The Rest (and some of the Best) of the US

Finally we have landed in a place with reliable internet and a comfy couch, so its time to catch up with some posting.

Before we move on in geographical terms, however (I’m in Paris now, and have stories from Scotland and Denmark still to share), I have a few last USian treats to brag about.

Los Angeles

We went back to LA after our SF/ Portland/Utah/Vegas trip, and had one very good meal at Shojin.

We ordered a Dynamite Roll and a Dragon Roll, with some Spicy Tofu and an Edamame and Avocado Salad to start. Everything was lovely, although the spicy tofu was a little on the bland side. The salad was perfect, I loved the creamy avocado and edamame combination, and it was very pretty with all its different colours of green.

Salad

Spicy Tofu

The Dragon Roll came filled with shitake and avocado, topped with seitan and more avocado. It was a really nice roll, but I found the seitan a little too chewy for a bite-at-a-time meal, and the pieces a little big. The Dynamite Roll, supposedly the restaurant’s signature dish, was mind blowing. Its a “tuna” and avocado filled roll, topped with spicy mayo, and it was my favourite dish by far. The mayo was perfect, and the “tuna” was tasty without being too fishy.

Dragon Roll

Dynamite Roll

Its pretty pricey for the US, with their yummy sushi rolls starting at $10.95 each, so we omitted the dessert and drinks option. We are on a very tight budget and can’t go out trying every classy veg place we see, so this was my special pick of the month, but even then we gotta keep it cheap. It was great food though, and if I lived in LA I would definitely go again and again.

A note on finding the place: its in a Japanese Mall, not on the street (we had an address only, and got a little lost walking around in circles).

The other un-blogged spot I went to in LA was BabyCakes NYC LA. As Kristy blogged the place is a veritable trove of vegan and gluten free goodness, and most of their treats are made with whole flours and sugar replacements, so you can (sort of) pretend they’re good for you, too.

I sat down with an excellent coconut and vanilla cupcake, and bought a few slices of day old cake for the plane trip to Tulsa. The cake and the cupcake were great, my annoyance with cupcakes not withstanding, and the inside of the cafe was cute, in that “I’m just a girl” post-feminist way that really bugs me.

coconut cupcake and my hat

The South

I have already mentioned the one fully decent meal we had while in the Oklahoma/Arkansas/Mississippi/Louisianna/Texas region. Suffice it to say that the rest of them time we eating meals created with only a hotel room microwave and one plastic container, and the bits and pieces we found in supermarkets. Think lots of packet soup and peanut butter sandwiches. I took a photo of this meal, because it was probably the best we had, at about 11pm after seeing speedway in Greenville, MS:

steamed veg, raw corn, tortialla chips and tinned chilli

Washington D.C.

Lasagne, Mac and Cheese, something else and veg

Its a terrible photo, but the food at Everlasting Life in DC gets a mention anyway because they had the best vegan Mac and Cheese I have ever tasted, a good lasagne, and a huge selection of salads and hearty soulfood dishes. We tried to visit a second time, but found they were closed.

It was my birthday the day we left Washington (or the day before – time zones make it pretty unclear which day to celebrate it on) and my temporary housemates, care of AirBnB, surprised me with fabulous cupcakes from Sticky Fingers Bakery. We tried carrot cake, peanut butter fudge, cookies and cake and a red velvet cupcake. They were all tasty and moist and wonderful, however I don’t have any pictures because they disappeared fast.

New York City

There is so much vegan food in New York City that its actually difficult to get to it all. We hardly got to any of it, as we spent a total of 8 nights in the city over two sessions, with the first marred by Hurricane Irene (no eating out for us) and the second by a horrible, nasty head cold that rendered me incapable of eating or moving. Below details what we did get to, and for other reports you’ll have to check out http://inthemoodfornoodles.blogspot.com/.

We visited Cowgirl’s Bakingtwice, with fantastic results each time. Both times it was a Friday, on our way to or from the cheap-ass freebie MoMA night (it takes more than four hours to see everything there, and as mentioned above, we are being very cheap). Over our two session we tried a hot dog, a blackened fish taco, a bean burrito, a ground beef burrito, a steak burrito, two Boston creme doughnuts, and a chocolate and vanilla cupcake. Everything was so damn good, there’s almost no way to pick a winner.

Just one of the many burritos we tried

A vegan New York hotdog!

I say almost because really, can there be a vegan treat more satisfying than a lump tasty vegan dough, deep fried, then filled with vanilla creme and topped with chocolate ganache? I think not, so I have to say that the Boston Creme doughnut won my heart. (and its a probably a good thing that said heart doesn’t abide in closer proximity to the doughnut of its choosing, because vegan diet and exercise aside, that doughnut is probably a little bit heart atack inducing, if consumed in the quantities I would like).

