Pulse Cafe closing, last day will be Sunday 11/20

[ron_newman]

according to their latest Facebook status update.

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I am...not surprised. A lot of their things were ok, not great, just 'pretty good for vegan'. There can be amazing food that is vegan (Clover Labs is doing things so well that I had been to their food truck in Dewey Square 4 or 5 times before even noticing they were vegan), but Pulse never lived up to that.

(I was always weirded out by the restaurant's name. The first thing I think of when I think of a pulse is blood running through my wrist. Other meaning come after, but that is always my first, and it was weird for a vegan place, y'know?)

[halfline.livejournal.com]

Clover Labs food isn't vegan. You can order some of their entrees vegan, but none of them are vegan by default as far as I know.

They're focus is the ovo-lacto vegetarian niche I think.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

the *truck* was in fact vegan until about 2 months after they opened (when they started offering popovers which have eggs, and the breakfast sandwich, which has a soft egg and cheese).

Everything else they were serving there today was vegan (more so than usual; at 1pm they were out of bread and serving everything as lettuce wraps). I have never been to the restaurant. But at the trucks, vegan is actually the default.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I don't think lettuce wraps are "more" vegan than bread, if the bread is also free of eggs/dairy/animal products. Unless yeast dough is considered a product of bio-oppression, like honey? :-)

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but one would have to read a label or ask someone to determine whether or not the bread was vegan, while with lettuce, well that kind of inquiry isn't needed.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I did actually once know a vegan who only ate unrisen breads because she was skeptical about yeast. Yes, seriously. Though clover uses pitas, so you are correct. I has a snark fail.

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

i love clover food truck as well, but to be a pain in the ass, i'm pretty sure that the eggplant and egg sandwich is not vegan. :P

but, i think most things are vegan, and you are right, it is still delicious. and cheap! (comparatively)

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Are you sure it was all vegan? When I've eaten at the truck and asked, a surprising number of items turned out to not be vegan due to assorted things they add here and there (like mayo). Most of them could be ordered vegan, but they don't label so you have to ask. It was definitely not their default.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

The truck was default vegan at one time. Then it stopped being default vegan because almost everyone wanted mayo and cheese.

[halfline.livejournal.com]

a lot of the items that look like they would be vegan aren't (surprisingly to me anyway). They tend to throw in mayo or cheese or yogurt sauce, so you just have to ask them to take those things off if you care about that sort thing.

[teko.livejournal.com]

They had some tasty seitan and tempeh dishes, and I loved their cornbread, but their simple vegetable dishes were, honestly, miserable. If you're a vegan place and you're struggling with serving vegetables, something's not quite right.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I had been in once for just dessert, and it was good, so a vegetarian friend of mine visited for PAX last year, and I took him there.

my meal (a mushroom risotto thing) was bland (my friend got the burger and it was ok). I asked for salt, which wasn't the problem but might have helped (which they did not have available), and when I was just unable to finish the dish (which took 50 minutes to get to me), the chef came out and argued with me about his cooking and how popular the dish I made was.

My friend then drove me to Five Guys the next night to apologize because I made an effort to take him to a vegan place and my dinner and experience kinda sucked (this was before 5G moved in town, and so I could only go to them on the kindness of car drivers ;-) )

[teko.livejournal.com]

I had takeout once -- one of their sandwiches. It was tasty (I think it was the BBQ) but honestly, it's not that tough to put BBQ sauce on tempeh.

The time I ate in, I had their vegan sushi (nori rolls with asparagus and red pepper inside) and a seitan roast. The seitan was just, well, seitan in a brown gravy, which was okay. But the asparagus that came with it was limp, olive-green, lukewarm, and completely unseasoned. I asked my waitress about it and she said "we don't season our vegetables -- we let their natural flavors shine!" Er, okay. That's pretty hilarious, actually.

[ron_newman]

I didn't even know that the word 'pulse' could mean 'vegetable' until this cafe opened and someone explained its name to me.

[enveri.livejournal.com]

That's a first on me, I've never heard 'pulse' to be associated with vegetables before!

(I always thought their name choice was just a little odd)

[elements.livejournal.com]

I believe that "pulse" is a genre of legume. With the appropriateness for the cafe being that they emphasize pulses for proteins, rather than meat, dairy, egg.

I agree with above comments on separate threads about the food being mediocre. Perfectly fine, but not worth going out for. I'm not vegan, but when I want to eat basic vegan food it's cheaper and tastier to make it myself than to go somewhere to pay for something that hasn't had a lot done to it.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I think of it being more of a British usage.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Does this mean we can get Joey's Thai Cafe back?

~Sor

[ron_newman]

Or Benjapon's, or Fusion Express?

[doogly.livejournal.com]

Oh Benjapon, how I mourn you...

[kylenffxi.livejournal.com]

Benjaritos were the best thing ever.

[ron_newman]

It's not Joey's, but the new place that just opened in this space is indeed a Thai restaurant.

Central Square for me

[notnatalie.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised either. As a big fan of that kind of food (though not a veggie nor vegan) I really wanted to like them but they were so so-so I stopped going. Also, the owner didn't know what tamari was when I asked for it to add something - anything - to a particularly blah dish. I considered that to be a warning sign for anyone in the natural foods community since its kind of like saying you don't know what tofu is. It's starting to look like Central Square will be the place for good natural foods casual dining - Life Alive and the new fun "diner-style" Veggie Galaxy have not yet failed me in any way.

[seltzer92.livejournal.com]

i am not surprised. the one and only time i went into pulse i walked in and asked them if i could purchase some cheese to go (a vegan eatery in allston sells cheese to go - so i thought pulse might offer the same)

the teenage waitress looked at me as if i was a madman and said "we are not that kind of restaurant".

not sure what that means exactly.

[ron_newman]

maybe they didn't know there was such a thing as vegan cheese?

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

or maybe they didn't think a person asking for cheese without specifying they wanted vegan "cheese," was actually asking for vegan cheese.

I wouldn't.

[seltzer92.livejournal.com]

no, i specifically told them i usually bought vegan cheese from "piece of pie" in allston.

[trtls.livejournal.com]

I will miss them, they served one of the few salads I actually craved! However, not surprised. I called it a long time ago when they couldn't settle on opening hours. Didn't know when I could go, so just didn't go!

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I'm sad they're closing because they are so close to me, but I never liked the food as much as I wanted to and the prices kept creeping up, too. I haven't actually eaten there in a while. For a really awesome meal, head up Holland to True Bistro. (Which is high end and not cheap, but totally worth it.)

[littlecitynames.livejournal.com]

I love True Bistro, and I am not even vegetarian.

[gruene.livejournal.com]

What a shock! People don't want to fifteen bucks for a heap of brown rice and kale? Who knew!

[real-green-tea.livejournal.com]

Aww, I'll miss that place. Great comfort food.
They also did a great job of listing ingredients and the staff was always obliging interms of telling you what is *actually* in their food.

Sadly there is a dearth of awesome vegan restaurants in the area.
It doesn't help when the prices on everything are like, 2x as much.
Hopefully someone will come along and replace them.
That location is like a recipe for restaurant death. It's like, too far out of Davis. Or something.