[Moriah] Testing, testing...

So we decided to test out a second vegetarian restaurant in Austin tonight. We've been to Mother's Cafe and Garden several times already and love it! It's got a great atmosphere, great service and wonderful food. But we wanted to try something different, so we decided tonight would be a good night to visit Mr. Natural. Here's how the two compare:



Mother's Cafe and Garden

-Warm, friendly service by basically all employees.

-A neat atmosphere with your choice of cafe-style seating in an air conditioned room or sitting out in the more intimate garden room, complete with lots of plants, water fountains, and fake ponds with fish swimming around.

-All food is cooked to order through the menu.

-Excellent vegetarian and vegan food! Some of the best we've ever had in a restaurant setting (aside from The Spiral Diner in Ft. Worth).

-Nice variety of vegetarian food. (It's not all tofu, for those of you who don't like that sort of thing!)

-A little on the pricey side.

-Vegan Belgian Chocolate Mocha Cake! Enough said. :)



Mr. Natural

-Friendly service, though not well organized.

-Set up like a cafeteria with a serving line and a casual, open seating arrangement.

-Food can be cooked to order through a menu, though there is also a cafeteria line from which you can choose different options.

-The food was good but not quite as upscale as Mother's.

-Not quite as much variety on the menu. Mr. Natural seemed to be geared more toward Mexican food.

-A little less expensive than Mother's though, as I said, not quite the same quality.

-A large selection of vegan and vegetarian bakery items that we haven't seen anywhere else, though the ones we bought (a vegan brownie and a slice of vegan chocolate cake) were a little dry and not as flavorful as we had hoped.



All in all, they are both good restaurants. We prefer Mother's over Mr. Natural for the higher quality food, better service and unique atmosphere, but it's nice to have variety. I would like to go back to Mr. Natural to try their homemade seitan BBQ and more of their bakery items that I can't find anywhere else. But I think we will continue to frequent Mother's more often.