Reviews

Seattle Weekly Best of 2008  Chaco Canyon Organic Cafe: Best Plant-Friendly Place to Answer Nature's Call

http://www.seattleweekly.com/bestof/2008/award/best-planet-friendly-place-to-answer-natures-call-477067/

"Chaco Canyon, the U District cafe specializing in organic, raw, and vegan fare, has a great bathroom. No, really, think about it: How many times do you go into a restaurant's bathroom and say "Wow, this john's fantastic!" And not only does it look nice inside—all dimly lit and calming—but it's also quite possibly the "greenest" bathroom in the city."

Patricia Amaya, of Huffington Post, July 2008

Traveling Green From Now On

"Seattle has a restaurant treasure, The Chaco Canyon Café. It's located in the University District, and is open 7 days a week, here are the hours. Truly environmentally conscious in every way imaginable, this eco-haven of fine dining collaborated with Tiny's Organic to bring CSA pick ups back to Chaco Canyon in support of local agriculture and the environment. Chaco Canyon Café composts and recycles 90% of their total waste. Wireless internet is available while enjoying a cup of local fair trade, shade grown, organic coffee or tea. Offering a choice between a raw foods menu or vegan menu, you'll find various dishes beautifully displayed, fulfilling and appetizing. Crowd pleasers and favorites are the Cilantro Pesto Pizza, Nacho Plate, Grilled Vegan Cheese and Soup and Hot Tunaless Melt to name a few. You will leave feeling well nourished and satisfied knowing you helped the environment, local communities and yourself."

November 2005

Corner-Ucopia
50th and Brooklyn in the “U” is a choice location
By NORA WEST
http://www.evergreenmonthly.com/2005/em2111/localfood2111.html  

November 2005
As the season of bounty and gratitude is upon us, I recently had the opportunity to give thanks for the corner of 50th and Brooklyn in the University District. On one little piece of real estate is a cornucopia of choices.

The Chaco Canyon Café is such an ecologically and nutritionally noble place that it inspires, and at the same time, makes me feel abashed. I say that because it acutely reminds me how much more I/we can do for our bodies and our planet.

Chaco Canyon is so committed: Recycling and composting more than 80 percent of their total waste, not offering plastic utensils, using 95 percent organic ingredients, preparing raw and vegan food, serving fresh live juices and much more.

The day I visited I had the hot Reuben. It is a delicious sandwich of Seattle-based Local Field Roast brand grain meat, sauerkraut, vegan cheddar, marinated onions, dijon mustard and tomato on Essential Bakery rye bread. It is served with your choice of soup, salad, or chips and coleslaw, all for the reasonable price of $7.95.

I chose the soup, an Egyptian red lentil—rich and full-bodied. In the raw food category I tried the spicy Thai grinder ($5.95). It was a flavorful patty of peanuts, carrots, cilantro, garlic and hot peppers served on a bed of spinach and savoy cabbage, drizzled with a tasty miso glaze.

The grinder was a refreshing and satisfying departure from the ordinary. The juice selection is bountiful, even offering hot items like the “flu buster,” which is apple, orange, lemon, ginger, garlic and cayenne. I tried the hot “healthy tonic,” a combo of apple, cranberry, echinacea and goldenseal.

Chaco Canyon blends smoothies that sound scrumptious. Offerings like the “raw tropique” (banana, mango and fresh apple) or the “mocha madness” (espresso, soymilk and chocolate). The coffee used is Fair Trade, organic, shade grown Costa Rican. The organic espresso is freshly roasted locally. The milk is hormone and BGH free, coming from vegetarian cows that live in Snoqualmie.

Did you understand? This milk fact alone is worth a drive across town to get your morning latte. How often I think, when I buy an espresso drink here or there, that I wish I could control the milk I was getting. Chaco has been around 2 years. I would love to be celebrating the 21st year. Think how much good would have been done for our health and the earth.

As you enter Chaco Canyon, you pass the takeout window of Flying Apron Organic Bakery. Now, the bakery window definitely stops you in your tracks, but just remember you can get your goodies to go on the way out—you don’t want to completely spoil your appetite for Chaco.

