Best vegetarian restaurant in Santo Domingo
Disclaimer - I don't know if I can say which is the best, because the ones I am going to mention all have good and weak points.
All the restaurants are in the Gazcue/Zona Universitaria area.
Ananda is one of the better known ones. It's in Gazcue on Calle Casimiro de Moya. It is very pleasant and spacious, and is attached to the Devanand Yoga Centre. The food, served cafeteria style, is excellent and varied, and best of all - cheap. Expect to pay around 100 pesos for a good plateful. It also has several parking spaces and if they are full it's easy enough to find a shady spot on the street. There is only one downside but it's a big one - the people who work there. I've been there three times in recent weeks and each time the attitude of the serving staff ranged from dim and unhelpful to downright clueless and rude. Almost bad enough to outweigh the positives. I'll be thinking twice before going again.
Especially when there are at least two or three alternatives nearby. Govinda's is just off Maximo Gomez on the Zona Universitaria side (the side street where the Supermercado Nacional car park is) offers a similar deal. Tasty food, low prices, and unlike Ananda they give you the choice of drinking your fruit juice with or without sugar. The service is better, too: the people who work there are very friendly. The downside is that the place itself is slightly less pleasant than Ananda, and a little noisy - usually because of the supermarket's generator. Also, the choice of food is slightly more limited.
The Adventist Church a couple of streets to the south (opposite the Haitian embassy) has a vegetarian cafeteria. It's friendly and bustling, the food is OK, but the presentation is not so appetising. I have doubts about the hygiene standards. Servings are very large, which is an advantage for some, but not all. They did serve ice-cold Mabi though. Price-wise it's more or less the same as Ananda and Govinda's.
For Govinda and the Adventists, parking is not so great.
The fourth place I know of in the area is Ojas in the Zona Universitaria. I haven't been there for several years so I won't post about it right now.
There was another one in Gazcue - Vida Silvestre - but it no longer exists, more's the pity.
I haven't included the Taiwanese ICE/Zona Fria on Romulo Betancourt in this post, because Formosano has already covered it in a separate thread. FTR I am a regular there and it's one of my favourites.
OK now, any others we should know about? Any differing opinions on the above?
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