text: Okay so the Forest Cafe is another place that has been reviewed a million times, but I feel I might still be able to offer some kind of valuable opinion.\n\nFirst off any faults I have with the Forest Cafe are nothing to do with it being vegetarian or vegan cafe. Again I feel like so many of the complaints about vegetarian places seem to confuse the fact that a place can be crap, like crap service and or crap cleanliness or crap food, regardless of it being vegetarian. In fact if the Forest Cafe did serve animal then its faults would be worse, for reasons we will come to. But for whats it's worth I don't agree with the fundamentalist view that  has been aired that animals were \"put on Earth\" to be eaten by humans (and I think most scientists would agree). I appreciate it's vegetarian/vegan stance, if nothing else its one more place vegetarians can go without having to worry about what's in their food. And as I have alluded to in other reviews, I'm sure meat eaters can still appreciate the occasional meat free dish in principal. Thus I don't find the fact that the Forest is vegetarian/vegan in itself to be a valid criticism (and suggesting vegetarianism is synonymous with hippyism is also ridiculous).\n\nANYWAY if you hadn't guessed from my ramblings already the Forest is a vegetarian cafe, as well as a meeting spot and venue. It's also volunteer run. As others have mentioned there is a sort of  \"hippy\", New Age aesthetic, although both those words are pretty meaningless.\n\nSo what are my problems with the Forest? My first is hygiene. Whilst the food can be just fine, and it's cheap too, the number of times I have been served dishes that have been lying out for too long, or the tables haven't been wiped in a long while. Can you see my point about meat now? The toilets have also been less than appealing on certain occasions in the past.\n\nThese are the sorts of things that bother me. I love that the Forest is volunteer run, I love that it's very liberal and relaxed about most, but those things need not be synonymous with disorganisation and uncleanliness. If anything that just furthers a stereotype that pervades some of these other reviews. My only other complaint is that whilst the Forest can be, as I have mentioned, a wonderfully open and easy going place where anyone can voice their opinion, it can contradictorily be a bit cliquey. I have found that some nights, during discussions and meetings, there are certain well known individuals who drown out and mock dissenting voices. It is the New Age eco dogmatic view in particular which seems to prevail without as much criticism as its deserves. Having said this, the Forest remains largely unhierarchal. And at how many other cafes can you even attend meeting and voice such opinions on how they are run in the first place?\n\nThe one thing I love and respect about the Forest is that you can go in and spend as much time as you like in there without buying a thing. How many places let you do that? I was recently thrown out of a pub after fifteen minutes of not buying anything while I was waiting for someone, and I was one of only three people in there! I like the Forest's stance on just being a place to \"hang\" if you so choose.\n\nSo whilst the Forest has so many great things going for it, there is room for improvement. Those anarchists and communitarians that use the Forest as a meeting place, should especially mind their own proclamations of unhierarchal social organisation, and its compatibility with order and effectiveness. The Forest needs to be a little more ordered and effective!