the vegan fork

Soy Luck Club

2007-06-07T19:24:00.001-04:00

I've been curious about this place for quite awhile and finally decided to go there. It's a cute little cafe/sandwich and coffee shop. Like the name implies, they have a lot of soy products, but the place is by no means strictly vegan or even vegetarian. They have a bunch of sandwiches and panini on the menu, most of which contain meat and cheese, but they note that they can sub soy chicken and soy cheese for those items. However, it's really up to the orderer to figure out which sandwiches will work out best with the soy chicken and soy cheese. The freedom is nice, but I would have appreciated some vegan sandwiches on the menu that they had thought out and intentionally put together, other than a hummus sandwich (yawn).

The person taking my order was as unhelpful as could be, aside from impatiently answering my questions about which items are vegan and which aren't. I ended up with a sandwich containing soy chicken, avocado, cucumber, dill, and soy yogurt. I was surprised by how good the soy chicken was...it reminded me of the tofurkey deli slices but thicker and better. I had ordered the sandwich because I wanted something containing avocado, but it barely had any on it. The sandwich was fine, but probably not something I would order again.

I also tried a panini. I had one with soy chicken, soy cheese (vegan), basil, and tomatoes. This was actually really tasty. The soy cheese was surprisingly good, and the whole thing had a yummy tomato basil flavor.

The strawberry coconut "soyafrost" I had was also good...basically soymilk and strawberry coconut flavor blended with ice. They had a lot of vegan baked goods there, but I didn't try any.

Overall, the sandwiches were okay, but I was so annoyed at how unaccommodating the place was, despite specifically having soy chicken and soy cheese for vegans, that I don't want to go back. The panini was good, but 'Snice is nearby and has a lot more vegan sandwiches available.

Cupcake madness

2007-05-31T20:29:00.000-04:00

You probably think "madness" is an exaggeration...but...wait until you see.

So....you've probably heard of the new book "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World," right? Yeah, me too. And I've been making some good progress towards trying every recipe in the book. Okay, I'm not really trying to make every recipe, and I can't resist tweaking them all, but I have been making quite a few cupcakes lately, mostly from the book.

The recipes are great, but really the most valuable part of the book are the tips it offers and a lot of the inspiring pictures. I had never been able to make such fluffy buttercream before I started playing with the techniques (and proportions) suggested in the book. Also, the tips on how full to fill the liners have helped me make my cupcakes consistent and (generally) the right level.

Anyway, on to the pictures of my experiments!

I made the golden vanilla cupcakes, but wanted to make them lemon. I think I had an actual lemon in the fridge, but in a true fit of laziness, I relied solely on lemon extract for the cake and icing....turned out delicious, though.

I later made another batch with lemon zest and juice (in addition to extract) and it was also delicious. I followed the buttercream recipe in the book, using zest and juice, and I think it actually would have been better with less juice and with a bit of the extract instead. I think the perfect buttercream would be a mix between the two that I made.

I also tried the "sexy lowfat" cupcakes. They were good, but they did taste low fat...a little more like a muffin than a cupcake. I topped them with a dollop of raspberry buttercream (made with raspberry jam). If you make sure to get a bit of buttercream in each bite, the lowfatness of the cakes isn't so noticeable.

I made the chocolate cupcakes with a bit of black cocoa to make them very dark and rich. I made a kahlua buttercream to go with these. I called them "mudcups" because they're so dark and chocolaty.

And they had a bit of buttercream on the inside as filling (not enough...I was too hesitant with the buttercream filling)

This is a mini mint chocolate cake. It was SO good! And SO cute!

I think the best recipe in the book (at least that I've tried) is the carrot cake. I increased the spices some, and I think it's important to use really high quality vanilla, but it's definitely the best carrot cake I've ever had. This one has "cream cheese" icing on top...I did another batch with the "cream cheese" icing and then topped in toasted coconut.

The chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing are both really good...they're classics, but crowd pleasers!

The red velvet ("crimson velveteen" in the book) turned out disastrous for me. I tried twice. they overflowed and fell. In my second batch I filled them less, but even when they didn't overflow, they still fell.

And they weren't red, even though they were when they went in the oven (I blame it on the natural food coloring I use).

I recently made some vanilla cupcakes with strawberry "cream cheese" filling, vanilla buttercream icing, and strawberries on top. These were fun to make and fun to come up with. I had tried three different fillings -- strawberry "cream cheese," strawberry buttercream, and vanilla buttercream. The strawberry "cream cheese" was the best so that's the one I went with.

I tried a few other recipes from the book, but these are the most exciting. I do plan to keep working my way through the book and to keep experimenting, though!

Franchia

2007-05-30T19:04:00.000-04:00

Franchia is a vegan Korean tea house and restaurant. I had previously been to Hangawi, a vegan Korean restaurant with the same owners. My meal at Hangawi was incredible, and the atmosphere added even more fun to the meal. It is very formal and ceremonial. You have to take off your shoes and sit at a low table, there are many different dishes and implements to use, and the servers are very attentive.

Franchia has some of the same food as Hangawi, but the atmosphere is less formal. The place is still pretty, but more relaxed.

Franchia has a reasonably priced prix fixe menu, but the choices are pretty limited, so we just ordered off the menu. We started with the corn scallion pancakes. They were delicious. In a non-vegan restaurant they would probably be made with eggs, so it was fun to be able to order them. The flavor was great, although the texture could have stood to be a little less gummy, but overall they were very good.

Then I had the crispy mushrooms in sweet and sour sauce. The mushrooms were so good...crispy on the outside and a satisfying meaty texture on the inside. The sauce and veggies were good, too, although I was surprised to discover that the other vegetables were completely raw. It worked, though.

I also had a taste of this soy chicken curry stone rice bowl. It was very good (although I could do without the seaweed as I don't like the fishy taste).

Although I was pretty full, I couldn't resist dessert. I had the mochi, which is filled with red bean paste and rolled in coconut. I love mochi! I love red bean paste! I love coconut! It was perfect!

The meal at Franchia was great. I would definitely go back if I had the chance. In fact, although it's probably a 15- to 20-minute walk from my work, I'm thinking about going there some lunch time to pick up one of their lunch boxes.

We went back the next day for something that we hadn't ordered but had really wanted..."tealattas." It's a frothy concoction of tea (I had green), soymilk, sugar, and ice blended together and topped with soy whipped cream. It was really good, especially on a hot day.

Casablanca Tea Room

2007-05-29T19:23:00.000-04:00

The Casablanca Tea Room, in Soho, is kind of a weird little place. The decor is really beautiful...but it's all white, and the ceiling and walls are billowy, some of them even obviously just sheets hung to separate the place from a clothing store next door. It kind of made me feel like I was inside a tent. They screen Casablanca all the time on one of the walls.

When I was there the place was almost empty, which was kind of weird but did make for good service. They have some vegetarian couscous on the menu, and it sounded good, but the sample platter of tapas sounded really exciting, so that's what we had.

It included an eggplant spread and a roasted pepper spread, salads of chickpeas, carrots, and beets, and a spinach spread and some olives. And it came with bread. Each of the dishes was really delicious. They all had the right hints of cumin, coriander, lemon, and mint. It was plenty of food for dinner for two (without leaving us too full), and at $24 was a pretty good deal. The cocktails, while also good, were expensive at $12 each (and not very large). I had the "mon chi chi," which consisted of peach tea infused vodka with strawberries and sugar. It was really yummy. They had a cocktail on the list containing harissa, but I wasn't looking for that much of a Moroccan experience.

I would go back, but probably to get the same sample platter...it was really yummy and beautifully presented.

Candle 79

2007-05-28T20:04:00.000-04:00

I went to Candle 79 for lunch. The menu had so many super-yummy sounding dishes on it...risotto primavera, morel crusted tempeh, and many others. I didn't want a lot of food, though, so I thought it would be safest to go with a sandwich. I ordered the black bean pumpkin seed burger. It had caramelized onions on it and came with a salad with avocado and some polenta fries. However, it was a lot of food.

