Thursday 11 October 2012

Things I Love Thursday: A Few of Our Favourite Stores.

Ah, another American edition of Things I Love Thursday! What can I say, I'm in love with Austin. If moving was as simple as packing a bag and hopping on a plane we'd be there right now. Unfortunately things like immigration laws and visas exist meaning that for now Austin will have to exist without us in it!

I used Lazy Smurf's Austin Vegan Guide to plan a large majority of this trips eating schedule and one of the most exciting things we discovered was the breakfast taco. We'd never even heard of breakfast tacos, let alone tried them, before this trip and now they're heading quickly towards the top of our list of favourite foods ever.

Thanks to Lazy Smurf we heard that the best breakfast taco in town was to be found at Whole Foods so we headed straight to the North Lamar location to check 'em out. 


The breakfast taco options at Whole Foods include tofu scramble, potatoes, beans, rice, guac', all kinds of salsas, tomatoes and two kinds of Daiya. I went for scramble, potatoes, guac', Daiya and tomatoes almost every time. What a perfect combination. I'm so glad that we brought some tortillas home so that we can re-create these.

Another amazing thing about this particular Whole Foods is that it's huge! It's actually their flagship store and it's full of amazing things like these parfaits which even turned Nick into a food photographer!


We were particularly in love with the chocolate parfait although the peanut butter will always have a place in my heart after Nick dropped one face down, lid off, onto the self checkout causing much mess and mayhem!

One of our other favourite stores was Wheatsville Co-Op. Wheatsville have the nicest most amazing staff in the world. Everyone we came into contact with at every store, cafe, restaurant, food truck and bar in Austin was crazy friendly but the people at Wheatsville were extra special. One wonderful person even shared their vegan chocolate with me whilst we were going through the checkout!

Their deli is insane, if you go you have to try the Buffalo Popcorn Hero and if you can't actually handle spice at all then they'll even replace the Buffalo Popcorn Tofu with regular Popcorn Tofu so that you can experience the creamy deliciousness of their vegan blue cheese dressing without burning off all of your taste buds! The first time we went I chased mine with a Red Rabbit Co-Op doughnut and a root beer.

 


On the second visit I tried the Red Rabbit Apple Fritter. I have to say that this was my favourite of all of their baked goods, I'm a sucker for fruit and a sugary glaze, amazing.


One of our other favourite stores EVER is Toy Joy


More amazingly lovely people are to be found working here and as well as being an epic toy store (I spent a shitload of cash!) they also have a vegan ice cream parlour inside!! I don't have a picture of the delicious peanut butter chocolate soft serve we tried but trust me it was awesome. The other amazing thing about this place is that it's open 'till 11pm - it would be the cutest place ever to take someone after dinner on a first date, Nick took me here after dinner one night on what was probably our 8 millionth date and I thought that it was the cutest idea ever!

The incredibly lovely staff are also funny as fuck if this Insane Clown Posse inspired sign's anything to go by!


Austin Books & Comics is also up there on our list of favourite places, as well as this epic photo of me & Hulk I picked up a super rad screen printed Mars Attacks poster and some super cute Jeffrey Brown comic books.


We also loved the bar where you could play air hockey, skeeball and drink Lone Star. Perfect!

27 comments:

  1. awesome post! I still haven't ever been to Austin... but lately I've been thinking of it. I have various friends who live there, and it seems like a cool place to check out. :) - not just for the food!

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  2. I never would have thought of Austin as a place I'd want to visit, but after reading this I'm dying to go there! Seriously jealous of all your vegan eats! Donuts! Breakfast tacos! Fuck yeah!

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  3. Haha! Magnets: How do they work? That shit is funny as hell every time! And vegan donuts and breakfast tacos! I need to visit Austin!

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  4. Those tacos look yummy! Also the WF puddin' parfaits are damn good! ICP - OMG so I always say that magnet line when something puzzles me!

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  5. Toy Joy is so awesome! There used to be a little vegan cafe next door...and breakfast tacos are so good. I never make them, but if I could get 'em here, I would.

    Did you fall over when you saw how big that Whole Foods is? I used to work for them for many many years, and I remember how I felt when I walked in there.

    xo
    kittee

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    1. Did you make it to veggie heaven??

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    2. I didn't! Next time! And yeah, that Whole Foods is HUGE! We'd been to the big one in Chicago but this one's even bigger!

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  6. cool! toys and vegan ice cream!!!

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  7. Lately I want to tweet you pictures of breakfast tacos just to make you jealous. Secretly I'm an evil bitch!!! I've had so much fun reading your Austin posts, and the fact that you are a breakfast taco covert warms my little heart.

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    1. That would be pretty hilarious! I'm a total breakfast taco convert and we're genuinely working towards moving to Austin! We'd be there now if it wasn't for the whole visa thing!

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  8. The apple fritter is my favorite Red Rabbit item, too. Well, except maybe the maple pean donut.

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    1. Oooh I didn't try that donut but yeah, the fritter was epic!

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  9. I'm a sucker for a good apple fritter and this one looks tasty. The toy store sound pretty amazing as well.

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  10. Ah, we totally were there at the same time! I had the Toy Joy chocolate peanut butter soft serve!

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  11. Dang, I wish I'd gone to Austin instead of Dallas now. Not that I didn't like Dallas but Austin looks great. Peanut butter soft serve sounds amazing.

    I love that pic of you with the Hulk!

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  12. Toy Joy sounds like the best thing in the WORLD. I think I want to get married there. And then move in and raise a family.

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  13. I think I also want to move to Austin and then eat tons of breakfast tacos!

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  14. Austin is one of the most vegan friendly cities in the US, it's great. We passed through there one time for a brief visit. It's funny you say how you would love to pack up and move to Austin. I'd love to pack up and move to Brighton! Same issues here, laws and such. Also coming up with a plan to get our stuff, 7 cats and a dog across an ocean.

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    1. I wish you could just swap countries with someone!

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  15. Toy Joy is so phenomenal! I went there twice when I was in Austin for 2 days. I might have eaten more than one milkshake each time.

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  16. I want one of everything you tried - I am seriously hungry after reading this post :D

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  17. Whereabouts would you say is the best area to stay in Austin? And did you hire a car? I understand it's not too easy to get around on foot or by public transport?

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  18. We stayed downtown and thought it was great, there were places to walk to if you wanted to go out at night but we did hire a car which was great for getting to the further away places.

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  19. Aw, love that final picture!

    Love all the pictures, really. A few friends of mine recently moved from Atlanta to Austin and they're really enjoying it. I still think Atlanta is the best Southern vegan city, but Austin does seem pretty rad. When I finally get over there, I will definitely be combing lazysmurf's site for ideas.

    adrienne at http://cracktheplates.com

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