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the dish

Sparkling Lemonade, Kimchi Salad Rolls, left, and Apple Potato Salad with daily soup, right, at Zend Conscious Lounge in Vancouver.Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail

Most people who have lived long enough in "supernatural" British Columbia eventually come to accept that there are certain mystical phenomena we will never quite understand.

Take Yaletown's ever-expanding personal-grooming economy, for instance. How many waxing salons and brow bars can one small downtown neighbourhood sustain? How many $39 mani/pedis does it take to cover those astronomical rents? These are truly mind-boggling questions that require a willing suspension of disbelief to comprehend.

Take a look inside Vancouver's Zend Conscious Lounge

Oh, Yaletown. Just when we thought the last ounce of its soul had been swallowed up by big-box corporate chain restaurants and spat out onto the brick sidewalks – the Farmers' Market was kicked out this year, for example, and Hamilton Street Grill will be closing this weekend after a 20-year run partly because that corner has disappeared under a cloud of cigarette smoke into a de facto nightclub district – along comes an earnest little vegan restaurant and alcohol-free kava bar that ploughs all its profits back to charity.

Well, Zend Conscious Lounge actually opened a year ago. And it hasn't yet turned a profit, says general manager Ashleigh Vogstad, although it does give back to the community in kind through charitable events such as beach clean-ups, sandwich deliveries to the Downtown Eastside and free Tuesday-night talks on such subjects as making meditation accessible and the virtues of matcha tea.

Ms. Vogstad, who has previously worked with the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education and other charitable organizations, was hired last March to create "transparency" and separate the Zend social enterprise from the other business dealings of its founder, Steve Curtis.

The distancing was a wise move. Zend does offer very good food and drinks, but as long as the restaurant was closely tied to Mr. Curtis, all its stories took a back seat to his own. Briefly, the high-school dropout and chief executive officer of ZAG Group, a nutraceutical and dietary-supplement company that has apparently made over $100-million in sales, claims to have healed himself from Stage 4 T-cell lymphoma by "eating his fear," climbing Mount Everest and enlisting the help of obscure shamans and mind-body healers in every remote corner of the globe. How's that for unbelievable?

"Fear" isn't listed on the menu at Zend, though guests are encouraged to try conquering theirs by shuffling through the decks of the motivational mixer game cards stacked on every table. "What is your spiritual animal and why?" asks one. "Buy a drink, give a gift or offer a sincere compliment to someone in the lounge," urges another.

What the kitchen does offer is organic, gluten-free, nutrient-dense plant-based dishes, all made from scratch, which are generally more creative than those found at most hippie-dippy vegan restaurants around town.

Enchiladas rolled in dehydrated kale tortillas have substantial chew inside (stuffed with spiced with creamed walnut meat and fresh kale) and out (smothered in spicy raw mole and chunky tomato salsa). Be sure to order a side of guacamole, which has a vibrant balance of citrus and garlic. Thick and herbaceous, it actually puts the guacamole offered at many local Mexican restaurants to shame.

Chef Karen McAthy, who previously worked at Graze on Fraser Street and will, unfortunately, soon be departing to expand her vegan cheese company, Blue Heron, doesn't shy away from bold spicing or exciting textures. Her kimchi salad cones, chock full of crunchy fresh and fermented vegetables, comes with an utterly addictive miso sesame dip, richly flavoured with toasty nuttiness and earthy umami depth.

The coconut-cashew curry bowl is a bit bland, watery and is oddly served cold. But an unassuming apple-potato salad – sweet, yet nasal-clearingly spicy and coddled in creamy avocado dressing – is outstanding. Gazpacho, a daily soup served last week, was garden-fresh fragrant with green celery and radiant radishes.

For the most part, this is vegan food that will satisfy the hungriest meat lover. Let's hope the new fall menu doesn't change too much after Ms. McAthy leaves.

The botanical bar is booze-free, but that doesn't mean imbibers won't get a buzz. Zend specializes in liquid shots of kava kava, a plant from the South Pacific that is currently all the rage in New York and elsewhere. The bitter, tongue-tingling extract can be added to any of the bar's cold-pressed vegetable and fruit elixirs. Although supposedly a relaxant, it does act like a temporary stimulant. I drank it twice. Both times, I became very chatty and felt lightly stoned.

ZAG Group manufactures the kava extract, so Mr. Curtis hasn't exactly disappeared. But it's a pretty smart marketing tool. And I'll bet the Friday night dance socials are a groovy alternative for people who don't drink alcohol.

That an establishment so earnest – and presumably healthy – could co-exist with all the grooming salons and corporate chain restaurants under the omnipresent gaze of the neighbourhood's gangland Bar Watch suggests that there might yet be hope for Yaletown. Well, it would be nice to believe.

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