Servers continue to take diners their entrees accompanied with an ever-changing daily question. They have asked, “What is your gift to give?” and, “What brings you joy?”

The implication is that the restaurant is a sliver of nirvana. There are messages of joy etched on the water pitchers, and the women’s bathroom mirror announces, “I adore myself and everyone else.” (Do I really? I could not help but wonder when I stopped in for lunch, unable to decide whether I should love the place for its good food or despise it for its too-precious attempt at happiness.)

What is most remarkable about Café Gratitude is its unabashed attempt to create a kind of animal-free utopia. There are no spaces free from its brand of positive thinking. The menu — from entree to dessert — reads like a catalog of affirmations. A diner doesn’t order peach juice, but a glass of “Cheerful.” Entrees with names like “Humble” (an Indian curry bowl), “Warm Hearted” (grilled polenta) and “Transformed” (mole tempeh tacos) are followed by desserts of hempseed chocolates and raw cream pie that go by “Delighted” and “Rapture” on the menu.

Each plate comes with the message in black paint: “What are you grateful for?”

Written on the windows are positive declarations: I am awakening, grace, jolly, precious, eternal, luscious, bliss, divine, calm, delighted or adoring.

If the messages on the plates and menu are not enough to offer some kind of precious inner peace, the community bulletin board is filled with offerings for meditation challenges, courses in new science and consciousness, bhakti yoga festivals, the “I am Renewed” juice-cleansing program and tantra immersion retreats. It’s enough to make even the most blissed-out, vegan Angeleno cringe.