Diner's Reviews (from HappyCow.net)

"Still the best vegetarian food around."
Posted by Kate on: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 at 12:35 PM PST
Review: My husband and I have been traveling to Belmar pretty regularly, for the past 8 years( we live 25 mins. away) first for veggie works, and now for Kaya's kitchen. We have tried most of the menu items and never have been unhappy. Let me mention that my husband is NOT a vegetarian like myself, and yet Kaya's kitchen is always his first choice for dining when we chose to go out. The atmosphere is so relaxed and the music is great. Since having a baby we do a lot of takeout and the food is just as good at home. We knew Omer when he was a waiter and a cook and now he's the owner. He has always been a great guy . We highly suggest Kaya's for the best vegetarian food around.
Pros: sun. buffet is awesome * banana cake is great *
HUGE portions
Cons: no salad bar * occ. slow service *
My Overall Rating: Excellent

"Awesome but..."
Posted by Keith on: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 at 05:35 AM PST
Review: We are from NJ but moved to the South 5 years ago. We came up for Christmas and went to Kaya's Kitchen since we had the book from Veggie works and heard it was great. This place did not disappoint. We went two nights in a row and had some of the best Vegan food available. I highly recommend the ribs (made of Seitan) and the wings were incredible. The only drawback was that on the second night (A Wednesday) the food took over 1 hour to come out and the waitress (who was great but overworked) took forever coming back to the table. This was clearly due to the fact that there was only 1 waitress for about 15-20 tables which were all occupied. I saw 3 couples walk out during that stay and if I were a reviewer I would have slammed them for that. It is a shame that a restaurant with such wonderful food doesn't hire another server (both nights we had the same 1 server).
Pros: Great food * good location * Nice people
Cons: overcrowded * slow serving if packed *
potential for aggravation
My Overall Rating: Very good

"Best vegan restaurant in NJ!!!"
Posted by veggiehead420 on: Sunday, September 11, 2005 at 06:34 AM PST
Review: Kaya's kitchen is by far the best! no other restaurants that i have been to can even compare! The variety of different vegan foods is amazing! you can really tell that these guys know what they are doing, and if you are a veggie head in NJ, you are blessed to have Kaya's around! i highly recommend the BBQ "chicken" legs (made from soy) & the karma wings are amazing.
Pros: best vegan food * cool staff * great all-around vibe
Cons: no delivery * only 1 location * breakfast only in summer
My Overall Rating: Excellent

"Yippee!"
Posted by Jen on: Friday, September 09, 2005 at 07:06 AM PST
Review: I've been to Kaya's Kitchen two times in the last 2 months, and it was great. I never got there when it was Veggie Works, so I cannot compare, but I will keep going back now. The service has been mostly friendly and prompt, the food is delicious, and the portions are generally enormous!! I had one of the best deserts I've ever had IN MY LIFE there... some chocolate mousse thing which I hope they serve again. Highly recommend a visit.
Pros: Moderate Prices * Wonderful Food * Enormous portions!!
Cons: No real place to wait * *
My Overall Rating: Excellent

"Consistently wonderful" Posted by William on: Thursday, August 25, 2005 at 01:01 PM PST
Review: Kaya's Kitchen is a great restaurant owned by people who care about what they do. while the menu is exquisite, the service and atmosphere of the restaurant add to the delightful experience of dining there. i was skeptical at first as i loved veggie works, but one trip to kaya's and i was convinced that this is one of the best vegan restaurants in new jersey.
Pros: * *
Cons: * *
My Overall Rating: Excellent

"Breakfast to die for"
Posted by Erin on: Monday, August 15, 2005 at 11:59 PM PST
Review: This place is amazing and in a great location. The food is terrific and reasonably priced with the exception of a few dinners. The salads are great and big enough as a whole meal. Every Sunday morning from 10-1 they have a vegan breakfast. Its incredible! The even have vegan tofu eggs. The pancakes are the best! I highly recommend it.
Pros: great selection * friendly service * very attentive
Cons: a little slow if busy * *
My Overall Rating: Excellent

"Best Vegetarian Restaurant in NJ"
Posted by Janet Reilly on: Sunday, July 31, 2005 at 08:59 AM PST
Review: For years we'd been going to Veggie Works Restaurant in Belmar (at the shore) and were stunned to see that it was "gone" when we went 7/27/05. However, in it's place was Kaya's Kitchen so we decided to give it a try. I was told that the chef from Veggie Works bought the restaurant & is still the chef! Well, the food is just as good....actually, it's even better because of different menu items that are available. We tried a spinach quesadilla as an appetizer.... it was delicious! They will ask you if you'd like Vegan or dairy cheese if the choice includes cheese. You can choose a sandwich or wrap or a dinner for dinner time. I would assume that you could choose a dinner at lunch time also. The dining room is bright and clean and the servers are friendly and more than willing to please. I would highly recommend this restaurant.
Pros: Quality vegetarian/vegan * friendly & prof'l servers *
No smoking
Cons: no salad bar * bread selection *
My Overall Rating: Excellent

Asbury Park Press, April 16, 2005

Belmar storefront offers multitude of vegan/vegetarian choices

    The second wave is flowing into Kaya's Kitchen in Belmar, and I'm guessing the average age of this crew is about half that of the early-supper crowd. A dining companion starts to say just what I'm thinking: Something about college turns meat-eaters into vegetarians.