The burger was delicious, but it was very big, and, being made mostly of beans, squishy. That means it kept squishing out the sides of the bun, making it difficult to eat. Yummy, though, but maybe better suited to miniature patties (as an appetizer served with salsa?) instead of in a roll? The roll was delicious, by the way.

The polenta fries were incredible. Crunchy on the outside, soft and creamy on the inside, and lightly seasoned. The salad was also good, with the avocado being the perfect accompaniment.

Like I said, though, it was a lot of food. It left me pretty full...maybe too full. I also tried a bite of the BBQ Seitan sandwich, and it was delicious, too. The restaurant was very nice....soothing colors, calm environment, very clean and pretty. It was a lot of fun to go there, and I understand why so many people like it, but I wish it weren't so inconveniently located relative to me (Upper East Side). It works great paired with a trip to the Met, though.

Lima's Taste

2007-05-23T20:27:00.000-04:00

In excited anticipation of an upcoming trip to Peru(!), I headed down the street to a local Peruvian restaurant, Lima's Taste, to get a preview of the food. This place has vegetarian options everyday, though, but I'm not so sure I'll find the actual cuisine in Peru as accommodating.

The place is nice but feels very different from other area restaurants...the furniture is all very formal-looking, with dark ornately-carved wooden high-backed chairs, but the walls are painted bright purple and orange with lots of art and some very modern flower arrangements. The service was extremely slow, even before there were many customers, but if you have time for a leisurely meal, it's perfectly pleasant.

They start out by presenting you with a little dish of corn kernels. Our server was silent when she delivered it, but I heard another server, a middle-aged man who seemed incredibly uncomfortable, give a dish to the table next to us and awkwardly state "It's corn. They grow corn in Peru." As if he'd just memorized that fact.

On their menu online they list three vegetarian dishes (one of which is based in a cream sauce, but the others sound vegan) and some vegan-sounding ceviches (mushroom and tofu). However, on the menu in the restaurant, the menu instructs you to ask about the "vegetarian dish of the day" and the ceviches listed were all seafood-based.

Fortunately, the vegetarian dish of the day was the vegetable saltado, which consists of some grilled veggies (broccoli, asparagus, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc) with FRENCH FRIES and some white rice. The French fries are mixed in with the other veggies, and I think it's a genius move on their part. The whole dish has a salty vinegary sauce, and of course that goes really well with French fries! The whole thing was delicious. I was talking for days afterward about how much I loved the French fries in there. It also had a lot of cilantro in it, and I could taste some lime. All together it was a great combination.

I would definitely go back, but I would probably call first to make sure the vegetable saltado is on the menu again...it was so good!

'Snice

2007-05-21T19:08:00.000-04:00

'Snice is a cute little vegetarian sandwich shop in the West Village. They have lots of tables, most of which are usually full of people with their laptops. It gets very crowded in there, especially around lunch time. It can be very noisy, too. It has no kitchen, just a (very small) area with a microwave, panini press, and cutting board. It's pretty impressive that they have as varied a menu as they do with so little in the way of cooking facilities.

The menu can be a bit hit or miss, though. I've had some terrible sandwiches there (the sesame "chicken," buffalo "chicken," and tempeh wrap come to mind). But some of the sandwiches are really good. My favorites are the vegan panini, which is really delicious but far too greasy, and the philly style seitan sandwich.

They have three side salads available everyday, and you can get a container of one, two, or all three. Most of them are really good. The bread salad is my favorite, but the ones below, a pasta asparagus salad, a broccoli salad, and a rice salad, were all very good, too.

A huge weakness at 'Snice is their baked goods. I've (foolishly) tried them several times, and every time they're terrible. They have some cute vegan cupcakes, but the cake part tastes like it came straight out of an artificially-flavored box mix and the icing tastes like crisco. I had a very hard dry chocolate peanut butter cookie once. And, not having learned my lesson from that, I recently tried this (huge) very hard dry lemon chai sandwich cookie. It was like eating cardboard. I've now learned my lesson well enough to not try any more of their baked goods.

Brunches

2007-04-07T13:10:00.000-04:00

Brunch can be really hard. Most restaurants don't serve anything vegan, unless I want to settle for just a side of hashbrowns. And there are lots of veg restaurants that have great brunches, but it feels selfish to continuously drag friends to veg restaurants. My favorite non-veg restaurant for brunch in NYC is Spring Street Natural. They always have several good vegan options (tofu ranchero, tofu scramble, sandwiches, salads, etc.) and they have non-veg food that is apparently really good -- I've never been there with anyone who didn't like the food. It's a really pretty place too. It's a large space with lots of wood and windows. Sometimes the service isn't all that attentive -- it gets really busy for brunch -- but the service is always very friendly. They have great cocktails, too, and fresh pressed juice and fun lemonade flavors that you can turn into a cocktail, too (passionfruit lemonade with citron -- yum!).

My favorite brunch item at Spring Street Natural is the tofu scramble. It's so good! The only reason I ever order tofu scramble anywhere else is because I'm hoping it will taste like this one (it never does). It has shiitake mushrooms and red onion, and a really good mild curry flavor. It comes with salad and brown rice covered in miso gravy. I'm not usually much of a gravy fan, but this one is really good!

The same weekend, I also had brunch at Teany, which is a small vegetarian sandwich/breakfast/dessert/tea/coffee place on the LES which is (or used to be?) partially owned by Moby. I've had lunch there before, but this was my first time for brunch, so I was excited to get something breakfasty. Despite my distaste for ham-flavored things (including fake Canadian bacon) I ended up with a bagel breakfast sandwich because I was just so excited at the prospect of a breakfast sandwich, something I've been missing for years. It had the fake Canadian bacon, fake cheddar, and tomato on a whole wheat bagel.

It was surprisingly good, considering how bad and plasticky the vegan cheddar looked (it actually tasted good once it was closed in the sandwich with the other ingredients) and that the fake Canadian bacon tasted like, well, Canadian bacon.

What I've never had at Teany but hope to have the chance to order someday is the "afternoon tea special." I'm just not sure there's ever a time when 2 little sandwiches, a scone, and a cupcake or cookie sounds like a reasonable snack or lunch.

Negril

2007-04-03T20:48:00.000-04:00

Negril is a Caribbean restaurant on W. 3rd St. It was a little fancier than I expected, with the decor very glossy and carefully planned. It was very dark in there (ambiance, I guess), which made it hard to photograph my food.

I had roti filled with curried vegetables and tofu. It was good but too salty. There wasn't a lot of tofu in it, but the tofu was cooked perfectly. I couldn't actually identify any of the vegetables because they were cooked quite a bit...and the darkness probably also had something to do with it. The roti was also really big; I think it's probably one of the best values on the menu since it was so large and only $12.

We also had mango mojitos (you can see the carafe in the picture), which were REALLY sweet. I didn't try the regular flavor, though, so maybe that one's better.

Both the menu on Negril's webpage and the one on menupages list a grilled vegetable sandwich that sounds vegan, but it wasn't on the menu at the restaurant. The roti was really my only option aside from a salad.

The other notable thing about Negril is that they add the tip onto your bill...no matter what the size of your party. We were pretty surprised (and a little outraged) since it really seemed improper. I think it's the first restaurant I've been too that adds the tip automatically to all bills.

My food was pretty good, but I wasn't crazy about the rest of my Negril experience. I would maybe go back for brunch or something, when hopefully the place would have more light and be a little more relaxed.

A sucessful hunt for vegan food in Hawaii

2007-03-25T19:30:00.000-04:00

I successfully found some really good food in Hawaii, although I ate some mediocre meals in addition to the delicious ones and I had to be careful about restaurant selection.

At Huggo's in Kona we were able to eat right on the water -- practically right on top of it. I think we saw someone with a table on the edge get hit by some spray from some waves. It was definitely a touristy place, but the view was really beautiful and the atmosphere was relaxing and the service wasn't too over-solicitous compared to the other water-front restaurant we tried in Kona.

I had the "garden grill," which included some grilled vegetables with a rice pilaf and some black beans. It sounds very simple, but it was really delicious. The vegetables were very flavorful (especially the portobello) and fresh. The beans and rice were both very good too. It was plenty of food, but was light enough not to make me feel stuffed. I loved that the beans and rice came inside of a cooked tomato!

