• 4
• Great location

It is great to see a vegetarian cafe in Grey Lynn. Situated just over the road from favourite veggie haunts such as Harvest Wholefoods and the Matamata Bakery, it fits in well with its neighbours and is what you’d expect (hope) to find in a cool trendy inner city suburb such as Grey Lynn. The café is light and white with lots of wooden furniture and has a very clean look. You can dine in or outside in the back patio area or even out on the street at the alfresco tables. Orders are taken at the counter and delivered to your table. There are a small number of baked counter items but most of the food on the menu is freshly cooked. I was delighted when I looked at the menu to see no hummus on it. I like hummus but am heartily sick of it featuring on every vegan option as if no vegan food is complete without a massive dollop of it. I think it shows a lack of culinary imagination when cafes rely on hummus to pad out their vegan menu. Surely there is more to vegan cuisine than that! The Big Sur menu is about half vegetarian and half vegan. There are hotcakes, muesli, roasted Portobello benedict, eggs, toast with avocado, courgette pasta and some Japanese and Indian inspired dishes. There were quite a few dishes I would have ordered had they been vegan. Unfortunately none of their vegan choices really appealed to me. I was hopeful the hotcakes would be vegan as they came with a coconut whipped cream but alas not. The vegan options were ok – not exciting for my palate as I like creamy foods, carbs and protein. Their vegan dishes seemed to focus really on veggies mostly. I like veggies but like them with other foods rather than make them the main dish. Still, the vegan dishes were quite acceptable and nothing to complain about at all. Just not my favourite kind of menu. I ordered the avocado on multi seed toast. I loved the toast – it was bursting with seeds and they were generous with the avocado too. It was a good choice. I also tried the courgette spaghetti which was tasty tho not exciting for me as that is the kind of thing I eat at home a lot so it is not something I would go out for. For dessert I nabbed the last vegan muffin which was lucky as it was the only vegan baked item available – the other cakes and slices were not vegan. (Why not make them all vegan so that everyone can have them?) The muffin was orange and date. It was nice to see a vegan muffin not riddled with banana. Nothing against banana but 9 times out of 10, cafes think if they do a vegan m