Laughing Planet Cafe (Oregon)
food: 4.5/5
experience: 4/5
overall: 4.5/5
Laughing Planet Cafe is a Portland-based chain restaurant with an emphasis on vegan so we're already on rough waters there. They have locations in Oregon, Canada, Washington, and Reno. I visited their Reno location first.
This place falls under the so-healthy-it's-nasty category. I'm sorry but no. It reminds me of that one time Selena Gomez was trying to get Justin Bieber to eat "healthy" vegan food (oxymoron) at this one restaurant and he spit his food out. Not that I did that because I can't afford to be wasting money but yeah.
I got the paleo bowl because it seemed like the most filling low-carb item on the menu of vegetables.
It was pretty mediocre. I mean there's just not enough healthy ingredients in there that you can make a good-tasting meal out of, or spices, or something. Something was just "missing". Plus health food is not cheap. So it cost more than a few bucks to feel moderately full. I got a soda which helped a little, and had some of someone else's chili but it too tasted "incomplete" for lack of better term.
The next time I visited wasn't for years (understandably). This time I visited them in their hometown of Portland. I tried some stuff that sounded a little more appetizing.
This is their spinach & black bean burrito. I subbed sweet potatoes in spinach which made it way better. I like the white jasmine rice they use because it gets kind of sticky. Also has pico de gallo and cheese. I got it with a whole wheat tortilla. All in all this was fantastic and definitely made up for the previous visit.
Finally I tried their quesadilla. BBQ chicken, to be precise.
Their tortilla is toasted to a perfect crisp. They jam a lot of meat in there, probably mores than cheese, but their meat is delicious and not plain like La Catrina. It's got a bit of spice to it with an authentic BBQ flavor. Oh yeah, and it comes with chipotle BBQ sauce. score.
Cookies for dessert! I tried a couple. They have several but a lot of them have stuff I'm allergic to so I stuck with two classics: the chocolate chip and snickerdoodle.
Their snickerdoodle was pumpkin ('tis the season) so it was different. I'd give it a 3.5/5. It's sweet and it's got cinnamon sugar on top but the pumpkin just doesn't jive that well with the snickerdoodle base. The chocolate chip one has sea salt in it. Or on top, rather. The rest is just standard chocolate chip. I was just saying earlier how I would marry chocolate if I could. That was after ingesting this huge cookie. It's crisp on the edges and softer in the center, with plenty of chocolate chunks distributed throughout. Definitely opt for this one over the others. Their oatmeal chocolate chip has flaxseeds and some other weird shit in it but if you're into that crunchy hippie crap go for it. Last they have a double chocolate hazelnut, which also has "flaxseeds and some other weird shit in it" (callback!).
Portlanders compare it to Chipotle in terms of quality but I very much beg to differ. Laughing Planet is underrated and they are lucky they have it. Authentic Mexican food it is not; good "Mexican" food it is.
experience: 4/5
overall: 4.5/5
Laughing Planet Cafe is a Portland-based chain restaurant with an emphasis on vegan so we're already on rough waters there. They have locations in Oregon, Canada, Washington, and Reno. I visited their Reno location first.
This place falls under the so-healthy-it's-nasty category. I'm sorry but no. It reminds me of that one time Selena Gomez was trying to get Justin Bieber to eat "healthy" vegan food (oxymoron) at this one restaurant and he spit his food out. Not that I did that because I can't afford to be wasting money but yeah.
I got the paleo bowl because it seemed like the most filling low-carb item on the menu of vegetables.
It was pretty mediocre. I mean there's just not enough healthy ingredients in there that you can make a good-tasting meal out of, or spices, or something. Something was just "missing". Plus health food is not cheap. So it cost more than a few bucks to feel moderately full. I got a soda which helped a little, and had some of someone else's chili but it too tasted "incomplete" for lack of better term.
The next time I visited wasn't for years (understandably). This time I visited them in their hometown of Portland. I tried some stuff that sounded a little more appetizing.
This is their spinach & black bean burrito. I subbed sweet potatoes in spinach which made it way better. I like the white jasmine rice they use because it gets kind of sticky. Also has pico de gallo and cheese. I got it with a whole wheat tortilla. All in all this was fantastic and definitely made up for the previous visit.
Finally I tried their quesadilla. BBQ chicken, to be precise.
Their tortilla is toasted to a perfect crisp. They jam a lot of meat in there, probably mores than cheese, but their meat is delicious and not plain like La Catrina. It's got a bit of spice to it with an authentic BBQ flavor. Oh yeah, and it comes with chipotle BBQ sauce. score.
Cookies for dessert! I tried a couple. They have several but a lot of them have stuff I'm allergic to so I stuck with two classics: the chocolate chip and snickerdoodle.
Their snickerdoodle was pumpkin ('tis the season) so it was different. I'd give it a 3.5/5. It's sweet and it's got cinnamon sugar on top but the pumpkin just doesn't jive that well with the snickerdoodle base. The chocolate chip one has sea salt in it. Or on top, rather. The rest is just standard chocolate chip. I was just saying earlier how I would marry chocolate if I could. That was after ingesting this huge cookie. It's crisp on the edges and softer in the center, with plenty of chocolate chunks distributed throughout. Definitely opt for this one over the others. Their oatmeal chocolate chip has flaxseeds and some other weird shit in it but if you're into that crunchy hippie crap go for it. Last they have a double chocolate hazelnut, which also has "flaxseeds and some other weird shit in it" (callback!).
Portlanders compare it to Chipotle in terms of quality but I very much beg to differ. Laughing Planet is underrated and they are lucky they have it. Authentic Mexican food it is not; good "Mexican" food it is.
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