New Plant-Based Restaurant Opens in Downtown Kirkland

The Eastside just got a little more vegan-friendly with the grand opening of a brand new plant-based eatery.

Plantiful Superfoods, a modern health food cafe, opened its doors in early April and is tucked away on the second floor of Kirkland Urban center in the heart of downtown Kirkland.

Plantiful makes a wonderful addition to the broad range of vegan-friendly restaurants in the greater Seattle area and serves a variety of dishes to please any food mood.

Luan, a co-owner of Plantiful, says he envisioned a restaurant with “quick service… a casual concept… fast-food in a healthy way”. With this goal in mind, he and his business partner, Son, developed an entirely plant-based menu serving both quality sourced and house-made ingredients.

Plantiful Superfood’s Plentiful Food And Drink Menu

Plantiful’s menu has five essential categories: acai bowls, lattes, smoothies, burgers, and pizza.

Their delicious range of lattes, smoothies, and acai bowls have come just in time for the summer, and are all packed with nutritious superfoods.

For a warming start to your day, try a Zesty Dream latte, made with turmeric, coconut milk, orange, cardamom, pepper, and orange oil. If you’d like something more refreshing, try one of their smoothies or bowls. The Plantiful Bowl, concocted to boost energy and focus, boasts mulberry and goji berries as some of its plant power sources.

Looking for something heartier? Plantiful has you covered. They offer vegan versions of classic pizzas, loaded toasts, and burgers which take inspiration from different cuisines. 

The Banh Mi Burger features Beyond meat and is layered with pickled vegetables and topped with house-made umami sauce. The Gangnam Style Burger, an employee favorite, is gochujang sauce, house-made kimchi, and pickled cucumbers on top of a “chicken” patty.

Despite the vegan community’s excitement about a new plant-based eatery in town, Plantiful’s opening hasn’t been free of drama. A now-deleted anonymous post on Reddit alleged that Plantiful is not in practice a true vegan restaurant. The accuser, who claimed to be an employee, said that the burger buns and nuggets that Plantiful serves include animal products in their ingredients lists.

It has since been confirmed that their ingredients are 100% vegan, with the exception of the gluten-free buns, which contain eggs, as most do on the market. This serves as a cautionary tale about believing everything that’s posted on the internet, especially when it can potentially harm an emerging local business. It also highlights the issues with the ambiguous term “plant-based,” which is used on food labels and restaurant menus that include animal-based products like cheese and eggs.

Plantiful took this all in stride. “We knew things like this would come,” Luan said about this challenge. And while gluten-free options are still a difficulty for plant-based and vegan restaurants, we are hopeful that new and more affordable options will emerge that restaurants can switch to.

Luan and Son are excited to continue to serve the community simple, clean, and delicious food, and have hopes for expansion. Based on the positive response so far from Plantiful patrons, it’s looking like we’ll see more of Plantiful in the future. Click here to visit Plantiful.

Have you visited Plantiful yet? Let me know what you think in the comments!