  Contextuality is an indicator of non-classicality, and a resource for various
quantum procedures. In this paper, we use contextuality to evaluate the
variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), one of the most promising tools for
near-term quantum simulation. We present an efficiently computable test to
determine whether or not the objective function for a VQE procedure is
contextual. We apply this test to evaluate the contextuality of experimental
implementations of VQE, and determine that several, but not all, fail this test
of quantumness.
