I love a good, juicy hamburger and have been known to travel more than a few kilometers to meet my carnivorous craving. However, I also try to eat healthy, organic and local so I was pretty keen to give the all-organic, all-raw and all-vegan Gorilla Food café a try.

Raw food? Proponents of raw food believe that cooking food destroys valuable enzymes and nutrients. So all the food prepared at Gorilla Food is raw and what is "cooked" is done via dehydrator with a temperature gauge that doesn't go any higher than 117 degrees Fahrenheit, keeping all that good stuff intact and live. The chef/owner is self-taught and in case you celebrity and hipster cred matters, he used to be private chef to Beastie Boy Mike D.

Gorilla Food started out as a tiny take-out window on Richards Street in downtown Vancouver but has recently moved into a real café a few doors down. Walk down a few steps and you enter into a comfortable space with stone walls, interesting artwork, and a pretty cool leaf and vine motif utilizing all the exposed pipes and wires to nice effect. The room is definitely a cozy respite on a rainy Vancouver afternoon.

My husband ordered the veggie burger ($7.50) made with various nuts, seeds and veggies and served between two lettuce leaves, topped with guacamole, ginger tomato sauce and sliced seasonal vegetables. He said it was like eating a salad and wasn't so sure he'd be full, so he was very thankful that he ordered the Choco Gorilla creamy shake to go alongside his lunch, which was loaded with raw cacao, bananas, dates, coconut oil and almonds. He declared it delicious.

I decided not to go the veggie burger route and tried the Maui Waui pizza ($6). The crust was a toothsome combination of sprouted sunflower and buckwheat, flax and carrots topped with tomatoes, tenderized kale, fresh pineapple and walnuts. It was a taste sensation. This isn't a traditional pizza by any means and I think eating the slice with a fork was pretty necessary to prevent any breakage or crumbling, but it was packed with flavour. For a drink, I chose the Root Down (a nod to the Beastie Boys, perhaps?) described as a "choose your own adventure" juice. I think I chose well by mixing up beet, apple, lemon and orange to the carrot juice mix. Yum!

Everything tasted fresh and healthy and I felt like I was doing my body a favour just from eating lunch there. We even got a couple of cookies to go and even that didn't break the spell that we were doing something good for our bodies. The vibe is a little bit hippy (check out the video below about Gorilla Food) but it's a friendly stop for a quick, wholesome and affordable lunch.

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Gorilla Food
436 Richards St.
Vancouver, BC
(604) 722-2504

Jeannette Ordas is a Vancouver-based Web Designer and Food Blogger who is probably right now thinking about what she'll make for dinner.

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