The last bite of Boston Creme doughnut, and the cupcake

For my second birthday treat, we had dim sum (that’s yum cha in Oz) at Vegetarian Dim Sum House. In fact, we actually went there three times over all, because it was just that good. Also it happens to be in our tight-arse price range, was open the day after the hurricane and at 10pm on the third occasion everything else was shut.

Everything we tried there was fantastic, but a special mention has to go to the sweet and salty dumplings, which were unlike anything I have ever tasted before. I’m sure I took photos, but of course they are missing (probably on Mr’s camera or phone), so for the time being you’ll have to make do with the photos in this review.

Having googled “vegan new york” the second i booked our tickets, I came across a vegan chocolate shop, and deciding that a vegan chocolate shop was too good to pass up, went there on one of our mental health days (days when Mr and I go our separate ways so we have something to talk to each other about, and don’t drive each other nuts by dragging each other to stuff we don’t care about – he goes to military surplus stores and the like, I seek out chocolate and art galleries, everybody wins).

Cocoa V is the chocolate shop in question – an upmarket chocolate and wine bar of the vegan variety with cheese plates, cakes and confections. I had a horrid head cold, so I ordered the spiced hot chocolate, hoping I would be head coldy enough to withstand the burning Kristy mentioned. Unfortunately, though it tasted really nice, even my head cold of doom couldn’t stop me from burning my throat a little with the very spicy hot chocolate. These people need to be stopped! Or, you know, I could have heeded the advice and just got a normal one.

The tasty but painul hot chocolate, which for some reason won't let me save it right-way-up. Let's just pretend that this presentation is "artistic".

I also tasted a salted caramel vegan chocolate, which totally made my day with its lovely, smooth, caramelly centre and sparkly, purple exterior.

Purple, sparkly, caramel, chocolate goodness.

The last noteworthy place we visited in the USA was Maoz Vegetarian. We had several of their life-giving felafel things, and loved them every time. They have a buffet style area where you can choose vegies, chillies and sauces to add to your felafel, great chips and really refreshing minty lemonade.

Maoz felafels in Times Square

Since we left the US, and even a few times while we were there, people have told us, “it must be hard to be vegan in America”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The US was the most accommodating, vegan-friendly country I have ever visited, with options in every supermarket, clearly labeled ingredients, and even corner stores carrying some frozen veg meal or another.

So, thanks America, you treated us right

The best of the rest: Canada

Yup, too much travel and not enough blogging!

We left Canada, and the whole North American continent a little while ago now, but its never too late to post reviews and pictures of vegan food from far away, so on we go!

As well as trying enough butter tarts to make me a little sick, I also sampled two other Canadian favourites- Poutine and Nanaimo Bars.

Poutine

Poutine is a Quebec dish of hot chips (or french fries) smothered in gravy and cheese curds. If you can get past the question of what, exactly, a cheese curd is (I can almost hear you thinking, Katie), it sounds pretty good, right? Let’s face it, anything that is deep fried then covered in gravy and has the prospect of cheese is probably going to be good.

But where to find a vegan version? I was told it would be difficult, as most places don’t even have vego gravy, but it turned out to be as simple as a google search.

We headed to Poutini’s House of Poutineon West Queen Street in Torono in serach of the goods, and we were not disappointed. Poutini’s has many types of poutine available, including some with bacon and maple syrup, but only one vegan version (still, I’m not complaining).

Poutine on the street

We got ours to have in, as it was very cold (okay, maybe 15 degrees) given we’d been living in an eternal summer for the previous 9 months. The poutine was warm and mushy in a good way. The gravy was pretty tasty, though it still has nothing on that dastardly chicken-gravy I remember from post-night-out-munchings in Canberra, I’m sad to say. Poutini’s substitutes Daiya Cheese for the traditional curds.

Poutine is ready for its close up

My first Canadian poutine was tasty, warm and filling, and I can understand how it became the number 1 late-night/cold-night snack food. It will probably be my only poutine, however, as it just wasn’t enough to knock plain old chips with vinegar off my personal hot-chip podium.

Nanaimo Bars

I tasted the other of Canada’s favourite sweets courtesy of very fancy bakery, LPK’s Culinary Groove.

Nanaimo Bars are a slice with a graham cracker crust, a chocolate top and a filling made of frosting. I tried both the plain vanilla and the peanut butter version, and they were both really good. The filling was very fluffy, but so sweet that I couldn’t finish one in one go. Luckily refrigeration is a thing, so I got to eat a little bit of the bars every day we were in Toronto!

As with the poutine these were great, but a little too sweet to become an ongoing part of my at-home baking schedule.

(the photos for the bars appear to be lost, but I’ll add them when I find them).

