Vegan in New York City

I've been struggling to write about food recently. After volunteering at the refugee camp and writing about my experience there writing about doughnuts and cupcakes seemed tougher than usual. Almost as soon as I got back from France I spent a couple of days catching up with friends, headed to London to march to Parliament Square with Help Refugees, the charity I'd been volunteering with, and the very next morning I was on a plane to NYC. I was excited but feeling pretty guilty that that's just a thing I can do because I happen to have been born in the UK. I didn't get a lot of time to process my experience before flying over here but since I've been here I've been setting aside time for self care; reading books, reading blogs, walking in the park, watching movies, eating all of the foods, and just giving myself time to do these things has reminded me that writing this blog is activism, it's just a different kind of activism! I don't know why I forget this sometimes but I do.

Travelling the world as a vegan can be the best, I know that I've mentioned that the hunt for vegan eats often makes you veer off of well trodden tourist routes and into neighbourhoods that the average tourist probably doesn't visit and this is no different in Hanoi, Budapest, or NYC. I've found it to be true everywhere. Brooklyn Whiskers is one of these spots and you need to venture deep into Bushwick if what you want is a top notch vegan danish.

As you can tell by the name the people who set up this cafe are really into cats, even their biscuits are kitty shaped and you must check out the bathroom if you're a cat person!

Portland: Portobello & Departure Lounge

This is the third and final instalment in my Portland series (for now, maybe I'll get to go back one day), read parts one and two here and here.

One place I knew I had to visit during my stay was Portobello, I'd heard so much about it and whilst a greasy burger from a food cart out the back of a dive bar is probably more my style I wanted to fine dine it up with the best of 'em at this upscale vegan joint.

Stephanie, Mandee, Randi and I managed to snag a table just before the Vida Vegan Con hoards descended upon the city. We decided to go all out with starters, mains and desserts and Mandee and I started with the cheese plate which came with three kinds of cheese, baguette and quince paste. 

Honestly I was a tad disappointed with this plate, I know vegan cheeses are expensive but for $16 I was, um, a little surprised at quite how tiny this plate of food was. Maybe I'm just a philistine? I will say that everything on the plate was delicious and I believe that the cheeses were from Heidi Ho, Chao and Punk Rawk Labs; my favourite being the peppered cashew cheese.

Stephanie ordered the Beet Tartare which actually ended up being the highlight of the fine dining experience in my mind. This perfectly creamy cashew cheese and roasted beetroot dish was beautifully presented, came with plenty of delicious French bread, and, if this had indeed been served at a dive bar I'd have licked the plate.

Next up we have Asparagus Fries, we almost didn't order these which would have been stupid. Served in a cone to stop the light tempura batter from becoming soggy these crisp delicious fries were my second favourite part of the meal.

I think I ordered badly again with my main course because I really didn't love this Summer Pea Ravioli with Morels.

I love ravioli and I love both english peas and mushrooms but something about this dish missed the mark for me. I did however love Stephanie's Gnocchi with Spring Vegetables which was weird because normally I am not a gnocchi fan. The moral of this story is go to dinner with Stephanie, order what she orders, enjoy.

I couldn't pass on dessert because there was a Chocolate Hazelnut Bomb on the menu!

This chocolate explosion was topped with crunchy caramelised hazelnuts and it was an amazingly rich end to the meal which left everyone feeling stuffed to the point of bursting.

I would definitely go back to Portobello, the dishes I enjoyed still stick in my mind today (uuuhhhh that beet tartare) and I love that their menu changes with the seasons. If you go let me know what your favourites are!

Our next dining destination was Departure Lounge somewhere that I hadn't even heard of before Vida Vegan Con started, but after recommendations from both Isa and Grant Butler (VVC's restaurant review panelist) it seemed ridiculous not to pay them a visit.

Our group of four ordered many, many things to share and drove our not-so-food-photo-obsessed friend a little crazy with all of our picture taking. If you're reading this, sorry again. I still feel a little bad about being such an annoying dinner companion.

Departure Lounge is not a vegan restaurant but they do have a separate vegan menu and a commitment to creating out of this world vegan dishes. Good enough for me.

This dish of Wok Fried Brussels Sprouts with chilli, lime and mint was outstanding. I have no idea how anyone can make sprouts taste this good and on the strength of this dish alone I'd like to invite the chef to come and live with Nick and I. I'm sure Nick wouldn't mind once he tasted the food.

