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Everlasting Life Café Written by Fatimah Steffanoff, Muslim Link Restaurant Reviewer Thursday, 30 June 2011 12:02

Pepper steak entrée with brown rice and savory bean with corn sides

This month TML visited Everlasting Life Café near Howard University campus, which has been located there with the same mission of promoting greater human health for over 20 years.

ELC is a family owned establishment, focused on providing overall balanced nutrition to their clientele via their restaurant menu, catering services, nutritional consulting, and cooking classes.

The ELC menu offers ethnic cuisine to satisfy any palette by fusing healthy cooking to combine bright colors, full flavors, and great textures in a simple, quick and clean venue.

When you first approach ELC, you enter a large open café filled with tables, chairs, artwork and a juice bar across from the cashier counter. Through a hallway in the back is where you will find the foods in a cafeteria style setting, however your nose will guide you to it long before you even see the hallway. ELC is filled with the aroma of ethnic cuisine from the moment you enter, and happy welcoming faces greet you then guide you through the process of selection and ordering.

The best surprise from the start was that we were told to ask for a sample of anything we wanted to try first. We had already seen the full menu online and were aware that it was going

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Everlasting Life Café Written by Fatimah Steffanoff, Muslim Link Restaurant Reviewer Thursday, 30 June 2011 12:02

to be tough to make a decision, so this was great news. As we stood by, we observed the sandwich station where an employee was putting together the order for a customer with obvious care and intention to please. When we placed our order at the juice bar, the employee asked as to how much ginger we would like in our “Roots Tonic” made of fresh beet and carrot juices, and referred to us as his “clients” – this place takes customer service and their specific roles seriously.

After sampling several selections we settled on ordering from the Hot Bar the Pepper steak entrée with brown rice and savory bean with corn sides, and from the Raw Bar the Parsley salad, artichoke salad, live stir fry, marinated mushroom salad, all complimented by a “Roots Tonic” Fresh Juice and “Almond Joy” Smoothie. Servings we large enough that we reached our fullness but had plenty left to take home for a total of $32.84 and were already wishing we had saved room for their delicious looking home baked cinnamon rolls and cookies.

Everything on the ELC menu is completely Vegan; however, TML imagines that if you served it to someone without telling them, they would never have known the Pepper steak was meatless.

ELC uses Tempeh and Seitan which are soy and wheat meat substitutes, offering texture and flavor in place of actual meat. But most impressive is how ELC uses ethnic influences to flavor their dishes – everything had fantastic flavor as vibrant as the bright colors of the ingredients used! No mistaking the distinct spices used to enhance the dishes whether they were Indian, Southwestern, Asian or American in origin, ELC got them all right. It’s amazing that something so tasty can be so good for you, too.

Overall ELC is an always halal, healthy option, offering a great variety to please the whole family, leaving no one hungry, made of great quality and fresh ingredients served by friendly and helpful staff who considers you their “client”. Great for take-out, dine in and even catering an event, give Everlasting Life Café a try!

-------------------------------------------------Cuisine: Vegan Address: 2928 Georgia Ave NW, Washington, DC, 20001 Phone: (202) 232-1700 Website: www.everlastinglifecafe.com Hours: Mon-Sat 11:00 am - 9:00 pm

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