Probably the Best Vegan Mexican Food in West Texas

Recently, as a part of the enormous around the world trip of enormity, I found myself in Texas, looking for a meal.

Actually, to be fair, I wasn’t looking for a meal, I was looking for a wallet, and Mr had taken me on a little detour from our destination (Odessa) to a company he loves called SpecOps in Monahans, Texas.

SpecOps make wallets, belts, buckles, bags and other stuff. Their stuff is made in the USA and is leather-free. Vegan by accident is vegan enough for me.

They only had the wallet I wanted in a fetching camouflage, so I opted out, but we did get talking to the people there about football, and if there were any Friday night football games on in the vicinity. One thing lead to another, and we were invited out to dinner at a local restaurant.

As any vegan knows, being invited to dinner is a delicate affair. You want to accept hospitality, but you know that inevitably at some point you ill have to either refuse or make things difficult, especially if you are going to a restaurant in Texas.

We said we’d love to go, but that it could be tricky because we don’t eat meat/eggs/dairy, but our hosts assured us it would be fine. So off we went, not sure what we would find.

Turns out the place is part owned by the people at SpecOps. The restaurant had been operating in town for decades, but the owner was ill, and his daughter, who had been managing the restaurant, was spending more time taking care of him, so it had recently closed.

After is closed, a group of people got together and formed a committee to start it back up, concerned for the family and for the community. They put in the money and work needed to re-open it, and the place was open again, and full of customers. In fact, when we got there at 5.30pm it was already filling up – our host said that people come early, because they want to get in and its always busy.

The place, called Fermin’s, has an extensive menu of Mexican and Tex-mex food including burritos, enchiladas, tacos, nachos, chips, beans, rice etc. The beans and rice are made without meat, animal fat or animal stock, the chips and dips are made on premises, and staff were happy to mix and match for us, so there were a lot of vegan options to choose from. The staff were also very helpful in checking out our concerns with the kitchen, and making suggestions. Not a turned up nose, sideways glance or grumble about picky eaters in sight. Melbourne eateries could learn a thing or two about how to treat people from these guys.

In the end we got chips with salsa and guacamole, a bean burrito, a rice burrito, fries and about 6 liters of iced tea (glasses are just bigger in America).

The food was really good, and quite cheap (although we got it for free, thanks to some very friendly texans – Thanks guys!). The burritos were smaller than they are in Oz, but most people were ordering burritos plus other food, and they were certainly priced to let you do that – we didn’t only because we weren’t that hungry, it being 5.30. We were also given some extra chips to take on the road, which were really good with salsa and hommus the next day. The fries were fantastic, and I really liked the flavour of the rice.

If I ever get there again, I will also try the sweet tortilla dessert (of course I’ve forgotten what it is called!), which they said could be made with sugar instead of honey for us vegan folk.

I didn’t get any photos, so you’ll just have to take my word for it, but if you ever get yourself to west Texas, its worth the detour to Monahans to get some tasty, healthy, vegan food in a friendly, community-driven atmosphere.

Fermin’s is located at 400 N Main Road, Monhanans, Texas. Check them out on facebook, too!

Thanks to Bryan, and everyone else at Fermin’s and SpecOps, we wish you the best.

Vegan in a Crisis

I’m in New York, and as I type the entire population is out buying all the water, chips and batteries in the few stores that are still open. Actually, they’d better hurry up because all the transportation will be shut down in 30 minutes.

They’re all preparing for Hurricane Irene, which is supposed to hit New York in about 12 hours.

Yup, that's a storm the size of Eurpoe

As I said everyone else is out stocking up on canned meat, tuna, eggs (I don’t know how they intend to cook them, but I really have seen long lines of people buying eggs this morning), cheese or sour cream or meat flavoured chips, cream-filled and buttery pastries, biscuits and other snacks. Not really vegan-friendly.

So, what does a vegan stock up on when the apocalypse is pending?

Here’s my shopping list designed to cover 3.5 days worth of Keira-and-Mr caloric needs, plus extra for people we may meet in the stairwell/safe haven:

• 3 blocks of dark chocolate
• too many Luna Bars
• 2 packs trail mix
• 6 bananas
• 1 packet of Newton’s Fig Newtons
• 1 can Amy’s vegan chilli
• 1 jar of chunky peanut butter
• 1 pack of vegan granola
• 2 litres of soy milk
• 1.5 litres of grape juice (only one that still had any vit C in it)
• 1/2 a packet of saltines (okay, these we already had)
• 1 loaf of bread
• some oats
• 1 thing of hummus
• 2 soy yoghurts
• sugar
• 3 drink bottles and a bath tub full of water (plus bottles the AirBnB hosts have)
• and a pack of vegan dumplings that I intend to eat before the power goes out.
  

