Vida Hermosa - Playa Hermosa

I’ll def be coming back here . Food was by far best breakfast spot in Costa Rica . I highly recommend the vegan burrito and vegan pancakes . Spectacular ocean front views . Can’t wait to come back . Friendly staff

We went here for brunch and for dinner, mostly because Playa Hermosa is such a gorgeous beach. This restaurant has cute relaxed seating options on the beach, or up on the balcony, both with amazing views of the intense waves that characterize Playa Hermosa. The vegan items are labeled and the servers all seem on top of it, I was even able to ask for my smoothie without sugar. Lots of veggies served with every meal! My absolute favorite is the tofu scramble, love the texture of it, much better than the one we make at home haha. Also the owner saw us coming in as he was leaving the parking lot, and introduced himself and was very friendly, making us feel welcome and excited to spend the evening in this cool spot.

Went here because it was a restaurant with clearly labeled vegan options. I ordered coffee with soy milk on the side, an order of vegan pancakes, and the vegan burrito with tofu added. The waitress only spoke Spanish and I’m a native and fluent Spanish speaker so I ordered in Spanish and also pointed to the items on the menu for clarity as I ordered for me and my partner. We were served dairy milk for the coffee and feta cheese not tofu was added to our burritos. Because we thought we were getting some sort of tofu scramble in our burritos (and the feta looked crumbled) we had already started eating/and drinking the coffee when we noticed the mistake. It was really disappointing and so unexpected for a place with labeled vegan options. We told another server who was walking by and she apologized profusely and said she was vegan and that it must have been a miscommunication because the other server may just not know what “vegan” is. But I never said vegan when I ordered, I specifically named the things we wanted, never said queso and even had a discussion with her about almond milk versus soy milk! So, that was a weird excuse. I wish the server who took our order had asked for clarification if she was confused. Anyway, they replaced our order with the correct one and the food was decent. When the bill came it appears the server who took our order had added cheese to the order and not tofu in their computer system so it might have been that she intended to charge us extra for the tofu, but since they didn’t have an option in the system for “add tofu” she used “add cheese” instead to account for the extra charge and didn’t tell the kitchen it was actually tofu that was requested. Nothing was taken off our bill for such a huge mistake — bummer! — and I was ill for the whole day after. Wish the owner of this business would make sure that all new hires/servers know what vegan means especially if they’re going to have a menu that clearly labels items as vegan! Or at least say “we don’t do substitutions” to make it leas likely for these kinds of upsetting accidents.

Had the Portobello Mushroom Burger, straight from their vegan menu. Delicious and magnificent views of the Pacific. Also some amazing smoothies, undoubtedly thanks to local fruits, while the rest of my party had cocktails (the curse to be a designated driver). Price reasonable. It was touristic, but all things looked at, that was probably what we were looking for.

Three rice grains untied in teriyaki sauce with tofu and a soso sandwich. Even the smoothie was unsuspecting.