Pete C.
Yelp
Solid new vegan eats in Kendall Square. I went opening day and had the barbecue pizza, which was good - the vegan cheese was the stretchy daiya kind, not nut cheese. Pizza was a 4, 4.5 out of 5 - nice crust, properly cooked, good but nothing crazy going on. Today I went back and tried the fried chicken / chickpea bowl, which was excellent, and the sweet potato tots which were exceptional. The fried chicken was a vegan fried chicken patty diced up on top of greens, sauce, chickpeas, radishes, tahini, etc. Highly recommend the tots as a side with almost any dish.
I also tried the ice cream sandwich, which was decent and had kind of hard frozen soft serve squished between two cookies. Good stuff, I probably could have skipped it though because the fried chicken salad bowl and sweet tots were so filling.
Staff is friendly, restaurant space is small and clean with a few counter seats and nice little outside eating area (covered). Plenty of "overflow" space in the lawn in front of the restaurant.
Still waiting to try the burger, honestly though I'm ready to be less impressed with this because almost every place has a good veggie burger now thanks to beyond/impossible. However, the stock photo of their burger they've featured in ads looks AMAZING, massive two patty burger expertly layered up, but I'm a bit dubious whether that's what they're serving up (ready to be proven wrong though!!)
If I had any criticisms, they would be:
1. It's a little on the expensive side - but this is totally fine as it's KENDALL SQUARE, people there can afford it.
2. The dishes are good but don't distinguish themselves massively. There's lots more competition ini the veg/vegan space than years ago, and honestly while I'm glad a new space opened up instead of another Beatnic location, there's not THAT big of a difference.
Really, the only aspect I see PlantPub particularly distinguishing itself with, is the massive booze selection. This is nice for people going out to lunch/meals after work with colleagues, but in order to really take advantage of that, I'd think they'd want more eat-in seating, OR maybe people can get bowls and go sit out on the lawn?
Regardless, I Think Kendall Square was long overdue a vegan place like this, I'm glad one opened, and will be back again soon!