Gail N.'s Profile

I really, really, really wanted to love this place.

The first thing that put me off was the location. It was literally an old warehouse turned into a cafeteria. A big brick wall here. A cold cement floor here. No decor at all. Just all over cold and uninviting. I didn't even like being in the space for more than a few minutes.

I was so excited for the food though as that was what I came for. I had a hard time picking what I wanted but I ended up getting the sea veggie sushi, spring roll, and two different slices of pie/cake. All to go. Waited and walked around awkwardly for my food. Got it. Left to try the goodies with my boyfriend.

Verdict on the food: disappointed! I only enjoyed the sushi rolls. The rest were really disappointing. The spring roll dish had a really strange flavour that I wasn't expecting and wasn't a fan of. It looked amazing though. The desserts were dry and overwhelmed with that soggy nut crust taste. For the money, I feel like I could have made a far better raw meal by myself at home.  I do think I just had a bit of bad luck and chose the less than stellar items on the menu. But then again, I don't feel like I should have to have that problem. Everything on the menu should be spectacular and I shouldn't have to "know" what to order and what to avoid to get a great meal.

I'm glad I wasn't a raw food skeptic when I tried this place out because I would have quickly deemed it boring, expensive (although it pretty much is), and just not tasty. The atmosphere of Organic Lives is also certainly not something I want to associate this kind of lifestyle with either. However, I do want to give it another shot here because I KNOW the food can taste so much better and I will find some dishes that I love.

I came here for my birthday with 10 of my friends and we booked the entire upstairs loft. I had actually originally made my birthday reservation with Revel Room but they had a change in bookings and couldn't keep my reservation so the sweet reservations girl there went ahead and made me a backup reservation at Wild Rice, which I had never heard of at the time. I'm far more impressed at that customer service I received at RR than my experience at Wild Rice but that's a whole other review and I'm just rambling.

So. Wild Rice. I'm not a fan of this whole innovative Asian fusion east-meets-west kind of idea. I think it can be done well but I've never tasted it done well. Maybe it's because I'm Chinese myself and grew up eating Chinese food so these always seem like weak attempts at making Asian food trendy.

I will say that the restaurant looks really nice. Small, but nice. The downstairs bar area looks great.

Our "loft" turned out to be a lot smaller than I was expecting it to be. We sat on little two person couches and had to hunch over tiny wooden tables that came up to our knees. We had to eat with our plates in our hands and because the tables & couches were tiny and spread out, we decided to push them all together and ended up with a square table with a big hole in the middle. Overall, incredibly awkward seating, especially when trying to share the food, as it's meant to be eaten.

Our server was a bit hostile. He didn't say anything to us when he came up and never even told us his name. Didn't much make any eye contact with us either as we spoke to him. Another girl who came to bring up food was a lot friendlier though.

The food itself was pretty decent. It wasn't bad but it wasn't amazing either. We had a whole smattering of different dishes and tried almost everything on the menu because there weren't a plethora of choices. I loved that there were MANY vegan dishes but they weren't advertised as vegan. They were just like any other dish - they just happened to have no meat.

I think this would be a fun place to be with one other person or just a few friends but I wouldn't recommend taking a group here. Although it was nice having the upstairs to ourselves, the seating was mega awkward and if your server is anything like ours, they're not going to take you seriously.

It probably wasn't a good idea to come for dinner at 6:30pm on a hockey night because pretty much every single person there was only there for drinks and to watch the game on a huge TV they rolled out.

I felt like our server judged us when we didn't order drinks (I hate it when servers do that anywhere) and he seemed a bit taken aback when we said we were ready to order our dinner. Overall, very pretentious and not very friendly.

To start, he brought out these two crab crostini-type appetizers that were on the house. It would have been a nice surprise but it's funny because I don't eat meat and my boyfriend is allergic to crab. My boyfriend took one for the team, however, and finished them off so that we wouldn't have to feel bad about sending it back... even though it made him itch for the rest of the night.

I had the ravioli and chocolate torte for dessert. The ravioli was decently good - creamy and cheesy, like a ravioli should be. As for my dessert... I appreciate that they were innovative with it - it consisted of a plate of random things like two raspberry marshmallows (which I thought were pretty cute), the little block of chocolate torte, what looked like some cookie crumbs (I have no idea...), and a tiny cup of some kind of custard sauce. It was really strange. I had no idea how to eat it.