The other great meal I had was in Waimea at Daniel Thiebaut Restaurant. The restaurant was very beautiful, and it's in a building that used to be a country store for the locals (it's in a ranching town). They had a whole "vegetarian and pasta" section on the menu with several things that sounded like they could easily be made vegan. For the whole trip, I had been seeing on menus "macadamia nut-crusted" this and that...usually fish and chicken. I was dying for something vegan crusted with macadamia nuts...and I finally found it. Daniel Thiebaut had a macadamia nut-crusted tofu napoleon on the menu. It ended up being a very large serving of tofu with mac nuts and a mixture of wonderful delicate stir fried veggies between the layers served with a very rich tahini sauce. It was incredibly delicious.

Kampuchea Noodle Bar

2007-03-07T21:16:00.000-05:00

This is a new Cambodian restaurant in the LES, and it's delicious! They have lots of meat-heavy items on the menu, but a nice veg selection as well.

Can we talk about the cocktails first? They had some that were so good! Their coconut mojito is yummy. It was delicious but not too sweet. I also tried a really good mango caipirinha. And probably the best drink I tried was made with vanilla vodka, jackfruit puree, and ginger.

The cocktails were in good company, though, because the food was also delicious. We started with the pickle plate, which was fun, but really just too many pickles for us. It had pickled cabbage, daikon, mango, radish, and cucumber.

We also had the one vegetarian crepe on the menu. It contained squash, bean sprouts, edamame, and onions. All the veggies had a great grilled flavor. It came with lettuce leaves to wrap the veggies in, and raw bean sprouts, basil leaves, and lime. Then the crepe was made of rice flour and coconut. It wasn't that flavorful...especially compared to the veggies, but had a fun texture and chewiness factor.

Then we had the vegetarian noodle option, the tofu katiev. The bowl contains rice noodles, tofu, squash, mushrooms, and broth. It was good, but not anything super-special. I took the leftover noodles for lunch the following day, and I think they were better then...maybe because they weren't competing with all of the other delicious food?

My favorite of the things we ordered was the grilled eggplant num pang. It's a sandwich on a baguette with grilled eggplant and other veggies. It comes with chili mayo, so we ordered it without. I'm sure it's great with the mayo, but I really didn't miss it. The sandwich was really yummy and garlicky, and the baguette was wonderfully crusty. There were ill effects on my breath for a good 12 to 16 hours after, but it was worth it. The sandwich was definitely the best thing I ate at Kampuchea, and it had some tough competition.

Aside from the incredible food and drinks, the restaurant was also just a really fun place to be. It's very cute and simply decorated with an open kitchen. The servers were incredibly friendly and helpful without being annoying, and there was just a nice warm feeling about the place.

Vancouver, BC

2007-03-04T18:13:00.000-05:00

I tried to find and eat vegan food in Vancouver, and unfortunately most of the things I ate were somewhat disappointing. There are plenty of veg and veg-friendly restaurants there that I didn't try, though, so I'm sure Vancouver has some good food to offer.

Stonegrill:

The Stonegrill is a restaurant where most of the entrees are served raw but with a hot rock on which you cook it. Most of those entrees are slabs of meat or fish, but they also have a vegetarian entree that's served on the rock. It came with a portobello cap on the rock, and a plate of onions, peppers, broccoli, and mushrooms for me to add to the rock. It's interesting that the stuff doesn't really cook until you cut into it. Only the exposed surface cooks. So you cut the things into really small pieces and let those cook. Amazingly, the slab of rock stays super-hot for a long time.
The vegetables were nice and fresh and it was fun to cook them on the stone. However, the vegetables are completely plain, no marinade, and they're served with just some soy sauce for dipping. I would have been happier with a more interesting dipping sauce.

We decided to order the "orange soup" for dessert. When we asked our server for it, she tried to steer us away. She told us that it's "interesting," "the owner's own creation," and "not the best dessert on the menu." However, the only other vegan option they had was sorbet, and we were pretty curious about the orange soup.

It's orange juice cooked with lily bulb pieces and Grand Marnier, served inside an orange shell. I was surprised that it was warm; I think it might have worked better cold. It was okay, but not terrific. It seemed a little bitter, which was probably due to the Grand Marnier. The lily bulbs didn't have much flavor, but they were weirdly crunchy for a dessert.

Hon's Wun Tun House:

I wanted to go to Hon's because it has two kitchens: one for vegetarian food and one for other food. I thought that sounded great, and I could be assured that my food was totally veg (no oyster sauce to worry about). The place was big and crowded and loud and the two kitchens were open so you could see into them.

There were lots of fun choices on the menu, but I made a bad decision. I ordered "braised wheat gluten with vegetables." When it arrived, I didn't notice which kitchen it came from and the server didn't say anything. It looked kind of gross, so I was hoping it was my dining partner's "chicken with vegetables." I tried to tell him it must be his. He told me it must be mine. We both suggested the other person take a bite to find out. Finally a server came back with the chicken dish, and it was clear that the gross-looking dish was mine.

And it was gross. The gluten was...limp. The sauce had very little flavor. The vegetables were fine, but they were in the flavorless sauce. It was all kind of greasy. I didn't eat much of it.

We had some vegetarian pot stickers as an appetizer, and they were pretty bad too. They were super-greasy and not very flavorful. Oh, and Hon's claims to have a trademark on "potstickers." You would think they would serve really good ones!

The chicken dish, by the way, looked really good, and my dining partner confirmed that it was.

The Naam:

I wanted to go to The Naam because they're Vancouver's oldest veg restaurant, so I figured they must know what they're doing. It's a cute little place, and amazingly enough they're open 24 hours. We went for breakfast.

The truth is that they are one of those old school veg places that relies heavily on dairy and eggs and had a few vegan options, but not many. I ordered the tofu scramble and some home fries. The food was very good. I loved the fact that the scramble had lots of veggies in it. And that the scramble wasn't bright yellow with turmeric as they often are. The home fries were really good.

I was disappointed by the few vegan options, though. I wanted a cookie for the road. They had tons of cookies at the counter, but when I asked if any were vegan, I was told no, even though they had a sign listing lots of vegan cookies.

Lan Cafe

2007-03-02T09:40:00.000-05:00

Lan Cafe is a new-ish vegan Vietnamese restaurant on 6th St (India Row). It's super-tiny, and the atmosphere isn't great, but the food was pretty good and it would be a great place to order delivery from if you live nearby.

We started with the vegetarian shrimp papaya salad. I was remembering how good the green papaya salad was at Pukk and hoping for something similar. The "vegetarian shrimp" kind of grossed me out because I don't like the taste of seafood, real or fake. But it wasn't that fishy, and was really just slightly funky chunks of tofu. The salad was okay but not really what I was looking for. I think I wanted it to be more sweet and tart and have more peanuts, but it was kind of bland (and too light on the peanuts).

Then we tried the Seitan with Mixed Vegetables and the Pad Thai. Both dishes were good but maybe a little too greasy, and the seitan dish was a little heavy on the sweet sauce.

I would definitely go back to Lan Cafe, but I may be inclined to plan ahead and get takeout rather than eating in their tiny dining room.

Seattle Treats

2007-02-24T13:27:00.000-05:00

Don't' think that I ate all this junk food in one weekend -- these pictures come from several visits over a period of time. I just hadn't gotten around to posting them. The city of Seattle does do vegan junk food amazingly well though...

Cafe Flora:

I've been to Cafe Flora a few times. The first time I went I thought everything I ate was pretty awful, but I later decided to give it a second (and third) chance, and it's gotten better every time. One of my favorite things is the pate platter. I don't have a good picture of it, but it's definitely worth ordering. The lentil pate is delicious, and it tastes great with the caremlized onions and crackers. The olives and pickles are only "okay," not great, but all-in-all the platter works well.

This picture is of one of the worst entrees I've tried -- it's potato gnocchi with sweet potatoes. It sounded great, but it was kind of greasy and had some oddly thick weird-tasting sauce on it. I managed to convince my dining partner to switch with me and ended up with something good that included a cilantro vinaigrette and some sort of flat bread (it's pictured behind the gnocchi).