    Kaya's is vegetarian with a multitude of vegan choices, a storefront mecca in Belmar that's a second home to those in search of a dining-out option that doesn't involve seriously editing a menu and furiously questioning a server about ingredients. It's relaxed, culinarily eclectic and family friendly, even though veg-feeding twosomes typically seem the order of the day - and night.

    The menu revs up when the kitchen's going global. There are Indian and Thai touches, Caribbean and Latin riffs and Middle Eastern/Mediterranean notes. There's nothing shy about the menu or the food and where the kitchen part of Kaya's Kitchen really shines is when it goes all-the-way authentic with a sauce, with a true-to-form classic, with a food that is what it is - including being vegan or vegetarian.

    So here comes my little lecture, which isn't specifically aimed at Kaya's Kitchen, but at most vegetarian/vegan restaurants in this country: With all the authentic, from-the-source vegetarian/vegan dishes out there in the world, including many parts of the planet where religion or philosophy prohibits eating meat or animal products, why does there seem to be a burning need in American vegetarian/vegan restaurants to add ingredients billed to "taste just like" chicken or ground meat? Why don't restaurants looking to serve dishes without animal products focus on the thousands of innately animal-product-free dishes that hail from parts of Asia, the Middle East and Mediterranean, Latin America and the islands? There, these chefs can find authentic dishes that offer an inherent balance of good nutrition and taste, dishes that have stood strong for centuries.

    I think about this as I eat the hummus at Kaya's Kitchen, which is a delectable example of what I mean and what this easygoing restaurant does very right: The chickpea mash, served with pita slices, carrots and cukes, is one of those true-to-form classics based on a good-for-you ingredient that does right by your body and the world. That's why chickpeas are the basis of hundreds of dishes the globe over.

    I think about this again as I dig into a Thai-inspired entree called curried coconut "chicken," which sports a killer-delicious sauce that brings to life the sweet potatoes, chickpeas, chunks of pineapple, broccoli and onions. It's particularly lively with the accompanying brown rice, which gets perked up by the ginger in the mix. But the soy "chicken" is out of step with the dish, its texture glooey and stringy and its taste adding nothing to the melange. Is it necessary, this stand-in product? I'd argue there are other ingredients that could add protein and bright flavor to this otherwise delightful dish. So why fake it with an ingredient that needs to be described in quotation marks?

    OK, I'll quit lecturing and hope you catch my drift. I don't want to pick on Kaya's Kitchen, either, but rather to encourage the good-cooking folks here - and at other vegan/vegetarian restaurants - to go all-the-way authentic more often, minimizing the "tastes-just-like" fare. It's not only not necessary, it's truer in spirit to enjoy a food for what it is rather than what it's trying to emulate.

    The spice is right on the karma wings, highly seasoned tofu strips that enjoy taking a dip in a creamy-textured, cooling herb-flecked sauce. I'm not as keen on the Mississippi ribs, chunks of seitan that are slathered with a too-sweet barbecue sauce. But the spirited sesame dressing in the salad dubbed Oriental gives a lift to the mix of greens, mushrooms, onions, veggies and tiny cubes of tofu, and I think the folks here should definitely consider bottling the stuff.

Pierogi passion

    I'm all over the spinach-and-potato-stuffed pierogies, or at least I would be if the two single-digits at my table weren't hogging them. Who could blame the kids, for the puffy pockets are smothered with a hearty portobello-flecked tomato sauce that gives them an Italian flair. I adore the vibrant cilantro-lemon sauce on the cilantro "chicken" and think the snips of onions and peppers invigorate the scattering of snappy black beans and corn. But I'd rather see more black beans rather than limp wedges of soy protein modeled in the shape of chicken breasts. It just doesn't add to the overall taste of the dish.

    I do like the crunch in the vegan "meatloaf," but I doubt the recipe truly could "fool" many, as the menu here claims. And why should it? The nutty loaf is good for what it is, though I'd rather have something other than a brown gravy on the side.

    Dessert options, our cheery, helpful server tells us, are varied and though not made in house, they're fresh and appealing. I like the lemony exuberance of the lemon-poppy seed cake and the richness bananas bring to a big-bang banana cake with a generous mocha frosting.

    I like a lot about Kaya's Kitchen (I'm thinking, too, that the folks here should bottle that curried-coconut sauce as well), but I would love to see its clearly talented kitchen crew, led by chef-owner Omar Basatemur, take off in lots of other vegan/vegetarian directions. Those dishes are out there, ready to be corralled and introduced to a dining audience hungry for meat-free meals.

Andrea Clurfeld is the restaurant critic for the Press. In addition to The Dining Companion, which appears every Sunday, her casual dining column, Eat Out, is published in Friday's editions of the newspaper. Readers may write to her at the Asbury Park Press, 3601 Route 66, Neptune, N.J. 07754 or at clurfeld@app.com.

