I was so excited to try this place given the four stars and the menu looked amazing. Alas, it was a big let down. Where to start?
The staff is really nice, the prices are on the lower side and the place has a quaint and intimate feel to it-- but the food is way too awful. There were seven of us and we were seated after a wait time of about 15 minutes. We got the famed milkshakes. Those were decent and I appreciated the fruits chopped and blended in--but still, it was nothing to write home about. And things only went down hill from there.
The veggie burger was simply AWFUL. It was super bland and essentially was a rice cake that had been fried up.
The less said about the baba ghanouj, the better. The eggplant had obviously been barely roasted or seasoned. The baba ghanouj had a mix of waxy and grainy tasting eggplant puree, with hardly any salt. Oh and absolutely no olive oil. The pitas were old, tough and pretty bad in general.
My "Ruth" spinach pie was a mush of some cheese, a few slices of tomatoes and some spinach. This was the least bland of all the things we got, but that hardly means much.
The kuchen (with strawberries) was almost to the point of being frozen hard. Yuck! The brownie was also old and hard. Needless to say, most of us hardly ate any of our meals.
It seems that the reason why this place is still in business is because not only does this have an old institution status, but Cleveland seems to hardly have a place as vegan/vegetarian friendly as this one.