For dessert we had the chocolate cake with raspberry icing, which was really good. The cake wasn't dry at all, and the raspberry icing was delicious.

Mighty-O Donuts:

After my previous disappointment at finding Mighty-O closed, I went early one day to make sure I could get some donuts. The six flavors (counter-clockwise, starting with the sprinkle donut in front) are: sprinkle, cinnamon-sugar, coffee, strawberry shortcake, good ol' glazed, and chocolate peanut butter.

Now this was awhile ago, and the donuts were acquired at the start of a road trip (they were the only food we ate all day until dinner, as I recall), so the donuts were less satisfying as the day wore on and I became sick of eating only donuts. With that in mind, my tasting experiment is clearly flawed, but I will rank what I think the best donuts were anyway. From best to worst:

1. strawberry shortcake
2. good ol' glazed
3. cinnamon-sugar
4. sprinkle
5. chocolate peanut butter
6. coffee

For some reason Mighty-O's chocolate donuts tend to be dry, which is why the chocolate peanut-butter is ranked low. And the sprinkle wasn't great, but I've had that flavor since and they've been very good, so I think it was a bad batch.

I haven't been able to find the strawberry shortcake since, but I keep looking for it!

Pizza Challenge: Juliano's vs. Pizza Pi

I tried the two vegan pizzas in Seattle (at least the two that I know of) to compare them. It was very exciting to find two places that serve pizza with vegan cheese -- I don't think we have any places in NYC that do that.

Juliano's makes vegan and non-vegan pizza. They cook the pizza in a conveyor oven, so I believe you can actually order just slices of vegan pizza. And a pizza only takes 7 minutes from the time you order it.

This Juliano's pizza has tomatoes, onions, and green peppers. It was a little greasy (I'm not used to greasy pizza since I usually only get it cheese-free), but delicious. The crust is very thin and very yummy. I can't remember how much the pizza cost, but I think it was around $17 or so (?). The vegan cheese was amazingly good.

Pizza Pi makes only vegan pizza. This one had fake pepperoni, onions, tomatoes, and green peppers. The crust is thicker than Juliano's, but still good and nicely chewy. However, the crust was very salty. The vegan cheese was okay but not great. The fake pepperoni wasn't very good. Overall, this pizza was NOT very good. This is especially true if you take into account the fact that it cost something ridiculous. I can't remember exactly how much, but I think it was around $25!

Clearly, Juliano's was the winner of the pizza challenge!

Globe Cafe:

This place is definitely my new favorite breakfast restaurant! The first time there I had the tofu scramble, which comes with grits, salsa, guacamole, broccoli, and your choice of toast or tortilla. I forgot to specify that I wanted a tortilla, but I ended up loving the toast because it was made with a yummy homemade herb bread. I know the picture looks kind of gross, with all that food oozing into each other and spilling off the plate, but it was delicious.

I had the French toast another time. It was good, and I liked that it came with fruit, but, as French toast always is, it's a little too desserty for breakfast.

The first time I went to the Globe Cafe, they pulled these huge cinnamon rolls out of the oven while I was there, and I just couldn't resist getting one. It turns out they look and smell a lot better than they are. The bread part was a little too bland and dry for my taste. It had chunks of coconut and nuts in it though, which made it kind of interesting.

Washington Square Park Dosa Cart

2007-02-21T14:43:00.000-05:00

I had been reading about the Dosa Cart in WSP at Sullivan St. and W 4th St. for years. I had walked by many times as it was closing up, or when I didn't have time to stop, or once when I realized as I approached that I didn't have any cash and that it was unlikely that they would take credit cards.

One time when I was particularly hungry and I walked by as the Dosa Cart proprietor was closing up, and I tried to convince him to make me a dosa anyway. He explained to me that I need to come earlier in the day, and in my desperate hunger I whined something like "but I work during the day." Fortunately I stopped short of stomping my feet and yelling "that's so unfair!" but needless to say, I was unsuccessful at getting a dosa.

Finally, last fall I was walking through the park on a Saturday when there was a street fair on W. 4th Street. And the Dosa Cart was there. I happily waited 15 minutes or so for my freshly-made masala dosa. I was amazed that it was only $4. I think they could easily charge double that. Everything served is vegan, with signs all over the cart announcing that.

The dosa was delicious and came with a yummy coconut chutney and a sambar soup. It was all nicely flavorful (although it could have been spicier) and not at all greasy.

I look forward to trying other flavors of dosas, if I can ever get there again when the cart is open...

Sacred Chow

2006-09-09T21:21:00.000-04:00

Today I went to Sacred Chow for lunch. It's a cute little place just below Washington Square Park serving tapas, sandwiches, and breakfast/brunch food.

I was really in the mood for a sandwich instead of sweet breakfasty stuff, otherwise I would not have been able to resist the banana bread french toast (that will require another visit).

I was torn between the roasted black olive seitan sub and the orange bbq seitan sub. I went with the black olive seitan, but I'm not sure it was the right decision. It was good, but the seitan was kind of salty and didn't have any black olive flavor (beyond the saltiness). Some pieces of the seitan were a little big and kind of doughy in the middle, too. It came with vegan "mozzarella," which was good but not too cheese-like...it was creamy/liquidy like a creamy sauce. And boy was it messy -- and giant. The cole slaw it came with was not very good (my dining partner took one bite and pronounced it "unremarkable").

I think next time I'll try the orange bbq seitan...or some tapas, but I don't know if I can convince anyone I know to go to a tiny little vegan restaurant for tapas....it seems like most people I know like all the weird meats and cheeses they get when going out for tapas, so I don't know if seitan and raw kale will do it.

Galaxy Global Eatery

2006-09-09T20:56:00.000-04:00

Galaxy Global Eatery is a restaurant on Irving Place (right next to Irving Plaza) with an international/outer-space theme AND a hemp obsession. It sounds like so much fun that I was very excited to go there.

I went for brunch...which might be part of why I didn't feel like I was in outer-space at all (like I was expecting). Maybe the atmosphere works better at night.

They have plenty of fun cocktails on the menu, but they were out of ingredients that went into several that I tried to order. I ended up with something good, but it wasn't my first (or second or third) choice. They're also one of those places that puts all of their cocktails in martini glasses, which just makes them likely to spill...which they all did plenty of as the server carried them from the bar to our table.

I had a tofu scramble, which came with tempeh bacon, some potatoes, and a salad. It was good (though nowhere nearly as good as Spring Street Natural's tofu scramble). I think the potatoes were actually some sort of potato salad with a vinaigrette. If I went back to Galaxy Global, I would probably order something else, but this wasn't bad for brunch.

Blossom

2006-09-09T20:25:00.000-04:00

Despite the fact that it was an evening of bad ordering on my part, I had a great dinner at Blossom in Chelsea. The place doesn't have that crunchy-granola atmosphere that you find at a lot of vegan restaurants. Despite being right on 9th Avenue, it felt very private and tucked away. It as quiet and dark but with a lot of candles, and the tables weren't too close together.

For an appetizer we had the South Asian Lumpia, which was delicious. It was like a really good samosa with seitan inside.

For an entree I ordered the porcini filet. It was okay, but not great. It didn't have any really distinct flavor other than "salty," which I think was because it just had too much gravy. The mashed potatoes were good, but again covered in too much gravy. The porcini filet is on the left in the picture (see all that gravy?). On the right is the "savory seitan & herb potatoes." I had a couple of bites of this, and it was delicious. The seitan's texture was great, the potatoes were little roasted cubes with lots of flavor, the green beans tasted really fresh, and the whole dish had a wonderful garlic flavor. If I go back to Blossom, I would definitely order this.

I made another mistake ordering dessert. After much debate, we decided on the chocolate ganache torte, at my insistence. It looks good, but it was very bland...it tasted like two-day old cake made from a cake mix with hot fudge from a jar. Even the ice cream wasn't very good. For the rest of the night, all I could think was that I wished I'd ordered the berry tarte.

Seattle

2006-08-15T19:14:00.000-04:00

I had a great time eating in Seattle.

