*My rating is 2.5/5, but since that's not possible on Yelp I'm giving them 3/5*
I'm visiting Norfolk from out of town and when I looked up "vegan food", Yorgo's came up. I was excited because the Yelp reviews are good, the vegan menu is pretty extensive, and my friend I'm staying with recommended it.
I bought a breakfast burrito and carrot cake cookie sandwich to eat there, and 1/2 pound containers of cream cheese, chick'n salad, and egg salad, everything vegan.
Burrito (2/5): Decently sized and good filling to tortilla ratio. However, it was overly salty and didn't have depth in either flavor or texture, making it boring and flat. I like to have variation, like the crunch of fresh vegetables, creaminess of hummus, tang of lemon or lime, etc., but the burrito had none of that.
Carrot cake cookie sandwich (4/5): Pretty good. It tasted like a normal carrot cake, but nothing exceptional. There wasn't enough frosting in the sandwich, but with the cream cheese I bought it was good.
Cream cheese (3.5/5): The texture was like regular cream cheese, but the taste, although accurate, was faint. The tanginess of real cream cheese wasn't strong enough. I overheard one of the managers telling someone that it was just Tofutti cream cheese that they bought in large tubs and then portioned out, which is very disappointing.
Egg salad and chick'n salad (2/5): Taste was overwhelmingly like mayonnaise. The textures were a little off, with the chick'n salad being a little rubbery and the egg salad being like a cross between tofu chunks and ground beef.
My largest complaint is that they make it seem like the spreads and salads are made in house because they're sold in clear plastic containers. After hearing that the vegan cream cheese is just Tofutti, I'm questioning how much is actually housemade by the restaurant. If you look at the vegan menu, many of the meat substitutes aren't house made, but rather from companies like Tofurkey, Daiya, and Gardein. To some this might not be a big deal, but the difference between making something from scratch vs. from a large company is that the food from scratch is usually made with simple ingredients, while the food from a large company is more likely to be processed. This is especially true for vegan food. For example, homemade vegan cream cheese can be made from tofu, cashews, or coconut yogurt. Here's Tofutti's cream cheese ingredient list:
water, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, isolated soy protein, maltodextrin, tofu, nondairy lactic acid, sugar, locust bean, guar and carageenan gums, salt, vegetable mono and diglycerides, potassium sorbate (added as a preservative).
Look, I'm not going to put all the blame on the restaurant. I could've asked where the spreads came from, but I just assumed they'd be from scratch. I do think that they should make it clearer if they're just reselling items that they bought in bulk. If I wanted to buy Tofutti cream cheese, I could've just bought it at the store, and cheaper to boot. read more