Naam has been the cornerstone of Vancouver low key comfort food. Quite the feat as it’s located in a quiet part of town and is a vegetarian restaurant which is opened 24 hrs a day with decently priced food. With this in mind, I thought it was time to visit the famous joint.
With its fame, comes the infamous lineups thus my reason for not trying out this place sooner. I can’t tolerate long waits but fortunately when we arrived we only had to stand around for about 10 minutes. It’s a no fuss comfortable place with paintings along the wall. There was a guitar player at the center of the room strumming out some atmospheric Caribbean music. Once we sat down, we immediately tried to tackle the menu and identify the dishes recommended by friends. At first glance, there was a huge variety of plates to choose from.
One of the must-haves is their forever-in-demand nachos. Even the small option was a huge heaping plate.
Instead of regular cheese, we had ‘vegan’ cheese. I’m not really sure what was in the vegan cheese but it was pretty good. It looked, melted, and tasted like real cheese..and as with many ‘vegan’ items we could taste a hint of soy in it but it wasn’t overwhelming.
The next highly suggested menu item was to choose any one of their bowls. Since my friend is vegan, we went for the vegan-friendly Dragon Bowl
It was a mish-mesh of tofu, steamed broccoli, carrots and cauliflower on organic brown rice with miso gravy. The bowl was a flavourless mess. It seemed like a dinner a penniless college student would try to put together from scraps he/she found in the fridge. After a few bites, I gave up on it and became tofu-ed out.
In hopes of adding flavour back to our dinner, we ordered the Sante Fe Enchilada
The hearty enchilada was made out of organic tofu, grilled veggies, black beans chilli, spiced chipolte peppers topped with cheese with a side salad, sesame fries, and miso gravy. . Even with all those ingredients, we could only make out the black beans and barely anything else. All I remember of the dish was it tasted like black beans mixed with salsa and tobasco sauce.
Maybe it was the density of each plate, but we barely made a dent to any of them. The flavours were one-dimensional and I don’t quite get the mystery that is the miso gravy..it reminded me of a version of the A&W gravy.
I’d say Naam is almost categorized under the same restaurants like Stephano’s, Anton’s, and Samurai Sushi…big subpar-quality portions at low prices with long lineups: ideal for those who want to fill up their tummies while being budget friendly. The redeeming points of the night were the nachos and the friendly waiter.
This is my first time at Naam so I would give it another shot and try out their brunch menu..and hope I don’t get disappointed with my favourite meal of the day.
The Naam
2724 W 4th Ave
Browse Timeline
Comments ( 3 )
it’s about time someone trashed this place. I went there a couple of times as a uni student and even back then i thought it was awful. Meat eaters take heart: vegan and veggie food doesn’t have to taste this crap!
totally with you on the miso gravy – WTF is that anyways? to me, the items were messily put together in a heap of (too many) ingredients, smothered over miso gravy. The tofu was awful too – hard as a slab.
I would go to Nuba or east is east or any of the buddhist vegetarian place anyday for no-meat options than this dump.
liv added these pithy words on
Feb 01 10 at
4:54 pm
oh man, last time i was at the naam i had the nachos and they were really good. i also had the flatbread with hummus, tzatziki and other dips and that was good too…
I’ve never ordered an entree there though, but thanks for the review. even the pictures don’t look that appetizing.
Niki added these pithy words on
Feb 02 10 at
12:29 am
@liv it’s really a place to for the uni kids to get hangover food
@Niki nachos and dips are hard to mess up. Agree the nachos were good though. I know their brunch is popular so may give that a try
Senses and Style added these pithy words on
Feb 02 10 at
3:34 pm