One of my first stops was the Moonlight Cafe. It's a Vietnamese restaurant in the International District. They serve plenty of non-veg stuff, but they also have a separate vegan menu. It's very extensive.

The place kind of had that generic suburban Chinese restaurant feel, but the food more than made up for it. There was plenty of Vietnamese food on the vegan menu, including pho, but I ended up trying two kind of typical Americanized Chinese dishes -- Cashew "Chicken" and Sesame "Beef." They were both really good. The "beef" was gluten-based and had a very satisfying chewy texture. The "chicken" was softer and I think soy-based. The mouth-feel wasn't as good, or as much fun, but it was really good and it was nice that the two "meats" were different.

Also, Moonlight Cafe compared quite favorably with Teapot Vegetarian House, where I ate once and was incredibly disappointed. I only tried it once, but I think my comment at the time was that everything I ate there tasted like it came out of a can, and that's definitely keeping me from wanting to go back.

Another great meal in Seattle was at Carmelita. It's a vegetarian restaurant, but unfortunately sort of old-school vegetarian, meaning heavy on the eggs and dairy with few vegan options. Despite those limitations, I did have a tasty meal at Carmelita.

It was cute and small inside, but it was also kind of stuffy on a really warm day, so I was pleased to eat outside in their adorable little back garden.

For an appetizer we had some potato empanadas. They were very good, but I have to say I don't think they were that memorable because I can't recall anything except that they were "good."

Then I had the only vegan entree, a crust stuffed with vegetables and served with lentils. It was really tasty and well-seasoned, but kind of a heavy meal. That pink sauce that it was served with was really good.

Here's a picture of the presentation and another showing the inside.

Carmelita didn't have many vegan desserts, and I was still trying to preserve the memory of the Chocolate Almond Midnight at Millennium, so I passed.

A real treat in Seattle was the all-vegan buffet at Araya's Vegetarian Place. A vegan buffet is always tons of fun, but making it a Thai buffet was just incredibly exciting! I think I tried a little of everything, some of it a little disappointing, but most of it really good. I was disappointed that there was no green papaya salad, but they did have a nice variety of salads, vegetable/tofu dishes, rice dishes, and noodle dishes. And for only $6 or $7, it was a great deal!

I also tried to go to Mighty O's for some delicious vegan donuts, but unfortunately they discourage eating donuts on Monday afternoons by closing at noon on Mondays...

San Francisco

2006-07-25T19:08:00.000-04:00

I went to San Francisco and ate a lot. Here are some highlights.

Medicine Eat Station is a restaurant serving Japanese "Zen Buddhist" food. It was big with long tables (which their website informs me are made from sustainably harvested mahogany).

All of their cocktails are made with sake, and I was a bit too adventurous and ordered something called an ume-tini, which was sake with an umeboshi plum in it...it wasn't very good, but I managed to finish it.

Continuing the pattern of being too adventurous, we had an appetizer called "jade nuggets." It's tempura natto...I had never had natto before, and having seen it before on the Iron Chef, I wanted to try it. I think the menu warned that natto is an "acquired taste." When asked about it, the server mentioned that some people think it tastes like cheese, and I thought that since it's deep fried and might taste like cheese, it couldn't be that bad.

I was wrong. It was gross. I ate very little of it, and I think we all squeezed every last drop of the accompanying lemon wedge onto the nuggets to make them more palatable (with no success).

A second more successful appetizer was a bowl of vegetables in broth. It was good, but aside from some sort of delicious mushroom, I don't think it was anything special.

For entrees we ordered the "fried" (tempura vegetables), "steamed" (pockets of tofu containing vegetables), and "simmered" (vegetables rolled up in bundles with something -- yuba? -- in broth).

This picture shows the tempura on the left and the simmered bundles on the right. That big bowl of brown liquid is a yummy dipping sauce for the bundles. The tempura was great, as it's hard to go wrong with something fried (notable exception of natto above). The bundles were also really good, especially with the dipping sauce.

This picture is of the steamed tofu pockets with some grilled lettuce behind it (yum!) and some pickled vegetables next to it. There were other accompaniments including miso soup, rice, and blocks of fresh cold tofu, which were delicious. The tofu pockets were good, although I think they were my least favorite of the three entrees. The tofu was very spongy, and it was a little sweet, which I didn't like as much as the blocks of fresh tofu.

We also had two desserts. One was a chilled coconut cup, which has a thick sweet coconut liquid, like melted coconut ice cream, with some toasted buckwheat floating on it, some cubes of something clear and solid (made of agar maybe?), and, I'm not joking, some sort of mushroom. The mushroom was actually really good and it had absorbed the flavor of the coconut liquid. The other dessert consisted of berries marinated in wine and some fried goyza. Both desserts were really good.

Medicine Eat Station was fun, but the next night I went to Millenium. I've been going over it in my head, and I'm pretty sure that it was the best meal I've ever eaten.

I had two cocktails made with organic alcohol. I can't remember what the first one was, but I think it was something with rum. The second was just a screwdriver, but it was made with fresh squeezed orange juice, and it was really wonderful. Their cocktail list was very fun, and I had trouble deciding on which to order.

The bread came with some really delicious tofu spread...the kind of tofu spread where you eat it and say things like "this can't be tofu!"

This was our appetizer. It's a black bean torte. It was like a quesadilla with black beans and plantains. It had some sort of yummy creamy sauce made of cashews.

My entree was this stuffed pablano pepper. It was stuffed with a tofu chorizo. It had some sauteed greens and that strawberry jicama salad. And several sauces, which I couldn't identify but were delicious.

This is what my sister had. On top are some fried abalone mushrooms, which had an amazing meat-like texture. They're on top of risotto. I don't know what else is down there, but whatever I tasted was really delicious.

For dessert we had the Chocolate Almond Midnight. The bottom layer is dark chocolate creamy mousse-like substance, and on top the same texture but with white chocolate. It was so incredibly good. As we ate it, we kept speculating as to how they had made it. In fact, we looked up the recipe in the Millennium Cookbook, where they list not much more than tofu and chocolate chips as the mousse ingredients...but obviously there had to be other ingredients in it, because I've made tofu/chocolate mixtures before, and this was exponentially better. I suspect that making this requires some mastery of science that the average person doesn't have, too.

It's hard to think about anything past Millennium, but some other culinary highlights of San Francisco included a seitan sandwich at Herbivore, some Maggie Mudd "ice cream," and some delicious vegan turnovers from Rainbow Grocery.

[Note on the Maggie Mudd: we went to the store, and I was so excited about the idea of walking into an ice cream shop and getting a vegan "ice cream" cone. However, apparently the people at Maggie Mudd don't think the anyone would want ice cream before 3 PM on a Friday, so they were closed. To get the ice cream, we had to go to a store and buy a pint. It was delicious, but on the carton of "Flyin Hawaiian," it promised coconut flavored ice cream with chocolate macadamia nut clusters....but there were only THREE clusters in the whole carton! I'm willing to give Maggie Mudd a second chance, but they're sure making it hard...]

BTW, I'm slowly catching up with posting this stuff. If you've eaten with me lately, you know that I have some more pictures on my camera. I'll get around to posting them soon.

Gobo

2006-06-20T19:15:00.000-04:00

Gobo is a veg restaurant (almost all vegan, I think) in the West Village (with a second location on the UES). The place has a very modern clean-feeling atmosphere. Many of their dishes are similar to Zen Palate's (but better!), but it's also a little pricier. Unlike Zen Palate, Gobo serves alcohol (just wine and beer), which will make me choose Gobo over Zen Palate any day. Oh, and another plus to Gobo? They have bubble tea! It's pretty good, too, but they often run out of tapioca late in the day, so you can't always count on it.

I went there the other night with a group of people, mostly non-vegetarians. I was pretty worried that the food would be too "weird" for them, with the menu full of seitan, soy protein, tofu, and, you know, vegetables. But everyone seemed to really enjoy their food. I was very relieved!

I had the "soy filet with coconut curry rice." That consisted of pieces of soy protein sauteed with veggies (bell peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, broccoli) with some sort of savory sauce. The coconut curry rice came in a cone-shape wrapped in a leaf of some sort (banana maybe?). The cone stood straight up on my plate, and although I remember being very excited about the presentation, I wasn't careful enough to get the whole cone in the picture...but you get the idea.

