Whole Vegetarian Restaurant

I don’t understand how this place survives. I’ve been here a few times now, and it has always been either empty, or super close to empty. Is there a big lunch rush or something? Totally weird.
Also, they serve meat now and I think the name is different.
The menu is slightly different than the old Main Street location. I feel like there are fewer options. But the important thing is that they have the «chicken» drumsticks, and they do, hurrah!
It is tradition that each Thanksvegging, a small group of my friends and I visit Whole Vegetarian and eat the crap out of everything. So here we were once again last weekend, sitting in the middle of a giant empty restaurant, with no music playing. I wouldn’t call it awkward, but it was definitely special.
The food was okay. I feel like it’s not as great as the food was on Main. I’m just not feelin’ it like I used to.

What a great location on the water! But, they could have done so much more with the place — it is just blah inside — saving grace is a little patio outside.
The place was dead. We ordered chicken fried rice as well as my fave Singapore noodles to take back to our hotel.
A sweet little girl was handling getting our order to the kitchen and accepting our debit card?! She could not have been more than 11 – 12 years old! For sure, a family run biz.
The washroom was in dire need of a clean — I silently prayed the kitchen was spotless as I had already ordered and paid! ($ 28 for the 2 dishes)
The food actually tasted ok, no complaints really until I was done and the stomach ache started to set in. I have now awoken with the same stomach ache. :(Needless to say I will not be eating the leftovers.
As a result, I won’t return and cannot recommend.

This restaurant used to be Whole Vegetarian, but now changed to Ba Bo Jai Restaurant. I came here for a dim sum lunch and I should have read the reviews first. The service was non existent and the food quality was extremely poor, it is at a very gorgeous location (Right by the water) and the interior of the restaurant is one of the most beautiful so I was very dissappointed to pay a very unreasonable price (probably most of it goes to rent) for a below average meal.

SHORT VERSION: This was a disappointment. The service and cleanliness were so bad that we didn’t even bother eating anything.
LONG VERSION: After a while goose chase trying to find the restaurant starting from its old location (I can accept this wasn’t their fault — we got the old address on an online site that hadn’t updated their addresses yet), we finally found their new location. GORGEOUS new place by the water in False Creek. Perfect setting, right? We got there a little after 5:45pm, and the place still wasn’t open. We waited a while, and saw the sign that said they’d be back by 5pm. This was 45 minutes after their break, and still no one.
On the patio tables of their restaurant, there were old food and plates that weren’t even cleaned up from lunch. Flies were gathered. Talk about disgusting. They couldn’t even be bothered to clean up after their customers before going on break.
We went to the Tapas place next door (5 STARS, BY THE WAY — SKIP THIS FIASCO OF A RESTAURANT AND GO TO TAPAS INSTEAD). At about 6:30p, we finally saw some staff lazily roll around to opening the restaurant.
We didn’t even have a chance to try the food, so we have no idea if it’s even good. We tried calling them, no one answered. We waited, no one was there. Directions were misleading (at the top floor, the sign at the window says «YES WE’RE OPEN! COME DOWNSTAIRS!»). They were late, and dirty from the looks of their uncleaned tables.
I wouldn’t risk going here, and after reading the other bad reviews, seems I’m justified.

I think the service and quality really went downhill quickly.
There had been a waiter or two, but recently it’s all done by one person (which means you wait). The entire room is serviced by one woman and her child (looks about 10 yrs old). I find this troubling … mostly because the child is delivering hot teapots to tables, as well as handling credit card payments. Call me old-​fashioned, but I don’t think such a young kid should be doing these things.
The food started off great when they opened but on my last few visits, there would be semi-​cold food. On one visit, a deep-​fried item was cold in the center. Really gross.
I found it odd on our last visit, the ‘vegetarian’ restaurant had a non-​vegetarian menu. However, recently, I see they’ve renamed as Ba Bo Jai and now serve non vegetarian food. Not sure it’s going to do any better unless they focus on improving service and food quality.

