- The Quesadillas de Calabaza- butternut squash and caramelized onion in tortillas with cashew nacho cheese and pumpkin seed salsa at Gracias Madre.
My first thoughts when my husband asked if I wanted to try a vegan Mexican restaurant were “hell no!” I mean, vegetarian Mexican is one thing, but why would you want to take out the cheese? The cheese is one of the reasons I love Mexican food so damn much.
Plus, it is really hard to find a decent vegan restaurant. You have so few ingredients to work with, it’s understandable, but vegan is not like pizza, where even crappy versions are not that bad. Crappy vegan is crappy, and what’s worse- you go home hungry. Was I ready to risk an entire delicious meal on trying a new cuisine?
Fuck yeah. But only after I located a proper, meat-filled taqueria near the restaurant. You know. Just in case I wanted dessert.
Food porn and my take on dinner after the click!
The appetizer we started with, the butternut squash and caramelized onion quesadillas with cashew nut “cheese” and pumpkin seed salsa was surprisingly delicious. The salsa was nice and spicy, I love caramelized onions with anything, and the lack of real cheese didn’t seem to affect the overall flavor of the dish. It made me brave enough to want to try a main.
- I went with the Mole enchiladas topped with mushrooms and cashew cheese, served with sauteed greens and beans. The enchiladas were okay, the mole had a nice bitterness to it, but it was REALLY spicy, and combined with the greens and beans, I found myself getting fuller quicker, which meant I’d be hungry soon after the meal.
- The tamale of the day was filled with butternut squash, and again, while it tasted fine, it made for a really heavy, filling tamale. And not in that satisfying filling way, but in that I just ate way too much starch sort of way.
- Three different tacos, one with butternut squash, one with mushrooms, and I believe one with eggplant. Our dinner companion was happy with her meal, but also tends to err on the of vego/vegan more often than me.
- The escabeche, or spicy pickled veggies. This was the most disappointing of the night–the veggies were soft, pretty much cooked all the way through, and lacked that acidic punch of pickles I love so much.
In the end, I wasn’t super thrilled with the meal. I just felt that overall, they relied on the heat of chile peppers to get through a course, and a lot of starchy, filling veggies that made me feel too full before I could even eat my share. It wasn’t terrible, and I’m not thrown off by vegan forever…I just stand by what I said before–good vegan is damn hard to find.
~LTG!
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Gracias Madre restaurant
2211 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-683-1346
Their website