My food was delicious, and as I said, everyone else really enjoyed theirs as well. The only disappointment was at the end when we all tried to order bubble tea and they told us they were out of tapioca...

Edited to add: Gobo also has the best yam fries I've ever had!

Red Bamboo Brooklyn

2006-06-08T21:14:00.000-04:00

Red Bamboo recently opened a branch in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. It's much like the original on W. 4th St, but better in so many ways:

Not as crowded -- less/no waiting for a table

Outdoor seating

More Caribbean-style things on the menu

Most importantly, they have a full bar! The Manhattan location only has wine and beer.

I went last week, and it was great. It's a bit of a walk from the Subway (the C or G train), but the neighborhood is nice and cute, and sitting outside on a warm spring evening made it worth the walk. Their menu has a lot of the same things as the original menu, but they do seem to have more Caribbean-inspired options. Most things on the menu are vegan, with those that aren't clearly labeled.

I ordered their "signature drink," the Red Bamboozle (yes, I actually ordered something called that). I can't remember what was in it, but it was delicious.

I also had the mango "chicken." It was pieces of fake chicken sauteed with strips of bell pepper and pieces of mango in a sweet mango sauce served in a mango shell (wait, mangoes don't have shells...I guess the proper description would be a hallowed out mango....or an intact mango peel?). It was really good, but it could have used less and/or less-sweet sauce...although that didn't stop me from gobbling it down.

Isn't it cute?

Red Bamboo

2006-05-25T19:50:00.000-04:00

Red Bamboo is a fun veg restaurant on W 4th St. They're heavy on the mock meat, but it's some of the best mock meat I've ever had. I think they commit the same sin that many other restaurants do with mock meat -- they try to compensate for something they think is missing (meat, I guess?) by using too much sauce. Their tandoori "chicken" and citrus "beef" are both super-yummy, but do yourself a favor and ask them to go light on the sauce.

I was there for lunch today, and I wanted something "light." I had forgotten that pretty much nothing they have is "light."

I had the dijon "chicken" cutlet sandwich. I think it was actually the worst thing I've ever had there. It was way too greasy and fried for me (see it glistening?!?), and there was so much dijon sauce on it that it was ridiculously messy -- you definitely can't eat it while you knit. I mean, if that's the kind of thing you would want to do. Which you probably wouldn't.

And here's a salad. The fluorescent dressing (yes, there IS enough of it for ten salads!) is carrot ginger. It was really bad...sickeningly sweet, with neither carrot nor ginger flavor.

They helpfully label the things on the menu that aren't vegan. Oh, and there's a bonus: they have vegan fortune cookies!

By the way, I have been eating lately, but I've been forgetting to take pictures and post them. But I did find this neat website: supervegan.com
Among other things, it let's you search for vegan restaurants in NYC, according to the level of vegan-ness you want!

China!

2006-03-25T23:26:00.000-05:00

I went to China and pretty much ate my way through the country. In restaurants/transactions in which no one spoke English and there was no English menu, I made do with my little notecard saying I'm vegetarian, then got out the sections in my guidebooks which listed vegetables in Chinese and English. Now that I think about it, that explains why I ended up ordering eggplant three times -- "aubergine" was near the top of the alphabetical list.

I ended up eating tons of delicious stuff. I had a non-veg friend with me who was kind enough to serve as my "royal taster" and bite into things first when we weren't sure of the contents.

The best meal I had? I'm having trouble deciding.

It may have been the eggplant that I had the first night in Beijing. It was really delicious, and I don't think I've ever had eggplant nearly that good before. It was in some sort of sauce...I think maybe it was braised? The sauce was a really good balance of salty/sweet/spicy, and the eggplant was a little crispy. I think that eggplant is also part of the reason why I ended up ordering eggplant two more times; it was so good that I was hoping to have something like it again, but never did. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the delicious eggplant.

Also a contender for best meal was one we had at a vegetarian restaurant in Beijing called Gongdelin. They had an English menu, which had a lot of very interesting things on it. They had mock meats that extended way beyond the usual chicken and beef. For example, "hedgehog" was on the menu, but in looking up the restaurant I came upon a site that says the translation was wrong, and that actually it's mock monkey brains. Can't say I'm sorry I passed it up.
What we did order was sweet and sour "chicken" shreds which were delicious and very mild, not spicy. We also ordered something that was listed as "western style lentils." I was very excited because I'd been noticing a real lack of legumes in the foods available to us, so I thought this would be a nice dish of lentils, maybe even lentil dumplings or something. What arrived? Sauteed snowpeas. They were delicious, though, and at that point probably a good green vegetable was missing more in my diet than some legumes.

Another good meal (though not the best) was in a Taiwanese restaurant in Beijing. Here I had a tofu dish. It was chunks of soft tofu in a spicy sauce. On the side we had a cold dish of peanuts, which was really good. They were in a salty sauce, and had some minced veggies with them.

One of our best food experiences (and most highly anticipated) was in "Hubu Alley" in Wuhan. This is a little alley with lots of street food that's a popular breakfast spot. We got off our overnight train in the morning in Wuhan and headed straight to Hubu Alley. No one spoke English, so I found something that looked good and vegetarian, then showed my notecard to make sure. I ended up with a bowl of noodles that included some kind of sauce and minced veggies -- scallions and greenbeans are the ones I remember. It was really spicy. I took a picture, but I think I was too distracted to remember to use the macro mode, so it's blurry. I'm showing it anyway, though, because I'm really excited about the noodles...and I paid less than 25 cents for that bowl of noodles!

Here's a picture of an eggplant dish I had in Zhengzhou. It was at a Muslim restaurant. Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly as good as the eggplant the first night.

In Tai'an we went to a dumpling restaurant. I ordered something called "3 vegetable dumplings." As far as I could tell, the three vegetables must have been scallions, tofu, and garlic, because that's all that was in them. They were good, though. My plate of dumplings was huge -- it contained 25 (I counted). I managed to eat 15 of them, which I thought was pretty impressive, but as I looked around the restaurant I noticed that other patrons all managed to finish their orders of dumplings.

Overall, I ate lots of really good things. Noodles, vegetables, tofu, fried dough and other streetfood, etc. At one restaurant in Chingqing I had some delicious dumplings with a filling of bean paste, seasame seeds, and sugar. We were disappointed to never find anything like that again. We also tried some of the weird little packaged snacky foods. We had dried fruits, little cakes of rice and sugar, mystery candies, etc. Most of it wasn't very good. And of course we drank a lot beer (room temp) and yummy teas everywhere we went.

The culinary stylings of my friend Jenna

2006-03-02T20:58:00.000-05:00

My friend Jenna is a creative and enthusiastic cook who is always willing to "veganize" her creations to accommodate me.

Last weekend she made Ratatouille from the Moosewood Cookbook. It was the recipe from the original Moosewood, but she made some modifications to use the ingredients we had available, and I think it basically made the recipe more like the version in the revised edition of the cookbook (a can of tomatoes instead of some combo of tomatoes, tomato juice, and tomato paste). It turned out delicious.

Here are the before and after pictures. The bread is a yummy olive bread from Tom Cat Bakery, available all over the city.

A couple of weeks ago she made this spaghetti pie. I think it was using this recipe sans cheese. It was very good, although we were both disappointed that the pieces didn't retain their wedge-shape; I think you need cheese to hold them together. But every once in awhile, it's fun to eat spaghetti out of a pie pan. (Yeah, that's tofu in the pie!)

And I leave you with a bonus: a recipe (sort of). I cobbled together a yummy black bean dip from canned black beans, lime juice, garlic, salt, cumin, and a dollop of olive oil. Ideally I would probably run it through a food processor, but in this case I used a pastry blender (!) to mush it. It was good lumpy, but a food processor would probably make it nice and fluffy.

I didn't think to take the picture until we'd already eaten most of it.

Raleigh, NC

2006-02-27T21:46:00.000-05:00

Dates: February 17-20, 2006

I went to Raleigh for a weekend and thought I'd post about some of the vegan food in that city. It's not as easy as in NYC where there are so many veg restaurants, but there are still many options in Raleigh.