Nonetheless, if it happens to be one of those dessert-first days, go for it. Never will you see such a small space so laden with delectables. Flying Apron uses organic ingredients, whole-grain wheat-free flours and non-hydrogenated oils.

I tried ginger men pumpkin cookies and my favorite, flying aprons, which are made with spelt flour, oats, safflower oil and rice milk. Yum.

Next time I’ll try the coconut muffin or berry corn muffins, or possibly the apricot thumbprints. There are many, many choices for the picking.

Friday, January 23, 2004

Cheap Eats: Chaco Canyon Café
By REBEKAH DENN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/food/157669_eat23.html

Reading trendy stories about eating "raw food" for better health, it seemed like foo-foo fussiness for people with budgets big enough to eat at faddish restaurants. What a fun surprise, then, to find the Chaco Canyon Cafe, a 99 percent organic, mostly raw food, vegan restaurant. The board of daily specials includes none over $6, and staff were informative about features such as "pasta" made from jicama strips and "raw-nilla" ice cream created from ground cashews and coconut milk.

I still wouldn't eat raw food every day (especially in winter, the unkindest time to test vegetarianism). But the trip was akin to the pleasure of sampling a new ethnic cuisine, where even familiar ingredients take on new tastes and textures.

Spinach "lasagna" ($6) was nothing like lasagna, except for sun-dried tomato sauce, but was a perfectly good mix of nuts and vegetables with a consistency that wasn't unlike lasagna filling. The rye-seed manna "bread" ($1 extra) made my non-vegan soul crave a schmear of cream cheese. A large salad ($4.50) wasn't bulked up with big veggies, but made such good use of seeds, herbs and a bright kiwi-lemon dressing that every bite counted.

"Ice cream" ($2.50) would disappoint anyone looking for ice cream's texture, but was a tasty frozen dessert on its own merits, reminding me oddly of eating chilled halvah.

Best Place to Eat and Wi-Fi
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0431/040804_bestof_food_critics.php

There are currently over 15,000 Wi-Fi hot spots in the United States. Seattle alone boasts 293, and CHACO CANYON CAFE—an earth-toned grotto tucked beneath Cedars in the U District—is one of the latest test models for the burgeoning trend. Eschewing the clutter and expense of standard computer cafes, Chaco Canyon allows patrons to surf the Web for free on their own machines; owner Chris Maykut calls it "BYOC" (bring your own computer). The restaurant offsets the high-tech of wireless Internet with old-fashioned comfort food—as old-fashioned as vegan cuisine can be, anyway. A raw juice bar, a coffee shop, and a health-food diner rolled into one (with vegetable curry and lasagna among the more popular entrées), the cafe adds a social element to the too-often solitary lives of Internet addicts, letting them dine nutritiously, together, by the light of their laptops.

—Neal Schindler

THE NOSH
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0408/040225_food_thenosh.php

CHACO CANYON CAFÉ This raw juice bar takes things like beets and spinach—the icky vegetables you hated as a child and still have trouble eating—combines them with pears and other familiar fruits, and creates a single cup of goodness that is probably healthier than your last six meals. The aforementioned veggies and fruit feature prominently in Chaco's "Swamp Monster" drink ($2.95/$3.95); if green and leafy isn't your style, there are several other beverages starring that almighty crossover vegetable, the carrot. Located next to the Flying Apron Organic Bakery and beneath U District staple Cedars, Chaco certainly picked the right place to ply its wares. The cozy counter area connects to an equally snug little blue-walled nook—the perfect place to sip a raw, organic concoction and write a vegan manifesto on your laptop (the café is a Wi-Fi hotspot). Since Chaco serves a full array of coffee drinks and homey dishes like veggie lasagna and zucchini curry (ranging from $3 to $6), you don't have to chug peach-apple-kale smoothies if you don't want to—but the skinny guy at the counter says they're good, so why not give 'em a try?

NEAL SCHINDLER