The ambiance seemed kind of confused. I understand that it's supposed to have this artsy, trendy kind of feel but I didn't get it. The decor didn't really go together and it just didn't make sense. The chairs are literally white, folding, wooden chairs from your backyard patio. Not to mention the very loud music.

So basically: pretentious servers, sub par food, and I don't even like the atmosphere of the place enough to come back just for drinks.

Super cute little healthy & eco-friendly take on "fast food". You won't find any fake, greasy food here. I had one of their custom salads where you grab a little clipboard from the middle of the cafe and literally custom make your salad by checking off toppings, dressings, serving sizes, etc. I think that was the most fun part, getting to pick & choose whatever you wanted and seeing how it turned out in the end.

Our 1 serving salads turned out to be pretty big! You can either grab your food and go or you can sit at their tables and nom on some good, wholesome food. My salad was delicious and I almost had trouble finishing it. This is like a vegan/vegetarian's paradise without feeling pretentious or feeling like people need to cater to you because you eat differently. The whole point of Freshii is just clean, simple, & real food - for both herbivores & omnivores - no discrimination at all.

Yeah, eating here is going to be more expensive than other typical cafes (my salad was about $8 but completely worth it to me & it depends on the toppings & size you pick as well) but I would rather pay a little more to have better food and support a company who cares about supporting healthy lives.

Love the decor and look of the place. Very laid back & quirky staff. Striking graphic design of everything in the place. Makes me want to return time after time. And I most definitely will! I'm excited for more people to discover this new gem and to watch Freshii grow.

Came here with a large group and we were seated at two separate tables. I hate it when they have to split the group but okay, I understand  that perhaps they couldn't accomodate all of us at one table. We had called earlier to push our reservation half an hour later, twice, and they were fine with that. Our server (only one server for our group of 19 people) was a little timid but very nice even though we got quite rowdy. I sort of felt sorry for her.

The food was just meh & took a long time to come. The dishes are small and are meant to be shared like at traditional Chinese restaurants. However, myself being the vegetarian of the group, sharing was not an option. I appreciated that the menu sectioned off all the vegetarian dishes off from the others but I was thoroughly disappointed at the only vegetarian dishes they offered. They were all some variation of wok-steamed bok choy/tofu/mushrooms and seemed to me to simply be side dishes to the other seafood/meat main dishes.

I kind of see where the asian fusion thing comes from but nothing on the menu stood out to me as anything very creative. It was basically Chinese food made for white people & calling it a fancy name. I ended up having the Buddha Rolls which were doused in oil and tasted exactly the same as the "san juk guen" (bean curd skin rolls) you get at real Chinese dim sum. Everything in general looked quite oily. And my friend said her plain white rice tasted like plastic.

I also like to judge restaurants by their washrooms and Terracotta's washrooms were the complete opposite of what the dining area looked like. It was like they built the whole restaurant and then realized that they forgot about the washroom and just stuffed it in an empty closet space. Anyone a few more inches taller than me would seriously have their knees touching the stall door while sitting down. There wasn't even enough room to turn around and flush.

I honestly don't see what's so special about Terracotta. But then again, the lighting in the restaurant was so dim I couldn't quite see anything, really.

Came here for lunch on a rainy (not surprising) day and the front of the restaurant was still completely full. Our host took us to the back of the cafe where there was a whole other room that I never knew existed! I actually preferred it because the second room was much better lit than the front and much roomier.

I had the Tartine and it was amaaaazing! Beautifully presented and tasted just as good. Very flavourful! There were so many different flavours in that one dish - a little Indian-inspired, a little Moroccan, a little refreshing. I also had a lavender latte because I had seen it mentioned so many times on yelp. And for good reason! It was delicious but I couldn't detect any lavender! My boyfriend had the Paella which I only nibbled at so I can't vouch for it's taste but he loved it and it was adorably presented. We also shared a Belgian waffle with the mixed berry compote. I wasn't particularly crazy about it though.