I had lunch one day at Neomonde, which serves Middle Eastern food at a deli-style counter. I was very pleased that they listed the ingredients on many of their dishes, making it really easy to figure out what's vegan. I couldn't decide what to get, so I ended up with a "sampler" plate where I got to choose 4 items. I had the chickpea salad, potato salad (made with lemon juice and olive oil), hummus, and falafel. I don't think I've ever had falafel with sesame seeds on it before, and they added some nice flavor. The hummus had a good consistency, but was a little bland. I would rate it as better than mass-produced store-bought, but not as good as homemade. The chickpea and potato salads were both really good.
Neomonde also sells Middle Eastern groceries, so you can stock up on pomegranate molasses, pickled radishes, sesame candy, etc. while you're there.

After a frustrating and fruitless search for a Caribbean restaurant called Trin-Bago, we ended up settling for Indian food for dinner at Royal India. It was pretty much just like any other decent Indian restaurant. I had the Jeera Aloo, which they claimed was a house specialty. The flavor was good, although too mild. But the texture wasn't so great -- the potatoes had the texture of having been frozen.
We did have the pleasure of sitting underneath a portrait of a man that was said to have had 70 wives, though.

Next was lunch at a cute little coffeeshop called the New World Coffeehouse. I had a hummus & veggie wrap that was very good. It came with sun chips which I learned are vegan...and delicious. They also have a peanut tofu wrap on the menu which sounded good, but they were out of it. They carry ABC Baking Co. vegan cookies, too.

I also went to Lilly's Pizza. They have vegan soy cheese, but it's vegan-rella, which I'm pretty sure I hate. So I had baked tofu on my pizza. I think this is actually the first time I've had tofu on pizza, and it was really good. Their pizza is delicious. It has a sweet crust, and they have tons of toppings to choose from. I remember from last time I was there that they have really good salads, too. This time I opted for a $6 pitcher of PBR instead of salad, though.
Not only does Lilly's have tofu and beer, but they also have a glowing Jesus in the corner.

Recipe reviews: "Decadent Brownies"? Try "Desiccated Brownies"

2006-02-12T13:37:00.000-05:00

I'm going over to a friend's house this afternoon, and we have an agenda. There are several organizational items we need to accomplish. By now we've recognized that our usual method of trying to get things done -- starting the cocktails flowing immediately and non-stop chatting -- doesn't work. We never accomplish anything.

So, new plan. We will have list of goals and hold out on the alcohol until we've accomplished a thing or two. No drinks until we've ticked some things off of our list! But we'll need other motivation besides drinks (otherwise we'll end up trashed on a Sunday afternoon and our productivity will decrease rapidly). So I thought I'd make some snacks to help us along.

Brownies sounded like a great idea. I decided to make the "Decadent Brownies" in The Garden of Vegan. Once I mixed up the batter, I noticed that it was kind of mocha-colored, not the deep mud-color that I like my brownie batter to be. So I thought I'd best taste the batter before baking. Ick. It was really bland. So I added a fair bit of cocoa powder to get the batter to the proper color and to make them taste "decadent" as the recipe title promised. I also added a bit of vanilla extract. The batter tasted great, so I went ahead and baked the brownies.

I made the "Chocolate Mint Icing" in the same book to top them with. The icing? Delicious. The brownies? The driest brownies I've ever had in my life. They're terrible. I ate a few crumbs as I was cutting them up, and I realized I couldn't possibly serve these to someone I consider a friend.
So I popped them in the freezer, hoping that sometime I'll become desperate enough to eat them.

Plan B: I've always liked How it All Vegan much better than The Garden of Vegan (although the desserts are the weakest parts of both books), so I decided to go back to the original. I settled on the "Chocolate Chip Bars." I was still in a minty mood, so I added some peppermint oil to the batter....they turned out delicious! Much better than the brownies. Moist and yummy. Mmm, you can see the yumminess in the picture.

I also made this Split Pea Spread with Hummus Flavors from fatfreevegan because I had some yellow split peas sitting around in the cabinet. It's pretty good -- hummus-flavored as the name implies, but not so creamy and filling. Like a light hummus. Not something that I would expect to actually stand up to hummus in a head-to-head battle, but an adequate substitute on its own.

Cassava

2006-02-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

Visit Date: January 30, 2006, evening

Bubble tea! Yum!

After sitting in class for 2 hours and watching (and listening to) someone slurp down a juice box the whole time, I found myself wanting something sweet and fruity. So I stopped at Cassava (website and reviews on menupages) and got a pineapple passionfruit bubble tea.
Okay, first of all, if you've never had bubble tea? Go get some. Now. The chewy tapioca is so much fun!

Bubble tea is available all over in Chinatown, but there I usually see it as the variety with "milk" in it. Maybe the milkless variety is available in those places, but I've never noticed it. I like Cassava because they have several flavors of bubble tea that are milkless. One time I even got a bubble green tea with no sweetener, since I love green tea plain. It just wasn't right. The giant tapioca can't quite stand on it's own. It needs something sweet to really bring out the yumminess.

At Cassava they say that their "milk" tea is made with non-dairy creamer. I asked if they knew if it's vegan or if it may contain casein, but they don't know. If they're calling it "non-dairy creamer," I'm going to assume that it's that same gross stuff that people put in coffee that's laden with corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, and casein.

As with all take-out items, there's the problem of packaging. At least this plastic cup can be recycled, though, unlike a lot of those juice places that use styrofoam.

Village Natural

2006-02-04T08:43:00.000-05:00

Date of Visit: January 29, 2006, afternoon

Village Natural is a great place for brunch. Well, if you don't want delicious overpriced fruit-and-flavored-vodka cocktails served in martini glasses with your brunch. If you want that, go to Spring Street Natural. But if you're just in it for the food, Village Natural will do.
It's not an all-veg restaurant, but they have lots of vegetarian and vegan options. They even have vegan pancakes, but I haven't tried them yet. The other food options include salads, sandwiches with fake meat or without, scrambled tofu dishes, and some Japanese-inspired dishes served with steamed vegetables.
I had the baked millet croquettes. They're curry flavored: pleasant and mild, but nothing spectacular. I like to order them, though, because I love millet, and croquettes are always fun. They're served over noodles with a mushroom gravy (they're a little stingy with the gravy) and steamed veggies. The meal is good, and extremely filling. And it's actually not at all greasy, which is a definite plus in my book!
Village Natural is a cute little restaurant with kind of a wood-themed decor....not pretty wood, just wood. Though not chic, it's a very comfortable environment, and I've never seen it very busy.

Zen Palate

2006-01-28T19:40:00.000-05:00

Order Date: January 26, 2006, evening

I don't consider Zen Palate to be a treat at all. Why? Because I only eat their food when I work late and have to order dinner. I have several restaurant choices with good vegetarian food, but I usually choose Zen Palate because their delivery is lightening fast.

I've tried many of their dishes, but they've added a bunch of new ones recently that I haven't tried yet. Oh, and great news! They used to have some non-vegan items (containing dairy and/or eggs), and they used to be kind of shifty about admitting that. They've redone their website, and in the FAQs section, they list the vegan items. Last time I looked, there were just a few things with egg and a couple of desserts with dairy. Well, I looked again while writing this, and they now only list the two desserts with dairy as non-vegan. I emailed them to make sure this is right, and their response (lightening fast, like the delivery) is that they've gotten rid of the eggs, and now the only non-vegan dishes are those two desserts. Check out their website, which is crazy-detailed, with pictures of most dishes and customer reviews.

On this night I ordered my favorite dish. It's the "Moo Shu Mexican Style." It's two spinach pancake/tortillas filled with a kidney bean and soy protein mixture, guacamole, a spicy carrot salad, and cous-cous. Actually, it's not cous-cous. That's what they call it, but I'm almost positive it's millet (which I love!).