  My loot

Not the most filling food, not the healthiest food, but it will do. I would have liked more fruit, but everyone was out, and we have no space for veg. We have much more than enough calorie-wise, but I wonder if we’ll still get hungry due to lack of volume. Time will tell.

Hopefully, the power wont go out, the water will keep working, and this will all just be a thought experiment. If not, well, we’ll see.

So, over to you: Have you ever been through a crisis that caused you to stock up? Do you keep a stockpile at home just in case? Have you ever caught yourself day dreaming about what would be in your dream-vegan-stockpile? What would you stash in case of emergency?

 

 

 

 

Vegan Las Vegas (hard work)

Vegas. We had to do it, even if it is just lights, strippers and extra charges.

When I first realised we were heading to Vegas, I used the power of the google to see what vegan fare might be around. I was happy to see there was one blog about vegan options and even a casino which promised to have edible vegan options at every meal, at every restaurant.

What the google failed to mention was that without a car access to anything vegan was nearly impossible, and that the vegan options at the Wynne started at the $28 per person price point (including tax and tip) and that was for breakfast at the cheapest place, the buffet. Lunch was more like $35 per person, and dinner was unmentionably expensive.

So, trying to save dough, as doing so keeps us out of jobs for as long as possible, we went in search of other stuff.

Only three places really stood out in the end, so here they are in order of least to most.

The Buffet at the Flamingo Casino, where we stayed, actually had a couple of vegan options. I went once, for lunch, and I could make up a big meal out of the salad bar, make-your-own nachos and some steamed veg. Not the most exciting or protein-filled meal, but doable in a pinch. They also had a lot of fruit for dessert.

While the buffet was okay, I should point out that the casino gave us kind of a crappy stay. The room had someone guy’s stuff in it when we got there, it advertised as having a gym when actually the gym was privately run and stupidly costly, various things were broken or not as advertised, they wanted $14 per day for internet, and they were horrendously understaffed. Staff were nice but often seemed harried and tired, so I blame the management for being cheap and not employing enough of them.

Very pretty at night (from the outside, anyway)

Tamba Indian Restaurant is located on the strip, in the Hawaiin centre, near the Hard Rock Cafe. The website is here, but I warn you it is very Flashy and blasts loud music, so don’t click if that will disturb your chi (I nearly dropped my laptop when I clicked).

We went to Tamba twice, once for the lunch buffet, and once for dinner.

The dinner was fantastic, with the best chann masala I’ve ever had, and really fresh roti. The buffet was also good, with more than half of the options being vegetarian, and most of those vegan. The staff were friendly and understood what veganism is, which always makes things easier.

I didn’t get a photo, but trust me, it was good food and not too costly for the strip, so if you’re Vegas bound you should give it a try.

 

Meskerem Ethiopian Restaurant was our favourite place in Vegas. Located just off the strip, at the Circus Circus end, it was very quiet and felt much further away from the hustle and lights than it really is.

You have the choice of ordering the vegetable combo or to pick your own dishes, or a mixture of both. We got the vegetable combo and shiro both times, and it was too much food for us each time. We did try to ask for less the second time, but it came out even bigger.

Bad photo of great food at Meskerem

All the dishes are served on injera, one of my very favourite foods. Everything was fantastic here – deep-flavoured shiro, spicy lentils, sour aletcha, and all around wonderfulness.

I can’t recommend this place enough. It was quiet in a way that makes me worry for its future, so if you’re in the area get over there and support a veg-friendly business!

Now to leave with you with a few photos, just ‘cos I can.

The real reason for going to Vegas: proximity to this!

The Grand Canyon - worth the Vegas food.

Portland, Oregon

With our mid-west and southern jaunts impending, and the wasteland of vegan options we imagined would come with them, I tried to make the most of Portland had to offer by way of treats. You can read that as, “I went overboard and ate as much sugar-salt-fat food as I possibly could fit, and sometimes more than I could really fit”.

Here’s how it went:

DC Vegetarian

The second best sandwich in the USA and the world ever (see Red and Black for the very best) came from a food cart called DC vegetarian.I don’t remember much about it, except that the one I ordered was really good and had veganaise, and Mr liked his, too.

A wrap of some kind

Yummy sandwich

Home Grown Smoker

On K’s suggestion we tracked down the Homegrown Smoker food cart on our last day in town. Unfortunately it was closed due to plumbing work, but luckily the staff still had some food left over, which they let us have for free on account of us being from so far away.

We got two huge servings, each weighing about a kilo, made up of mac and cheese, some sort of smoked BBQ mock, some baked beans, slaw, salad and cornbread.

Like K and Toby, we didn’t really take to the molasses corn bread – too sweet. Mr adored the BBQ and liked the beans, I adored the mac and cheese and the slaw. I didn’t really take to the mock BBQ, but I’m not generally a BBQ fan, so its no surprise. We had so much food that it served for two meals and we still didn’t get through it.

