I am a vegetarian always on the lookout for great food and new places to eat.  I live in San Jose and at this point the choices of vegetarian restaurants are so limited as opposed to San Francisco for example.  One of my favorite places to eat when I go to the city is Café Gratitude.  In addition to being 100% vegetarian, their food is also “live” meaning it is not cooked thereby reducing the vitamin and

enzyme content which is so very important to life and our health. While they have four café locations in the North/East Bay, they do not have any in the South Bay so I am trying to get them to open a café in the South Bay but so far it seems that is not in the plan.  I am so perplexed as to why we do not have more vegetarian and/or healthy restaurants to choose from here in the South Bay.  I know we have the demographics to support places like:  Café Gratitude, Herbivore, The Greens and The Millennium, all favorite places I go when I visit the city. 

I love to cook and to be honest I should have been a chef.  I am now 43 years old with a hefty house payment, etc., and changing careers at this point in my life is really unrealistic.  However, I keep kicking around the idea of mixing my abilities and love of preparing healthy food, with my abilities as a business manager and sales person.  I would like some comments or thoughts from other women in the South Bay who may see a need for a wonderful new healthy café or restaurant similar to one of the ones I mention above.  I would also like some thoughts on location.  I think Los Gatos would be a prime location and has the demographics to support such an establishment since it is relatively expensive to eat at these places because of the preparation time involved, not to mention the cost of the quality, organic ingredients. 

On a final note, until the time comes that we actually get more interest in healthy, live and/or vegetarian food places to eat, wouldn’t it be nice if restaurants at least recognized the folks like me who are vegetarian and give us more options on the menu, not to mention train their staff on what it means when we ask "is there any meat or meat by products in this dish”.....and yes, chicken and beef stock are byproducts of meat.  I can’t tell you how many times I had the server tell me something was indeed vegetarian but when I delved deeper about chicken stock and such, they said that it did have the stock but no meat....in their minds that means vegetarian.  WRONG ANSWER! 

So, until my next post....here’s to helping me get the world educated on what true vegetarianism is, what it is not, and why we need more cafes and restaurants who provide this type of option for us.  The world is not getting any healthier by consuming meat and fast food...that’s for sure.