It's a little hard to eat...you need a knife to cut them...or, to be in your office with the door shut so that no one can see you tearing at them with a hand/fork combination. The guacamole is good, except that some culinary delinquent decided to put a few tiny pieces of celery in it. They're small enough and few enough that you can kind of ignore them. The carrot slaw is a great combo of spicy and sweet, and, of course, the millet is great. It also comes with two little spring rolls (the flavor of which I can only describe as "deep fried"), but for an extra dollar you can have those replaced with the moo shu basil rolls, which are in rice paper and filled with basil, peanuts, jicama (?), and I don't know what else. But they're delicious. In general, I find the food to be inconsistent, though, so sometimes things that have previously been great show up mushy and flavorless.

And here's the sad "I'm about to eat dinner at my desk" picture...

Eva's

2006-01-28T19:12:00.000-05:00

Visit Date: January 22, 2006, afternoon

Eva's (8th St btwn 5th & 6th Ave.) is one of those kind of scary "health food" places that caters to body builders. They sell lots of vitamins, protein shakes, lean meat/egg-white dishes, etc. But the bright side is that they use brown rice and whole wheat bread and have plenty of veggies and tofu.

On this visit I had the "vegan special," which consists of lentil soup over brown rice, a salad, and a whole wheat pita. It's $5.50, but you can get 10% off with an NYU student ID.

They call it the "vegan special," but I think of it as the "mild hangover special." It's heavy enough to help re-fortify you, but not so big and greasy as to make you immobile for the next few hours. If you need something for a more serious hangover (or if you've just run 13 miles), I recommend the "vegetarian (non-dairy) combination," which consists of falafel, green salad, brown rice, chickpea salad, eggplant salad, and whole wheat pita. You won't need to eat again for the rest of the day.

They also have many other vegan options consisting of various combinations of falafel, hummus, brown rice, lentil soup, chili, tofu, steamed veggies, whole wheat pasta, etc. And they have vegan spirutein chocolate chip cookies, but I've never tried one. I think I have some trust issues with an egg-and-meat place claiming to make vegan cookies....

Here's the vegan special:

The lentil soup and brown rice are pretty average; I recommend asking for hot sauce. "Salad" is a generous term for the dish of lettuce with a few carrot and cabbage shavings. Although Eva's has a nice selection of dressings, the salad seems to be pre-dressed with oil, which seems to be flavorless, but always makes me hesitant to add more dressing. The pita is sometimes more fresh than others...on this day it was very stale.

Still, for $5.50 - 10% + tax? It's a pretty good deal.

Union Square Farmers' Market

2006-01-21T12:04:00.000-05:00

Visit date: January 21, 2006, morning

This is one of the best things about Saturdays in the city. It's January, so there's not nearly as much produce available at the market as there is throughout the spring and summer, but it's still worth the weekly trip.

There are lots of apples there now. This picture is of pink lady apples. I didn't buy these...I bought from a smaller vendor who's always very friendly and liberal with samples and freebies, but I thought this picture was the prettiest.

I love the colorful varieties of potatoes. I didn't buy any today because I'm still making my way through the surplus I discovered in my cabinet, apparently due to over-buying in previous weeks.

There's a stand that sells flavored tofu, among other things. I've never tried or purchased the tofu...it always just looks greasy to me, but it's probably good because they're always there selling it. The picture is of the samples.

And here's the highlight. This is the whole reason I'm posting this. The vegan carrot raisin walnut cookies. I've had these before, and they're delicious. They're heavy on the carrot, and you can taste the maple syrup in them. They're a soft cake-like cookie. Really, with the carrots, raisins, walnuts, and whole wheat flour, you can kind of convince yourself that they're not a dessert cookie...more like a "health cookie." Good for snacks...and breakfast? And they're big enough to munch on all day, or over a couple of days.

This stand is at the market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and they claim to always have the vegan cookies. They're $2.25 each.

I was kind of disappointed with the picture since the plastic wrap prevents a good view of the cookies themselves, so I was forced to buy one. Here it is on my kitchen counter. I'm playing with the macro mode on my camera. Oh, and while playing with the macro mode, I discovered that the camera actually has a "food mode," designed to "take appetizing pictures of prepared food." Yeah. How silly is that? I mean, I'm using it of course, in case it makes the cookie look more appetizing...

Moustache

2006-01-15T16:37:00.000-05:00

Falafel!

Date of visit: January 15, 2006, lunch

I'd heard a lot about this tiny Middle Eastern restaurant in my neighborhood, but never tried it until today.
Upon walking inside, I was pleasantly surprised that it's much cuter inside than I'd thought from peering in the windows. It's not tiny and claustrophobic as I'd expected, but warm and cozy and clean without seeming antiseptic.
I had a falafel sandwich that consisted of falafel, lettuce, tomato, and tahini sauce wrapped up in -- this is the best part -- a freshly-made soft fluffy pita. The bread was obviously very fresh and managed to reach the perfect balance of flaky and elastic. The falafel balls also tasted fresh and were not greasy nor mushy. The tahini sauce was pretty run-of-the-mill: very good, but nothing spectacular. Overall the flavors blended together well, but were very mild. No garlickiness that you find in some falafel. It was great gentle food if you're hung over (like I was), and it was a nice change not to have post-falafel garlic breath.
I'd like to rate the sandwich higher than those at Bread & Olive in midtown because of the incredible bread, but I don't think I can because Bread & Olive wins me over with their garlicky falafel (I love it despite the ill effects on my breath) and the pickled radish they put in the sandwich. However, I'll definitely return to Moustache, and look forward to more bread and to trying their hummus.

Pukk

2006-01-14T11:58:00.000-05:00

Visit date: Jan. 10, 2006, dinner time

Here are some things you should know about Pukk:

It's a vegetarian Thai restaurant in the East Village (1st Ave around 5th St). It's not all vegan, but I think you can have the eggs left out of any dishes that include them to make everything vegan.
They made some sort of horrible mistake with their decor. You will notice right away, and it may even keep you from entering the restaurant. They have a white and neon green color scheme, and from the style, my guess is that they got a great deal on all of their furnishings from some Miami night club that went out of business. It's important that you're prepared for this before you get there; show up knowing that you should walk in the door despite every instinct you have urging you to never enter a place that looks like that. Trust me, it'll be worth it.
It's an incredible relief to go to a Thai restaurant and not worry about fish sauce!
Many of their dishes come with your choice of protein: "chicken," "beef," "duck," or tofu.
The service is quick and the food is cheap! Check out their menu here.

On my recent visit, I had the red curry with "chicken." I think the biggest problem that Pukk has is that some of their fake meat doesn't look very appealing. I looked down at my "chicken," and I thought "oh no, I ordered the wrong thing!" The stuff looks like plastic. I don't need my mock meats to look like real meats, but I do want them to look like food.

Despite the appearance, the red curry was really good. It has pineapple and bamboo shoots in it. It was decently spicy, but not burning hot. The "chicken" has a good texture; no one's going to believe that it's real chicken, but it's nice and chewy with a very mild flavor that basically just sucks up the flavor of the sauce it's in. It could have been slightly less greasy, but I tend to say that about everything I eat in a restaurant.

On a previous visit I had the green papaya salad. It was delicious. I definitely recommend it!

In this picture, on the left is the red curry and on the right is the "perfect protein duck."

Mmmm....vegan fork....

2006-01-14T09:23:00.000-05:00

I've stumbled upon a few blogs like this before, and that's always very exciting. But they're missing something. Pictures! So as long as I can remember to take my camera with me when I'm eating around town, I'll be able to both show AND tell you about all of the yummy vegan food available in this city. That is, for as long as my friends can put up with me always saying "Wait, don't start eating yet! I need to take a picture!" and asking them such questions as "Was the mock duck firmer or mushier than the mock chicken? Can you rate the chewiness on a scale of one to five?"

As I seem to be simultaneously one of nature's list-makers but also often disorganized, I think this will be a great way for me to keep track of the various restaurants and dishes that I like and dislike. I actually have some menus from restaurants where I've intended to try as many dishes as possible and rate them. I've come up with intricate rating systems involving cryptic codes, but I look back at the menus and have no idea what they mean (the "*" must be better than the "+", right? But what is that other symbol? A squiggly? What does it mean? I don't think I've ever had that dish...how could I have given it a squiggly?)

I hope you enjoy seeing the many vegan options available in NYC!