If we ever get back to Portland, I definitely intend a second run at this place.

The food

with my hand for size comparison

Back to Eden

Back to Eden is an all-vegan bakery/dessert joint in the North East of Portland. We went twice, and it was great both times. We tried the Chocolate Cream Pie with vegan soft serve the first time, and a lemon cake with cream cheese icing and chai flavoured vegan soft serve the second.

The soft serve was the big standout – so creamy, so flavourful, so soft! The chocolate cream pie was good, but not my cup of tea. The lemon cake totally exceeded expectations, it was tangy and tasty and almost drowning in cream-cheese icing, which in my opinion more cakes should be drowning in.

If we had stayed a little closer to the area (we were way down in the SE area, about an hour away by bus) I would have insisted on a daily visit.

Lemon cake and chai soft serve

Voodoo Doughnuts

I found this doughnut shop via some internet search along the lines of “things you must do in Portland”. It just so happens it serves vegan doughnuts along with the icky dairy-filled ones.

The place is supposedly a local institution (story goes they began by selling doughnuts with legal pharmaceuticals sprinkled on top, but had to resort to selling normal ones when forced to by the authorities), and the line is proof enough of its popularity. I think we waited outside the building for about 25 minutes, and that was the shortest line we’d seen during the trip.

The sign

The shortest line there ever was for the doughnuts

I don’t actually know which kinds we got, I just pointed at some doughnuts on the vegan display until I came across some they hadn’t run out of. One of them was a chocolate one, one tasted like cinnamon, and one of them had a filling. I do remember that they were all totally delicious though! Number one thumbs up for yummy vegan doughnuts.

Clockwise from top: a cinnamon thing, one with sprinkles, a chocolate one, a filled one.

Portobello

Portobello is a fancy-pants Italian restaurant, and I made sure we played our part and ordered all three courses to do it justice.

We had the white truffle and mushroom rillette, small sizes of the eggplant ravioli and the arancini, the chocolate rosemary tart and the trio of ice creams, and an orange blossom drink. Everything was fully wonderful, except the arancini, which was kind of bland.

Mushroom and white truffle rillette

Arancini and vegetables

Eggplant ravioli

Rosemary chocolate tart

Trio of vegan cie creams

The mushroom and truffle thing was a dip with crusty bread, the best I’ve had since going vegan. The orange blossom drink was really, really nice and smelled like spring. I like the rosemary tart, and as K and Toby reviewed, the salted caramel ice cream was heavenly.

A little shout out also has to go to the waiter for the evening,  Jeremy, who was awesome, and who we actually met a few times around town at various anarchist things and who helped us find vegan food a few days before we ended up at Portobello.
Sonny Bowl
We actually found the Sonny Bowl by accident, after wandering past it hoping the DC Vegetarian would be open late on a Saturday night on the way home. By the time we got there they were serving only one option, so we ordered that.
It was a noodle bowl type thing, full of veggies and tempeh (or was it mock?). It tasted healthy and good, but it was a little uninspiring. That said, for last minute, late night vegan food, it was a warm, filling, and reasonably long lasted feed, so we have no complaints
Given its late-night-ness, I didn’t get a photo.

Sweetpea Bakery
Sweetpea is a bakery on Portland’s famed vegan strip mall, and it serves all the obligatory bakery things – brownies, cupcakes, cookies- as well as lunchables of the sandwich variety. We had lunch around the corner at the Red and Black Cafe, so just picked up a few treats to eat later at the Rose Test Garden.

We got a Charlie Brown and GF Brownie. The Brownie was great, but pretty crumbly (I ended up licking bits of it out of the bottom of the bag like the classy lady/anteater I am). The Charlie Brown was a kind of peanut butter slice with chocolate on top. It was very tasty, but the huge serving proved a bit much even for me!

I enjoyed our Sweetpea treats, but I have to say it doesn’t have anything on Back To Eden.

The Bye and Bye
We were pretty excited about the Bye and Bye, it having come highly recommended by every vegan we had met in Portland, so it was with much anticipation that we ordered our chilli dog and crying tiger burger and broccoli.
I really wanted to enjoy our junk food and salvationary vegetable side-order, but I am sad to say we were really disappointed.

Maybe we ordered the wrong thing, maybe we were too hyped from all the hype, or maybe the food just tastes better after you’ve sample a beer or three (Mr drinks never, I drink rarely), but the food just wasn’t very good.
The Crying Tiger Burger seemed like it could better have been called the Whimpering Kitten Burger. It was quite mild on the chilli side, but it was tasty-ish. The Chilli dog was rubbery, the bread was kinda stale, and the chilli wasnt very flavourful. The broccoli was great though. We were a bit sad, and I’m hoping we just caught them on a bad day.