How do you call it a vegetarian restaurant that has a non-​vegetarian food. Say goodbye. It is the Wierd-​end. they can keep it

This place was a major, major disappointment! Our 30 to 40-​minute experience (before we stood up and left) was so terrible we will never ever return. I actually decided to join Unilocal specifically so I could warn others to avoid this place!
It was around 7pm on a beautiful sunny Saturday, and my companion and I were thrilled to find a vegetarian restaurant in such a beautiful location. We went inside and were greeted by a little girl, maybe aged 11 or so. She was adorable, and sat us at a nice table. She brought us some tea. Up to this point everything was great.
But then, we noticed a few odd things. Although there were between 8 – 10 tables of people inside, we could see no server. Just the little girl. Also, we started to notice a strange odor throughout the place — it smelled like sewage. But no matter, I have experienced far worse, and we decided to stick it out.
By the time the only server inside (a young woman in perhaps her late 20s or early 30s) brought us our menus 10 minutes had passed and we were started to get concerned. (We were hungry!) She took our order. Another 10 – 15 minutes later, our first dish arrived. It looked like SPAM sliced up into about 6 pieces. It looked disgusting in fact, and we were 110% sure we never ordered it. But the server seemed to be in a huge rush, and was gone. So we had to track her down, and when we did we told her that there was no way that this mystery fake meat was the $ 8 Bean curd with mushrooms that we had ordered. She made a really weird face and said something like yes it was ‘bean curd and vegetable’ and grabbed a menu and pointed to it.
But, I have a LOT of experience with vegetarian Chinese food and knew that there was no way this was bean curd. So I told her so. Then, she said, ‘oh, yeah so the menu is wrong. This is actually vegetarian ham with honey. The menu says the wrong thing.‘
She made no effort to apologize, or get us the right order. Instead, she seemed to think that the menu being wrong was NOT THEIR FAULT, and that we should suck it up and eat this totally disgusting-​looking random dish we never ordered. I was totally shocked!
So I said to her ‘Well can we get the bean curd with vegetable we ordered?’ and she said ‘we don’t have that.‘
That was it. We stood up and walked out the door.
We felt terrible, we’d been lied to for no reason, and we were starving and had to go and find somewhere else to eat. It was a really negative experience, and we will never ever return here again.
The fact they had one server and a CHILD working here on a sunny Saturday at dinner time is beyond me.

OMG– great location right on the water. perfect after an afternoon in Granville Island. everything we had was tasty– wonton soup, lemon chicken, lettuce wraps & a veggie with tofu dish. service was friendly. BIG space. hoping to go back for dim sum the next time we make it to YVR

The sun finally decided to make an appearance on the weekend, and lucky for me, one of my friends also decided to have a birthday brunch at Whole Veggie, which happens to be right by the water. So I got to admire the blue skies while shovelling veggie dim sum into my face. Works for me!
We ordered almost everything since there was a big group of us and we were hungry hippos. My only complaint is that one of our friends has a peanut allergy and the items containing peanuts were not listed as having peanuts on the menu. Luckily she was not the first to try them, but we were definitely more cautious as we ate.
I’d totally be down to come back for more dim sum-​thing, especially since nobody was even in there so we got all the attention. So when you get there and the place is empty, don’t feel discouraged, I don’t think anybody knows its there yet!

Whole Veg! I love the new location! The view of the water is lovely, the activity on the sea wall is nice, and on a sunny day the restaurant lights right up. We are familiar with the other Whole Vegetarian, closer to our home, but for my birthday brunch, I wanted to try something nicer by the water with a more central location for all our family so we brought everyone here. The dim sum was very tasty, fresh and hot (you could tell they served it up right away). Everyone at our table, vegetarian and non-​veg alike, enjoyed it. We brought 7 people but they had larger tables to accommodate bigger groups. They also had several smaller cozy tables, too.
There are some minor improvements to be made, however, and they might just be part of the growing pains of adjusting to a new space:
There was just one waitress on duty for a Sunday doing all the food running, order taking, and cleaning. She was polite and lovely and did the best job one person could do but they really need to have more staff. I understand this is a bit of a balancing act between having enough customers to get more staff and not having too much staff for the amount of customers. But there were a few instances in which we were left waiting and got the impression that the waitress was hurried. The washroom also needed more attention. One of the toilet tank lids was off and just resting on the toilet seat. It looked terrible. At least lock the stall and put an out-​of-​order sign on the door.
I hate to give such a low rating to a restaurant I want to do so well, and that I look forward to eating at in the future, but my guess is this neighbourhood won’t stand for the same cozy casualness as the Mount Pleasant location. I say it because I want this place to do well so that I always have a beautiful location to come to for delicious vegetarian dim sum!
To prospective visitors, don’t let my review stop you: the food will fill you up and make you happy and the location is fun and full of activity with a fabulous view.