The menu, which sports a number of items with quotes around words such as "chicken," really revs up when the kitchen's going global. There are Indian and Thai touches, Caribbean riffs and Middle Eastern notes. Many of the dishes include tofu, seitan, soy protein, ingredients quite of few folks who avoid animal products in their diets

Asbury Park Press, June 23rd, 2005

Kaya's Kitchen continues vegetarian tradition in Belmar

Veggie Delights
by Jon Coen
Correspondent

    For those who have been told their whole lives to eat their veggies, Kaya's Kitchen is working hard to make that demand a little easier to meet. For a decade, the Belmar restaurant - formerly Veggie Works - has been a staple for local vegetarians. Since ownership has changed hands earlier this year, the eatery has further entrenched itself in the vegetarian and health food communities at the Jersey Shore.

    Vegetarians and vegans, those who don't consume any animal products, have traditionally had few restaurant options outside metropolitan areas or college towns. Before 1994, when Veggie Works opened its doors, there were even fewer dining choices.

    Throughout its decade-long legacy, Veggie Works was widely known in vegetarian circles Monmouth and Ocean county fans spread the word of the extensive menu. It became a culinary must stop for those who'd omitted meat from their diets.

    Even touring acts made Veggie Works a priority when playing Shore venues in communities like Asbury Park.

    As popular as the cuisine became, Veggie Works was just as well known for its awkward service and average atmosphere.

    Still, the food was good enough to keep patrons returning for years, despite the operational reputation.

    New owner, Omer Basatemur set out to change that.

    "I just wanted to serve the same great food, but improve the service and dining experience," says Basatemur; of Ocean Township.

    The January reopening coincided with the birth of Basatemur's daughter, Kaya - she was born just three days before the opening.
    "Both motherhood and the restaurant have been wonderful experiences," says Jenn Snyder; Basatemur's girlfriend, who occasionally works on the floor.

    Basatemur, the brother-in-law of former owner Marc Rassmussen, took a month last winter to renovate the restaurant. The ceramic tile floor, the creative lighting, new ceiling and veggie-inspired artwork, coupled with attentive service, have renewed the establishment.

    Basatemur revised the menu as well. He worked in Rassmussen's kitchen for years, learning veggie delights. Many of the old favorites still remain. The popular "Singing Cowboy" is now simply the Chicken Fried Gluten Steak. The Karma Wings, Gluten Cheese Steak and Buffalo Soldier are still popular: While some patrons may lament the loss of the salad bar, the menu now offers salads a la carte.

    Although Basatemur has shortened the menu, he's added a variety of cultural dishes from Italian and Mexican to Thai and Indian, as well as blackboard specials. he also designed a completely vegan Sunday brunch.

    He feels that a meatless diet actually exposes eaters to more types of food.

    "I became a vegetarian at 19," he says while sauteeing mock chicken, pineapple and vegetables in coconut milk. "Before then, I used to eat the same things every night. This opened up a whole new world of food to me."

    "Take tofu, for example," he says. "It's pretty plain, but there's so many ways to prepare it. You start exploring other types of food, and it opens lots of options."

    Kaya's Kitchen also features traditional American dishes - minus the flesh - as Veggie Works did. The primary ingredients, aside from fresh vegetables, are gluten, seitan and tofu. Wheat gluten is the protein that remains when the starch has been removed from wheat. Seitan, another popular meat substitute, is seasoned wheat gluten. Tofu is simply molded soybean curd.

    The vegetarian community continues to flock to Kaya's, as it did to Veggie Works.
    "I think the hippies are a dying breed," says Basatemur with a laugh. "There's not as many as there used to be. Maybe they still come in, but they've grown up. We get a lot of punks in here, a lot of vegetarians in that group. In fact, a few weeks ago, during the Bamboozle (a citywide Asbury music festival), we were getting 300 take-out orders."

    The counterculture is still a driving force. During one recent evening, the Grateful Dead, Social Distortion and Spearhead made the stereo rotation. Meanwhile, members of the band the A.K.A.'s dined in a corner.

    "We came out to see a show tonight at the Stone Pony," says vocalist Mike Ski of Tuckerton. "We've always enjoyed Veggie Works, and we still like it as Kaya's."

    Another customer, Mike Giglio of Belmar, has been a patron of the location for 10 years.

    "It's great," he says of the new business. "It's brighter in here, the food is even better and the service is amazing."

    Kaya's continues the Veggie Works tradition as a beacon of vegetarian information. Basatemur doesn't consider himself an animal rights activist, but feels he sets a subtle example. Patrons are free to take literature on the subject, but it is not forced.

    Basatemur says recent trends encouraging meatless eating have contributed to his success.

    "There was a major trend a few years ago, but now it's more people making a lifestyle choice, even just eating less meat," he says. "I think that five years ago, some people came into Veggie Works skeptical.

    "Eventually, they realized the environmental factors, and the health advantages of vegetarianism," he says. "Today, it's not considered as weird. Our choices have become much more veg- and vegetarian-friendly."