Veg Out Café offering vegetarian options for diners on Aiken's Southside
Jan. 31—Healthy food doesn't have to be boring.
"I make vegetarian taste good. I'm really good at creating flavors and blending," said Andrew Krull, who recently launched the Veg Out Café at 1619 Whiskey Road in Aiken.
The restaurant is in the former home of the Foods for Better Living store in the Mitchell Shopping Center.
"I'm kind of a one-man show," said Krull during an interview last week. "I am the cook. I do everything."
A master herbalist, Krull is a graduate of the School of Natural Healing in Utah, and he has owned nine restaurants and two food trucks during his career.
Krull said he was planning to operate a gourmet grilled cheese food truck in Aiken after moving from Colorado "nine or 10 months ago" to be closer to his family in the area.
But he couldn't find anywhere suitable to park the vehicle long term, so Krull ended up renting a brick-and-mortar location.
"This is going back to my roots," he said. "The very, very, very first place I had was in the little town of Idaho Springs, Colorado. It was an herb shop with a juice bar and some vegetarian options for people. I enjoyed it. It was fun."
The Veg Out Café serves quinoa bowls with beds of mixed greens and toppings that include the Fantastic and the Sunshine.
The ingredients in the Fantastic are cremini mushrooms, walnuts, garlic, sun-dried tomato dressing and Brie.
Baked tofu, sweet peppers, cherry tomatoes, sliced almonds, sunflower seeds and flax seeds are in the Sunshine's mixture.
Among the other choices on the menu are the UnBurger, a combination of grains, seeds and veggies; and the Rock and Roll, which is zucchini stuffed with macadamia ricotta, sun-dried and fresh tomato marinara, and fresh basil pesto.
The "not fried" chickpea falafel, which contains almonds, is known as the Cosmos. Pine nut hummus also is available.
"It will evolve more," said Krull of the Veg Out Café's menu. "I wanted to start where I was comfortable and then grow it."
In addition, the restaurant offers fruit smoothies that don't contain sugar and syrup, and other drinks such as vegetable juices, lavender lemonade and "gingermint" limeade.
"I am all about handmade and organic," Krull said. "There are some things that we can't get organic, so I would say we are 90% organic.
Desserts at the Veg Out Café feature fruit and nut cheeses.
"Nut cheese tastes like regular cheese, and it actually tastes better than cheese sometimes," Krull said. "You can make ice cream out of nut cheese, and it tastes like regular ice cream."
Customers also can purchase 100 different herbs in bulk at the restaurant.
The Veg Out Café is open Monday through Saturday.
According to a post on the eatery's Facebook page, its hours this week are 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.
