At the time of this review The Herb Box Restaurant is in two locations in Scottsdale (North Scottsdale and Old Town Scottsdale). The Herb Box Restaurants are independently female owned restaurants. The menu offers a heavy focus on healthy vegetable based dishes. They serve as much as possible locally sourced foods, cage free eggs, hormone free natural meats and nitrate free bacon. The atmosphere is small and cozy but energetic. They also have an indoor/outdoor bar and a patio with live music.

The Herb Box offers many different appetizers that are “out of the box” and very different. We decided to start with the Vegan Nosh Board.

 

We received 4 small bowls of fried vegetables that were really different.

The bowl on the far left are the Crip Brussels Sprouts Chips. The Brussels Sprouts leaves are fried till crisp, taste sort of nutty and somehow are very light and seem oil free. I didn’t notice the yellow pepper aioli in the bottom of the dish till I got there. They are very tasty and easy to shovel in. Second bowl from the left are the Kale Pakora Chips with Corn, Sweet Onion, Sweet Hot Serrano Glaze and Vegan Yellow Pepper Aioli. (This one was one of my favorites) These chips were layered with flavors and texture. They had that hot sweet savory crunchy thing going on. They almost had a toffy crunch feel in the mouth.They were surprisingly delicious! Edamame Hummus were just simply fried and had a light dusting of some kind of better tasting sea salt. I don’t get the hummus among us connection here. Nor did I get hummus………Another of the favorite dishes was the Korean Fried Cauliflower. I only got a small taste of it but the Cauliflower was wildly flavorful with Korean Hot Pepper Sauce, Asian flavors and were tossed with quinoa, some pea sprouts and pea pods. I have to say that was one interesting Vegan Plate!

Another starter we tried was the Smoked Trout Beignets (I think it was spelled Beinegts on the menu…..?. Well anyway it basically was a Smoked Trout fish fritter or croquette that was served with a Roasted Red Pepper Aioli. It was also suppose to come with Cornichons that we didn’t receive.

I tried one Smoked trout ball by cutting it in half. It was too smokey for me….all I tasted was smoke…….but then I tried the other half with the Red Pepper Aioli and then like magic it was better and delicious!  Well any who the Smoked Trout Balls were delicious with lots of the Red Pepper Aioli.

We decide to share another plate and try the Urban Market Steak Salad.

Its very buttery tender Grilled Beef Tenderloin in a ancho Bourbon Demi with a detailed salad of Smokey Blue Cheese, Avocado, Watercress, Sugared Pecans, Dried Corn, Bacon, a few other things with a Blue Cheese Vinaigrette. The salad was much lighter than it looks and the blue cheese was used very sparingly not to over power anything.

We could stop now but desserts are a big feature here so we had to try one.

They all look great!

What to pick?

Went with Pumpkin Pie because it’s that time of year for Pumpkin Pie.

This pie is unique. (My phone didn’t capture the edible glitter on the top.)

The cream taste sort of like like cannoli filling. It’s also not too sweet.The custard is creamy, not too sweet and swings towards nutmeg.The crust is thin and is better than most pie crusts you get out because it’s edible and doesn’t taste like a block of flour like the average pie crust.

My first visit to The Herb Box was interesting! I enjoyed the food but it seemed like management was off on my visit because of the missing items on plates. If management was on   their game I think the plates would have have been complete.  I’m surprised that the server didn’t  recognize or care that two of the plates weren’t complete. There should have been some kind of  COMMUNICATION by the server or management…..I would be very understanding if someone said something to me….like I’m sorry we are out of that instead of just giving me the plates and hoping or not caring I won’t notice………… I also happened to come across on review sites that my Vegan Nosh Board was significantly smaller than what other people were served. I sent the pictures of the two appetizer plates to The Herb Box hoping for a reply….so I just don’t stew or speculate on what the issues were….. As of this date nobody from The Herb Box replied to me.

www.TheHerbBox.com

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