Vegetarian Ital (''vital'') natural food is served up in a bright yellow house-like restaurant in the heart of Little Haiti. Whether you are a Rasta or a garden-variety vegetarian, the food -- all vegan, with no dairy or eggs -- is worth a try. There is no menu. Instead, manager-owner Immanuel Tafari heads to the downtown wholesale produce market every morning and buys what looks good.
Vegetarian Ital (''vital'') natural food is served up in a bright yellow house-like restaurant in the heart of Little Haiti. If not quite the Garden of Eden, the place called Garden of Eatin' is nestled against a vacant lot filled with tall grass, chickens and lots of colorful wildflowers. It is easy to miss it at the far end of a parking lot off Northwest 62nd Street between First Court and First Avenue.
The interior is painted red, yellow and green, the colors of the Rastafarian flag, and the six tables are washed in sunlight during the day. Manager-owner Immanuel Tafari does all the cooking. A Haitian American who grew up eating the vegetarian Afro-Caribbean dishes his parents cooked in New York, Tafari came to Miami last year for a Rastafarian celebration and decided to stay.
Whether you are a Rasta or a garden-variety vegetarian, the food -- all vegan, with no dairy or eggs -- is worth a try. There is no menu. Instead, Tafari heads to the downtown wholesale produce market every morning and buys what looks good. He cooks with coconut oil made by boiling down fresh coconut milk until the oil separates.
The day's offerings are laid out on a steam table, and you can try everything in mini, small or large portions, served with salad of the day and fried sweet plantains. Soup is free for lunch customers who eat in. Soy burgers (pictured on Page 7) are fixed to order, served on spelt buns with soy cheese. There are also soy-protein kebabs and tacos.
Dishes in the daily rotation include stewed eggplant, cooked-down okra, stir-fried cabbage and tofu, vegetable stew and curry potato and soy fish stew.
Once a week, usually on Thursday, it's ethnic day. The theme might be Indian (dal, stewed spinach and basmati rice), Sicilian (whole wheat spaghetti with garlic bread), Jamaican (stewed pumpkin and chayote in coconut milk) or Haitian (ground root vegetables and plantain cooked in coconut milk and served with cornmeal).
Salads include avocado and watercress with alfalfa sprouts, celery and cucumber; rainbow (shredded purple and green cabbage, carrots and kale) and carrot-beet in tahini sauce or soy mayo dressing.
A new breakfast menu offers up organic blueberry waffles with soy sausage patties, steamed cabbage with hash browns, biscuits and slice of cantaloupe or cornmeal porridge with tea.
Many customers come for the fresh-squeezed lemonade with a touch of vanilla, red sorrel juice, energizing mauby bark tea and ginger juice. For dessert, try raspberry-ginger cake or banana pudding. Vegging out is easy and tasty here.
