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• Best vegan restaurant in Kobe

Kobe is a nice city to visit. But if you open a website or brochure about tourism in Kobe, the number one advice to visitors is: try the Kobe beef. No thank you! If prefer a Happy Cow over a dead cow. But that's not as easy as it seems in Kobe. According to the Happy Cow app there's only one vegan restaurant in Kobe: the Pink Weed Cafe. Here's how to find it: go to Motomachi station and take the North exit (that's cross the tracks so you face away from the city, shops and China town. Soon you'll see a baseball field (elevated). Take the first street on the right of the baseball field and after a few steps you'll see the Pink Weed Cafe. It's cute, it's idealistic, it's full of signs promoting vegetarianism and it has a Happy Cow sticker on the door. My kind of place! The menu has only four options: kind-of falafel, Japanese style curry, an extra large salad and the "meal of the month". I chose the latter and in hindsight that might not have been the best idea. The meal of December 2015 was rice, salad and something stuffed in chicory and onions. It looked fantastic, but the taste was a bit blend. The various ingredients should enrich each other, but instead the chef just added various healthy vegetables together. Also the combination of hot and cold ingredients can make a meal more interesting, but in this case it didn't work for me. On the other hand: this could just have been me, because other guests told me they loved it. The appetiser (sweet potato soup) was lovely, so was the "chemical free tea". Also, the Pink Weed Cafe is the only vegan restaurant in Kobe, so who am I to complain? Prices are very reasonable, the people super friendly and the food is okay. In a town like Tokyo, where vegan restaurants are abundant, the Pink Weed Cafe might not be up to par but for for Kobe the Pink Weed Cafe is the best vegan restaurant in town!