Red and Black Cafe
The Best Vegan Sandwich in Portland/America/The World award goes to Red and Black Cafe! We ate here twice because it was so good it needed a return trip.

The Red and Black is a collectively worker-owned cafe which serves fairtrade coffee and cocoa along with a huge menu of bagels, sandwiches and bowls and some cupcakes. Something I loved about Portland was the number of organisations which are collectively operated- great model for providing service (and yummy food) to the community without the shitty conditions and exploitation that usually goes with the food service industry.

Mr ordered the BBQ burger on both occasions. He loved it, and I liked it, which is a thing in itself, as I don’t generally like BBQ sauce at all (sweet just doesn’t belong on a sandwich). I ordered a BLT with tempeh bacon, daiya and avocado on the first occasion, and a hot cocoa and grilled cheese with tempeh bacon on the second occasion.

Biggest most awesome grilled cheese and a BBQ sanga in background. It gets a huge photo because it was the best sandwich n America and maybe the world, ever.

It was all perfect, wonderful food. The cocoa was home-style, so not too rich, but lovely and warm and sweet. The BLT/Grilled cheese were both enormous, melty and tasted so good. Had we stayed longer, and nearer, we probably would have eaten here even more. Two thumbs up.

All in all

All up, Portland really was a vegan wonderland. Vegan groceries, vegan-friendly co-ops, multiple vegan bakeries, vegan soft-serve, vegan doughnuts, vegan mac and cheese… the list goes on. I had an awesome time eating my way around Portland, and was very well stocked with a little more heft for the metaphorical winter I am now enduring in Utah/Nevada/Arizona/Lousianna/Oklahoma/Arkansas/Mississippi/Texas.

For more Aussie-eye reviews of Portland vegan eats, check out In The Mood For Noodles here.

See you next time for an update of whatever we get up to next.

San Francisco and Berkeley

San Francisco
Getting to San Francisco felt a lot like coming home. Cool weather (cold weather, really), grey light, relaxed atmosphere, none of the fake and over the top behaviour or too-carefully-crafted bodies of LA – we toyed with the idea of giving up the rest of the trip and just staying put!
We did a lot of touristy things – walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, doing a walking tour of the Mission District, taking photos of seriously enormous seagulls, climbing enormous hills, etc – as well as a lot of lounging around and watching the world go by.

Let’s get real though, you all really just care about the food!
We were very hungry when we got to SF, after a long morning of driving an RV, mucking around with public transport and meeting our wonderful Couch Surfing hosts, and we were very happily surprised to find that the ordinary-looking local chinese joint at the bus stop just happened to have a veg menu along side its omni one.
Crazy Pepperhad such great food, and such cheap prices, I’m not sure why we didn’t go back again during our stay. We got the lunch special which started with Hot and Sour Soup (so good in the very cold weather!), then any choice off the menu, made with soy meat instead of animal flesh, egg rolls (which we turned down – not vegan) and lots and lots of tea.

Meatless menu

Terrible photo of really good food - Ma Po Tofu and Lemongrass Tofu

Crazy Pepper is across the road from the Balboa Park BART Station, and its worth a look for some yummy and cheap vegan nosh, outside of the city.
Love and Haight and Herbivore both became our main eateries when we were staying near the Haight Ashbury area in an AirBnB place.
Love and Haightis an omni sandwich place on Haight Street, which has a nice big vegan and veg menu. We tried every vegan option over the course of a week, including vegan BBQ, vegan pepper steak, vegan chicken steak,  felafel, plain mock chicken, and a huge vegan cookie. Our faves were the pepper steak and the BBQ. I found the cookie a little too salty, as with most USian baked goods, but nice and chewy.

BBQ Sandwich at Love N Haight

The first time we went to Herbivore, a vegan restaurant on Divisadero, we were thoroughly underwhelmed by what we ate, with the exception of the truly awesome milkshake (made with fruit and coconut ice cream). We tried the shish kabob and the mac and cheese, both of which were very bland.  was particularly disappointed with the mac and cheese, which was watery, bland and not at all like the cheesy, creamy comfort food I was looking for.

Seriously good strawberry milkshake

We went back though, to try to figure out what everyone else was talking about. I’m glad we did, because our second and third tries (we got a little hooked) were much better.
We tried the Shwarma wrap with soy chicken (on the recommendation of our AirBnB housemate, who wasn’t wrong!), the BBQ sandwich, a burrito (which again was a little bland), the German chocolate cake, and doughnuts with chocolate ice cream.

