Blogmas Day 22- The Butcher's Daughter Review

I want to first preface this review by saying that I am 100% not a vegetarian and to be honest I barely even like eating vegetables. Most days I can't imagine having meals with no meat! I heard about the famed vegetarian/vegan restaurant, The Butcher's Daughter, from a friend who raved about her brunch experience there. She kept saying the food was delicious and that the decor was so cute. I'm always a sucker for cute things so when two of my friends came into town for a visit (and with one of them being a vegetarian) I decided to take them to The Butcher's Daughter for a meal. I wasn't expecting too much out of the food because I've had a bad experience with vegan food at another restaurant before. The Butcher's Daughter doesn't accept reservations so we made our way to the West Village location (there is the original spot in Lower East) around 6:30pm for an early-ish dinner. Luckily, there were many open tables and we didn't have to wait at all. 

As expected, the inner decor was adorable and I bet it would have looked even better in the daytime with natural sunshine. There was loud-ish club music playing when we were there for dinner, which didn't match the vibe of the place so I'm not sure what was going on with that. Nevertheless, we loved the multitude of plants everywhere.

My friends and I chose to order 4 dishes and split everything so we would be able to sample more items of the menu, which also as expected had not one dish with meat on it. We got the roasted potatoes, spinach and vegan cheese quesadilla, spaghetti squash pesto pasta, and the spinach and artichoke dip. Here comes the big shocker- everything was AMAZING. I was so surprised! I couldn't believe that everything was made with only vegetables because I couldn't taste any vegetable at all! It all tasted so delicious and real (I always feel like the problem with vegan food sometimes is that it tastes fake). The quesadilla was my favorite because it was the most flavorful as it also had mushrooms and pico in it. The spinach and artichoke dip wasn't as heavy as it normally would be so I didn't feel guilty dipping my baguette in for the largest scoop. The potatoes were a good staple side dish and came with some sort of mayo sauce on the side that I was just obsessed with. The biggest surprise of the night was definitely the pesto pasta. I thought the taste would be all screwed up since it wouldn't have any noodles, but the pesto flavor was so strong that it overpowered the taste of the squash noodles and it tasted as any other pasta dish would. I can't use enough words to describe how simply delightful all the food was here.

Thinking back, there are many other delicious items that I probably would have enjoyed- the cauliflower pizza, the black bean burger, loaded potato skins- so I know I need to make another trip back. I'm giving The Butcher's Daughter 5 toasts because... I think my post has made that obvious! Best of all, I didn't feel guilty eating the food and I didn't leave the restaurant feeling heavy or bloated. A huge win in my books!