Vegetarian View: Ashland House

Monthly Feature
Molly’s got the vegetarians covered with another restaurant review!

Each category on a 1-5 star rating.
Overall Vegetarian Selection: (4) Stars
Brief Take: Billing themselves as having “home cooked food,” I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a vegetarian variety on the menu. Usually home cooked food to a vegetarian means meat, and lots of it. I guess that is the tea room persona coming though…like one of the sandwiches offered is pear and brie sandwich. Ashland House has a fair amount of meat free options in all their menu categories and different foods too like the sandwich mentioned above. I felt like I had options here in my ordering. That made me happy.

Ordered Dish: (4) Stars
Brief Take: For appetizer my husband and I ordered fried asparagus and also hummus and pita. I have never had fried asparagus before and this was delicious! It was served with marinara and brought out at the perfect temperature. We liked the asparagus a lot and the breading was spectacular. The hummus was hearty and had lots of black olive and garlic notes in it. The pita garnered an A+ because it was pillowy and warm, my favorite way.

For my entrée I ordered the vegetarian sandwich which consisted of lettuce, tomato, sprouts, avocado, cucumber, shredded carrots, mayonnaise and cheese on organic oat bread. The sandwich was piled very high and I was pleased with all the ingredients except the cheese which was processed American, yuck. Everything else on the sandwich was a herbivore’s delight…and I am going to be a stereotypical vegetarian here and say I especially liked the sprouts, yum.

Dessert time brought warm caramel bread pudding. Ashland House changes their dessert offerings daily. Half the fun in going there is you get a different set of dessert options each time. The bread pudding was one of the better kinds I have enjoyed. The caramel was soaked in the bread and also pooled on top. Served with vanilla ice cream, this dessert did not disappoint.

Healthy Rating: (3) Stars
Brief Take: My sandwich was pretty healthy sans the mayo and processed cheese and the hummus was healthy too. The sandwich provided me with some of my veggies for the day but the thing missing from this meal that I had to make up for later was protein. Now the fried asparagus I am sure was kind of high in fat but don’t the vitamins in it negate that? The dessert was not so healthy. At all.

Overall Opinion: (5) Stars
Summary: Quick review of the overall eating experience…what was the restaurant like, service, etc)
Ashland House is a quaint restaurant /tea room nestled in Spring Branch in what seems to be an old house. The decor is cozy and tea room-esque with dainty decorations and flowers throughout. The restaurant is very close to my house, so I pass by it a lot and the parking lot is always completely filled. Ashland House used to serve a wonderful breakfast but have since removed that from their menu and hours of operation. Now, Ashland House is only open Monday through Saturday for lunch which is one of my few gripes with this place.