Sandwich at Herbivore

Shwarma wrap

German chocolate cake and a lemon doughnut for later

Our last noteworthy food outing in SF was Gracias Madre. We went the day after trying Saturn Cafe in Berkely, which may have been a mistake – I really wanted some fresh tasting, light food, and what we got was rich and heavy. On another day though, I think we would have enjoyed Gracias Madre a lot more.
We ordered the Gorditas, Mole Enchiladas and Flan (taking K’s note not to over order!). The gorditas were good, though a huge serving size for a starter. The enchiladas were okay, but too rich and smokey for us, and again, a huge serving. The flan was fantastic – such an interesting creamy texture. I don’t seem to have any photos from Gracias Madre – my camera battery died during the mural tour.
Check out InTheMoodForNoddles for another recent Melbournian review of Gracias Madre.

Berkeley
Just near SF is Berkeley, a relaxed university town with a ton of vegan food.
We came to Berkeley because we wanted to meet a couch surfer who seemed nice (Hi Lee!), and we’re very glad we did. Two vegan food joints stood out for us while we were there: Green Papaya, a thai veg place, and Saturn Cafe, a funky veg diner.
Green Papaya was fantastic! I was very excited to see larb on the menu, though a little apprehensive, as I haven’t had a decent larb since going vegetarian – veg versions I have tried in Melbourne and Sydney always fall short of the spicy, tangy, herby, sweaty-sock flavour of the real thing. We ordered that, and some eggplant and tofu, pad thai and a thai iced tea.
I wasn’t disappointed – it was the very best larb I have had since going veg, and tasted precisely how I remember larb tasting in my pre-veg days. I don’t know what they used to sub the fish sauce, but I think I will write to them and ask. Mr has the photos of this one, so I’ll try to add them later.
The eggplant dish was good also, and Mr loved the pad thai, though I found it a little odd to my tastes – sweeter and less salty than I like it, and with hated vermicelli instead of the wider stick noodles.
If we had had more time in Berkeley, I probably would have gone back to try more of the menu – great food
Saturn Cafeis a big, sparkly, pink and silver diner across the road from the University. We just happened to come across it on its birthday, so we were treated to balloons and streamers, and free ice cream and cup cakes.

Happy Birthday Saturn Cafe!

The cafe boasts a deliciously junky menu, and it was very hard top pick between all day breakfasts of pan cakes and french toast, and lunch items like nachos and burgers. In the end we ordered home fries (which come slathered in Daiya cheese and veganaise, and a quesadilla.

Cheesey home fries

Quesadilla and chips

The fries were wonderful, and the quesadilla was good, though Mr (who forgot what a quesadilla was when he ordered it) was disappointed that it wasn’t bigger and with more filling, however this was an ordering mistake, not a failure in the food.
We had some free cinnamon swirl ice cream and mini cupcakes, which totally made my day too – creamiest vegan ice cream I’ve ever had.

Free treats!

It was all pretty good, though I’m glad we don’t live around the corner from this place – I’d never cook again.

Now we are in Portland, so you can look forward to heaps and heaps of vegan restaurant reviews in the near future!

 

USA So far – Oahu and Los Angeles

We have been out of Micronesia and in the USA now for about two and a half weeks. We have being doing a lot of on-the-go eating, most of which has been pretty lackluster, but we’ve also had some great meals at the many many many veg eateries around. Apologies for the lack of photos – at first I kept forgetting to keep it with me.

 

Oahu, Hawaii

We spent just two nights in Waikiki, so didn’t get to try out everything available, but we did have some great food.

We had dinner on the first night at Simple Joy, a local all vegan restaurant. We felt like we had just wandered out of the desert and into a huge, lush oasis when we saw the menu – it seemed like forever since we had vegan cheese or mock meat of any kind, or even tempeh. We ate their quesadillas as a starter, which were perfectly warm, melty, and so wonderfully cheesy that I may actually have shed a tear. Even Mr got excited about them and said something along the lines of, “You should remember to mention them on the blog-thing”.

For mains I ordered the lemongrass tofu and Mr had the sizzling pancake. The tofu was fantastic, but I wasn’t so sold on the pancake. It tasted good, but I didn’t like the texture much- it felt too gooey to me. Mr loved it though. All in all it was a very nice welcome-back-to-the-land-of-good-vegan-restaurants meal.

The second night in Waikiki we decided to try out Loving Hut. The service was good, if a little overwhelmingly helpful (something I’ve come to expect in the US), the menu had a good range of healthy and not-so-healthy options, and the food was quite cheap.  Unfortunately, by time of writing, we have been to so many Loving Huts that I can’t remember what we ate there, except that we got the pot stickers, which were a little bland.

Our next two nights in Hawaii were spent on the North Shore of Oahu, cooking for ourselves in a backpackers, so no reviews except to state that supermarkets have such a good range of vegan stuff here in the USA. Melbourne is well served by the Radical Grocery, of course, but my former non-city dwelling self in very jealous of American vegans. All supermarkets should have peanut butter zig-zag chocolate fudge vegan ice-cream (to eat on the beach).

