Entertaining a crowd with dietary restrictions? These three venues offer vegan, raw, and vegetarian menus for catering or on-site private dining.
1. Evanston's Blind Faith Cafe serves exclusively vegetarian fare for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Menu options include tofu crab cakes, vegan mango cheesecake, and a macrobiotic plate filled with brown rice, kale salad, and butternut squash. The venue's private dining room can seat approximately 50, and restaurant staff can deliver pastry baskets, appetizer trays, box lunches, and hot entrees to offices and event spaces in the city and suburbs.
2. Butterfly Social Club's eco-friendly focus—the venue runs partially on solar and kinetic energy, and its walls are made of sand, clay, and straw—extends to its cocktail list, which offers drinks prepared with fair-trade, organic, and chemical-free products. The club's Long Island Iced Tea, for example, subsitutes agave nectar and coconut water for Coke. The venue can host receptions for roughly 100 guests and works with a list of preferred caterers that includes raw-food restaurant Cousin’s Incredible Vitality.
3. Founded by holistic healer Karyn Calabrese, Karyn’s Raw Cafe offers two menus. On one, a raw fine-dining selection includes basil-scented ravioli with macadamia whipped cream, while a more casual menu features smoothies and coconut-meat egg salad sandwiches. The restaurant's main dining room can seat roughly 35 guests and hold 60 for cocktails, while a private dining room can seat 40 and host receptions for 65. Though the venue has no official catering menu, Karyn's staff will work with planners to create specialized snacks for meetings and events within the city.
