on Rachel). We went on a Saturday night and even though we were only two I had made reservations. I highly recommend to do this because half an hour after we arrived, the place was packed.

Drinks

I think that the choice of drinks is one of the best thing about Crudessence. They have a wide variety of selections, including hot chocolate made with coconut butter and cashews as well as teas and tisanes. They also have a fun selection of juice mixes, smoothies, and elixirs, which are not cheap (6.25$ for 9 oz) but totally worth it in my opinion. 

Anthony had the Ruby Lips, which is a mix of apple, carrot, beet, and ginger topped with a watercress garnish. This is a beautiful mix of flavour which worked quite harmoniously.

I had the Kombu Mojito. This juice is more on the acidic side, which I very much enjoyed. It has pineapple, mint, lemon, and kombucha. Now I had no idea what kombucha was, so I looked it up after I had it. According to wikiepida, kombucha is a effervescent fermentation of sweetened tea that is used as a functional food and the kombucha culuture is actually a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast...Yummers! In any case, it was quite tasty and I would definitely have it again. It's good to have a dose of symbiotic bacteria and yeast once is a while.

Appetizer

Not knowing what to pick, we went for the Discovery plate, which is a mix of appetizers to sample.

The two tall shot glasses had the raw soup of the day, which was a carrot and apple soup. It tasted good. You can't really go wrong with carrots and apples though. There was some hummus, and a nut yogurt which, again, good but somewhat forgettable. 

I was also disappointed with the crispy kale. It felt like we had the bottom of the batch with very small broken pieces with little taste. I honestly have done a better job at home with crispy kale than what what served here. 

The maki rolls were good. They were made with sprouts and a vege pâté which tasted like salmon. I also enjoyed the faux-egg pâté, which tasted like the inside of a deviled egg. As you can see, the presentation is quite lovely and very pleasing to the eye. 

Main course

Crudessence is know for the Öm Burger, so my husband decided to try it out.

It doesn't look like a hamburger at all. The patty is a mix of vegetables, mushrooms, flax seeds and sundried tomatoes. The bread is chapati, (Indian flat bread) topped with a caper aïoli sauce which tastes like mayonnaise. For an extra 1.25$ each, you can get a slice of butternut squash cheese and eggplant bacon. For another extra 3.75$, your burger comes with a delicious salad. This dish was very good. You wouldn't mistake this burger for a meat burger, but the flavours were fantastic and satisfying  The salad was worth the extra money as it has many different levels of vegginess to it and is quite fun to explore.

I picked my main course for the specials menu. It's called the Samurai.

You can't tell much from the picture, but underneath all that greenery, there's a generous serving of soba noodles (buckwheat noodles) served with goji berries, kale, arami (type of seaweed), shitake mushrooms, and veggie balls. Unfortunately, I was not overly fond of this dish. The biggest problem were the soggy noodles. They were quite overcooked (so much for raw food) and therefore mushy and unpleasant to eat. The overall flavours were good and I enjoyed the veggie balls, but after experience fantastic Japanese restaurants like Kazu and Imadake, I suppose I was bound to be disappointed with Crudessence's take on Japanese cuisine.

Dessert

First up is the the blueberry un-cheesecake. Again, my husband hit the jackpot with this one. It was fantastic! The cheese is made from fermented cashews (again, yummers) and coconut oil and the crust is made with Brazil nuts and fig. I honestly thought that this tasted better than regular cheese cake, it was that good. I'm going to try to look up a recipe for this and attempt to duplicate it.

Next came my dessert: the Brownie. As much as I raved over the cheesecake, I wholeheartedly disliked this brownie. Raw cocoa, pecan, and walnut based. I suppose the rawness is what made it taste so dry. However, what I think was the most unforgivable about this dessert is the fact that the walnuts were rancid. For a restaurant that prides itself on fresh raw bio ingredients, this was very unfortunate. I'm glad I paid the extra 2.75$ for the ice cream side, because it was very pleasant and a good way to wash down the aftertaste of rancidness.

Service

Overall, the service was okay. Our waitress was very pleasant but overworked due to the busy evening. They only had two waitresses when they would have obviously needed a third. As a result, the service was a bit slow and the wrong dessert was brought to me at first (which, in retrospect, I should have kept). Again, I don't blame the waitress, she was really nice and knowledgeable about the food.

The verdict

Would I go back to Crudessence? Obviously, if I had ordered my husband's menu choices I might have said yes. However, due to mushy noodles and rancid nuts, and a 110$ bill, I have to say that I would not purposely go back at my own initiation. I would gladly try it again if I'm invited and hopefully make better menu choices. I believe Crusdessence has a lot of potential, but is easily a hit or miss experience.