Backpacker's meal

The beach on which you can eat peanut-butter fudge ice cream

 

Los Angeles

To say that we were tired when we got to LA would be a serious understatement. After a few big weeks before we left Pohnpei, and a hectic few days in Hawaii, we just about slept the whole time we were there. Don-t worry, we’re going back in a few weeks, so we’ll see things then.

We did do a little eating out though, with our friend Mike, who kindly put up with us staying with him.

First, we went to Scoops, the famed non/vegan ice creamery. There were four vegan flavours when we went and, of course, we got all four between us. They were Almond and amaretto (fabulous), Oreo peanut butter (good), Oreo and vanilla (ok), and melon and pistachio (clear favourite).

On another night we went to a vegetarian restaurant in Silver Lake called Elf. It was supposed to be very very good, and we heard it talked up by a lot of vegetarians before we went, so we were excited. It was fancy, and had prices to match (though still reasonable in comparison to Australia). We got a starter of vegan fondue to share. It was really creamy, deep-flavoured and everyone loved it.

The mains were a little less inspiring. The non-vegan mains sounded and smelled divine- pasta bakes, and many cheesy offerings. The vegan mains sounded good, but we were a little underwhelmed by the results. I ordered a main of risotto, which was to come with chillies and a mole sauce. It was ok, but not great. Mr ordered a vegetable tagine with summer squash, which came out as a huge serving, but wasn’t very flavourful at all. In all the atmosphere was great, the service was good, the fondue was fantastic, but the mains seemed a lot like they were made by a vegetarian convinced that living without cheese must be horrible, and vegan food can’t be tasty.

Raw ice cream (no honey)

Last stop of note in LA was Kind Kreme Ice Cream, a raw vegan* ice cream spot. I’ll start by saying the ice cream was really good. However we were surprised to see that they were selling honey, and had honey in some of their flavours. When I asked the woman behind the counter which ones were honey free, she went into a diatribe about how the honey was ethically farmed by her father and cell phones kill bees, so its totally fine and vegan to use honey.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I don’t care a lick what you choose to eat or not eat, or sell or not sell. I just mind when people try to redefine vegan as being whatever they feel is ethical, as opposed to what it is – no consumption of animal products. None. I’m happy to hear discussion about whether honey is ethical, and I’m glad to hear she has thought about the bees involved in her products, but it still isn’t vegan. Free range eggs aren’t vegan, freely given milk isn’t vegan, bone char from cows who died naturally isn’t vegan, and honey from bees, no matter how happy they are, isn’t vegan. Just because you consider yourself vegan, but like something non-vegan, doesn’t mean that product becomes vegan.

Phew. Glad that rant is over, aren’t you?

Stay tuned for an update about the totally wonderful vegan wonderland that is San Francisco and the Bay Area.

 

 

Broken blog, and a new direction for the rest of 2011

My blog broke last week, and I don’t know how to fix it. *le sigh*

My template went all weird, and the blogroll is stuck down the bottom. I attempted to fix it, resulting in the loss of my previous theme (I don’t remember what it was called) and the images I was using. I have re-set it, but it isn’t as pretty, and the blogroll is still in the wrong place. I just don’t have the time to fix it at the moment though, so we will make do.

It is also, I feel, my duty to inform you that as I leave Micronesia next week to start our in-real-life around the world trip, I am going to stop posting about cooking each country, and post mainly reviews instead. There may still be recipes and notes, however I don’t think I will try to cook from one country for a whole week. When I get home I’ll go back to doing the culinary tour from my kitchen.

I am so very very excited about our impending trip, and can’t wait to check out vegan food around the world for real. Our next stop is Oahu (Hawaii), then almost three months in mainland USA – I’m checking out reviews by Toby and K, and it all looks great.

Can’t wait to get my hands on some mock, tempeh, and fresh veg!

 

America: The Verdict

I enjoyed learning about some US food, although I know I’ve really only scratched the surface.

For the most part it was rich, sweet, and enormously portioned (be careful with your recipe serving sizes, they were bigger than we’re used to and I always had left overs). There were some dishes I just wasn’t that keen on. It turns out that okra just isn’t my thing, and I wasn’t that into the hot dogs with fluffy white bread, either.

I loved the pumpkin bread, the key-limish pie, apple pie, pigeon peas and rice, dirty rice, beans and cornbread, and mac and cheese, and I’ve always been enamoured with all things tex mex.

Truth is I had already moved on from America when I realised I’d forgotten to give it a verdict. Shame on me. However, that probably does sum it up. It was fun while it lasted, but now its on to new endeavours, and in particular, fresher, greener ones.

So, thanks USA, but now its on to ….Japan!