Here is something interesting to try! Zero in on an area on Google Maps where you would like to eat a meal (say, Steveston). Then in the search bar, enter "vegan". You will probably be surprised by the number of restaurants whose names pop up on your screen. Of course, some are not vegan at all other than offering a green salad or having a previous review which said, "not a place for vegans!" but some may actually have some plant based options on their menus. We discovered John's Pan Pizza in Steveston this way. We had intended to check out the new Garry Point Grill and thought we could visit John's as well.
There are a couple of tables and a window counter bar inside but it was way too hot on this summer day to be comfortable. We managed to grab the one small outside table.
It is easy to find the vegan offerings here both on the printed menu and on the website version. We started with the Vegan Green Pizza which featured pesto, artichokes and garlic and was frankly an excellent pizza! The crust was decent and the Daiya cheese was melty and very good. It was also wonderfully garlicky! We would drive out of our way (except that this would not be the environmentally friendly thing to do) to eat this.
Next up was the Vegan Chicken Pizza. The basis for this one was similar with decent crust and cheese, good tomato sauce and a few veggies (not a big fan of green pepper). However, under the heading, "what were they thinking" comes the vegan chicken. The staff did not know what kind of "chicken" this was so we have no one to blame for it but it was comparable to over cooked and dried out French fires. Throwing this on top of the pizza added nothing to it. At the very least this should have been marinated or sauced to give it some kind of flavour. This was a sold fail.
We decided to try the Vegan Lasagna as well. Now admittedly, it does not say that there is vegan cheese on this lasagna (we know that they have Daiya in the kitchen so we took it a little for granted) and it turned out to be basically, sauce and noodles....We decided to take it home and add our own cheese. There was nothing wrong with the part that we were served but we were more than a little disappointed. Another near miss as the cost of the Daiya cheese is obviously greater than serving a decent product.
I try not to crap on places especially if they are making the effort to serve food to the plant based minority. I somehow hope that more and more people will make plant-based choices when they are available for the sake of the animals and the planet but John's needs to try a little harder. Still the Vegan Green Pizza was great! Maybe just a few tweaks will help.
Food 2 1/2 out of 5
Vegan Options 3 out of 5
Comfort 3 out of 5
Service 3 1/2 out of 5
Value 2 1/2 out of 5
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