I’m a meat eater … as in (1) I skip the salad bars at buffets all together if there is no seafood or deli meat in the selection (2) if I don’t see any trace of meat for dinner when I come home from work, I would pout and end up craving for a Double Filet-​O-​Fish from McDonald’s or a Double Double from In-​N-​Out all night long.
However, with age catching up, I thought I would give this restaurant a try after stumbling upon in on a walk along the seawall on New Year’s Day. The restaurant is located in the former Chile House restaurant on the north side of False Creek off Beach Avenue. It’s bright and airy.
However, I really want to talk about the dishes we ordered: lo-​hon chow mein, deep fried taro rolls, and bean curd rolls. Pictures are posted as well. The chow mein dish was loaded with different kinds of vegetables (bok choy, baby corn, carrots and various types of mushroom /​fungi). The dish was very flavourful. My only criticism was that the chow mein was a little too broken up although it could just be the batch of the noodle used.
The deep fried taro rolls were equally delightful. The texture and consistency of the mash taro roots in deep fried coating /​wrapping are very similar to the non-​vegetarian version serviced in regular Chinese restaurant during dim sum time, withhout dried shrimp and pork filling. Even without the meat filling, the vegetarian version here is just as tasty.
We thought the bean curd rolls would be similar to the common non-​vegetarian dim-​sum version sans meat. We were pleasantly surprised with our first bite to learn that the ones here are deep fried and then braised. So the rolls are crispy on the outside but the soft and slightly gummy texture of steamed bean curd sheets is maintained inside each rolls. The black bean sauce was also mild and nicely balanced.
We went there on a late Saturday afternoon around 2:30pm. There was nobody else there. We learnt that from the waiterthat they had just opened this 2^nd location 2 months ago. I really hope the restaurant gains patronage. I think it will be our new go-​to Chinese take-​out place so I would like to see it staying for a while.

Every restaurant in this location has had a hard time staying in business and I think this one is on that same path. Thought we would try it since it is just down the street.
Food was average and came out at different times. Pretty drab vibe, the proximity to the water is the only thing going for it. To end our meal, we got our to-​go bag and nice cookies from the waitress… and then we waited. Finally had to ask her for the bill!

* Balance *
I’ve read someplace on the internet (so it must be true!) that it is good to balance your diet. Eating a good dose of veggies is part of that naturally. After Panz Veggie a few blocks away went a bit downhill I figured it was time to try out this new Chinese vegetarian addition to the area.
My eyes skipped over the various fake meat preparations offered with words like «Vegetarian chicken» and «Siu Mai.» I’ve never been a fan of fake meat. I zoomed in on one of my favourite vegetarian Chinese dishes — spicy green beans.
The waitress explained to me that during the lunch special I was really lucky as they give free rice and free tea. Woo hoo. How exciting — I get to balance my beans with rice and tea. Nifty.
The plate arrived and it was a very generous portion size — overflowing with green beans and the «free» rice. The beans did not have that delicious wok hei one would expect from a talented chef. They were slathered in an extremely salty sauce that didn’t have much heat at all. So no wok hei, over salted, under spiced, and terribly out of balance. The tofu chunks did not absorb any flavour either, they were not charred at all, and were very bland in the centre. The only redeeming aspect of this dish was that the beans were not overcooked. They still had a bit of crunch to them. But overall, not a good rendition at all. Photo:
I love dishes with simple ingredients that are prepared in good balance by a masterful chef. I did not find that here at all. So sadly this new spot will not be the place I seek out to balance my diet.