Overall: Medina has a feel of casual meets classy. It felt like a more upscale cafe without being pretentious & still serving amazing, fresh food. The food felt like fine-dining quality but without the swanky prices. If I could give 4.5 stars, I would, just because our server was kinda just meh. But I don't blame him - there seemed to be only two waiters for a full restaurant. And when we left, there were already people waiting outside in the rain! Get here early! I will definitely be returning & I'm eager to try Medina's sister dinner restaurant - Chambar. Should be incredible judging by the food at Medina.

The decor is gorgeous! Hot pink chandeliers, eccentric lamps, and seriously oversized menus. However, it's fairly cramped when it's busy (which it usually is) and our table was nearly touching the table next to ours. The tables had sheets of brown paper laid on top as the tablecloth which I found to be kind of hilarious and expected to see something like that at a typical dim sum restaurant to make clearing the table easier not at a trendy yaletown lounge.

The milkshakes (spiked and normal) are fun to try. I had the bourbon and my boyfriend had the mint chocolate. The mint chocolate milkshake was delicious but I wasn't a fan of mine. I had the pissaladiere pizza which was very tasty. It had a great sauce.

The service was good at the beginning but diminished as the night went on as the lounge filled up with the night crowd. Overall, I'd say the food is basically comfort food. You'll find classics like mac & cheese and calamari but nothing really out there. I would mostly just come here for the atmosphere and the experience.

I was surprised the place was fairly empty when we came here for dinner despite it being the day before Christmas Eve but it filled up more later in the night. We were lured to come here because of the photos of every dish on their site - everything looks so good & we pretty much knew what we wanted to order because we even arrived. Plus, they are very veg-friendly. The restaurant decor is totally something you'd see in an art school sculpture department. Fantasticly eerie.

I had the risotto cakes entree and chocolate mint creme brulee for dessert. The risotto cakes were amazing. I'm a vegetarian and something about their seasoning seriously made me think I was eating bacon when I was eating the mushrooms. Could be a good or bad thing. I just thought it was crazy that they were able to do that. It was like an explosion of flavours. The dessert was pretty good but their use of sad little out-of-season strawberries & blueberries as garnish wasn't really a smart move, in my opinion. I'd rather them use in-season fruits and have them taste MUCH better.

My boyfriend had the potato gnocchi and a pie with a really long name. They were both really good although it was my first time trying gnocchi so I have nothing to compare it to.

Our waitress was nice and polite. The vibe was super laid back and almost slow. So a good place for quiet conversation and a long relaxing dinner. A++ for food. It was delicious!

It was pretty empty when I came here for lunch but I think that's what made it kind of nice too. It definitely has a more of a gallery/cafe feel during the day. People would come in and make a round just to look at the art on the walls and then leave.

The menu is amazing. Some nice veg-friendly items that use mostly, if not all, local organic produce. I had the fresh thai wraps that were entirely raw and tasty. I loved the eclectic decor and utensils (spoons shaped like lightning bolts & ergonomic knives). We had a very friendly Australian waitress as well.

The other half of the lounge is dedicated to being an art studio with easels all set up. I didn't have a chance to do any painting because the prices seem kind of high but I would love to return later in the night as an after-dinner drinks & dessert kind of thing to see how different the vibe is.

I'm a vegetarian who ended up here because my meat-eating boyfriend really wanted to. I started out feeling pretty mortified while searching the menu for something I could eat. The only meat-free items were the salads and a few of the appetizers.

I felt so embarassed that I was going to be ordering a salad and an appetizer - totaling around $13 altogether - while everything else on their menu was $25 onwards. However, our waitress didn't make a single comment about my choices and was more than accommodating & extremely friendly! She came back several times to see how we were doing and was super fun to talk to. Fantastic service!

I ended up with the grilled flatbread and spinach salad. The grilled flatbread was delicious with a really good sauce. For dessert, I had the Billy Miner Pie. Let me just say that it was it THE MOST INSANE dessert I have ever had. When she plopped it down on our table, we both proclaimed OMG out loud. The biggest slice of ice cream cake for $6. It was a foodgasm, right there. I would go back just to have their Billy Miner Pie again. Oh my god. I still can't get over it!