On a trip to Michigan over the July 4 weekend, I decided to finally go visit a place that I’ve known about for over 15 years. For that length of time, I’ve been cooking using recipes in various cookbooks published by The Moosewood Restaurant (or rather, by members of the collective that runs the restaurant).

The restaurant is located in Ithaca, NY, which is just far enough from expressways in the state that it isn’t a convenient stop if one is crossing through. I figured I should finally take the extra time required to go have a meal there, and see just what the place is like.

It’s located in an old building that’s been made into a little mall. This is the building:

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And here are exterior and interior entrances to the restaurant:

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They have a very large repertoire of recipes, as they’ve put out more than a dozen different books over the years. As a result, they don’t have a set menu – they offer small lunch and dinner menus that change daily.

I had a bean burrito with onions, peppers and hot sauce, served on a bed of brown rice. Also had a bottle of local ginger beer, and a blueberry-apple cobbler for dessert. The food was good, but ultimately no better than I’ve had at other vegetarian restaurants, and somewhat pricier.  I’m glad I made the trip once, and I’ll certainly eat there again if I find myself in Ithaca, but I won’t go out of my way to return to the place.