REMOVED: AREAL

I had read about this place on happycow, and here's my AREAL review. Came here for lunch with a friend and sat in the courtyard.

It's a spacious & beautifully designed space with several different areas: outdoor courtyard table seating as well outdoor lounge style seating; inside dining room, bar seating, and inside lounge area with couches. The kitchen is open and you can see the wood fired oven for making pizzas.

What drew me to AREAL, besides curiosity, is the menu. It offers a handful of items labeled 'V' which are supposed to be vegan suitable. So we ordered the 'V' items except for the veggie burger.

The morrocan stew is saspiced beans with brussel sprouts, served with a small bowl of raisin & almond sliver topped couscous. It's savory, and my friend liked it.

The roasted vegetable pizza is noted as cheese-less. However, vegans should mention 'No Parmesan on top' as the kitchen and staff might assume that you are okay with that. We had to specify and double check with our server. In any case, I did not like the pizza. The crust edges all around had blackened marks from a high fired oven; yet the center of the pizza dough was too soft kinda mushy. The vegetables had been roasted first, so they were all cooked thoroughly, but the dough was just not appetizing. Maybe the kitchen can reduce the fire in the wood oven, but let the pizza bake longer...?

The raw spaghetti, on the other hand, was refreshing, comprising strands of thinly sliced raw zucchini, marinated in a red sauce (tomato) sauce, plus some stuff inside (forgot what it said on the menu, but tasty).

The menu stated that they offer soymilk option, and I was totally looking forward to having a soy cappucino with the LaMill brand of coffee they offer, but our waitress said that they were out of stock on soymilk... bummer! Maybe they don't have enough demand for soymilk to keep more on hand.

My guess is that the clientele here is mostly all non-veg, maybe lots of tourists and some locals. AREAL is located right on Main Street with lots of walking traffic.

Next time I'll try the veggie burger with fries. I saw a woman order the veggie burger, and it was a really thick patty (a really tall burger). I also saw that the fries have skin on them.

By the way, after your waitstaff takes your order, s/he will bring a basket of mini scones. They're tasty but not vegan.

Suggestion for improvement:
- Adjust wood fire oven for better pizza result
- Waitstaff could use training about vegan diet