The next dish of Gingered Mushrooms came with sweet & sour rhubarb, watercress and ramp. As a lover of all things rhubarb I was delighted to see it represented in a savoury dish, breaking out of it's role as a filler of pies and crumbles. This was exceptional.

We ordered all of the sushi on the menu which included this Grilled Shiitake Roll with avocado, cucumber, scallion and carrot sauce which I adored.

Next up was the Ume Shisho Roll with pickled plums, cucumber and jalapeño. Whilst I loved the bold plum flavours in this dish I did (somewhat unsuccessfully) have to eat around the jalapeños!

The table also ordered these beautiful BBQ Tempeh Buns.

These steamed buns were stuffed with Korean BBQ sauce and spicy coleslaw. I didn't try one, I can tell when something's spicy enough that it'll kill my tastebuds and my dining companions agreed that it'd definitely push me over the edge!

This Greens and Seeds roll was the thing that got us all excited about Departure Lounge's menu. How could a place serving nooch sushi ever steer you wrong?! This roll was also stuffed with avocado, cucumber, herbs, pumpkin seeds & sesame and I'm pretty sure there was some wasabi or something in there too because this roll packed a strong horseradishy punch.

Last but by no means least the final part of our sushi selection hit the table, the Sweet Potato Tempura roll was a spicy miso spiked delight and I loved the addition of even more nori - delicious.

If I'm lucky enough to end up back in Portland this is somewhere I'll most certainly re-visit and now that I've blogged about it I'll be able to leave the iPhone in my bag and just enjoy the overall dining experience. The food here was stunning both in taste and presentation and I'd highly recommend it to any vegans with their sights set on Portland.

Portland Part 2

This is the second instalment of my Portland series, read Part 1 here.

One of my favourite PDX hangouts was the vegan friendly bar White Owl Social Club and it had nothing to do with this Mac & Cheese Burger...okay, that was a lie, it had EVERYTHING to do with this Mac & Cheese burger. That and the delicous drinks menu and bargaintastic happy hour. Oh and did I mention that they even have a black and white photobooth, so rad! Anyway, THE BURGER! Just look at it...

...isn't it just one of the best things you've ever seen?! It's mac and cheese, fried, in a bun, with a side of fries. That's the triple carb win right there. I don't think I need to say much more than this, I ate it five times in a week. 

I also visited on another occasion when I decided to branch out and Mandee and I shared a selection of goodies from around the menu. We went for the mac and cheese, which I thought was better in burger form. Fried pickles, um, amazing, I'm a total pickle convert. And the BBQ Pulled Jackfruit Burger with Fries. This was our attempt at ordering in a restrained manner, I love us!

Portland has a tonne of vegan friendly bars, I also went to both The Bye & Bye (where I took a terrible photograph of a delicious grilled cheese sandwich at 2am) and The Sweet Hereafter (where I hung out with many VVC attendees at the Unofficial Conference After-party).

I loved all three of these bars because of the plentiful outdoor seating, great drinks menus and the fact that food is served all hours. Whoever came up with the law saying that food must be served if alcohol is being served is a real winner! I wish we had bars like these in Brighton.

Alongside the super vegan friendly bars another thing I love about Portland is the Food Carts. Two of my most frequented carts were DC Vegetarian...

and Sonny Bowl.

Both of these carts are situated Downtown on the corner of SW 3rd and Washington which means you can mix it up and order something from both carts if you wish. On more than one occasion I grabbed a breakfast sandwich or bagel with cream cheese from DC Veg and a Kale - Mango Smoothie from Sonny Bowl. The perfect breakfast combo.

Another highlight of the food cart scene was Homegrown Smoker. I've been wanting to visit this cart since I first heard about it back in 2011 and it certainly didn't disappoint. I was totally unable to choose between the Macnocheeto, a vegan mac 'n cheese burrito, and the Carolina Chick'n Sandwich so I went all out and ordered the Combo Platter instead.

The platter comes with your choice of two proteins, two sides and corn bread and I picked the Smoked Soy Curls, Smoked Chikn', mac no-cheese and STFU Puppies - corn fritters with remoulade sauce. My choices were definitely influenced by my chilli allergy / aversion and I was surprised that after discussing this with the person working that they still covered my chosen proteins with chilli sauce! It was all okay though, some careful scraping and liberal use of the remoulade came to the rescue and whilst this meal was still right at the top end of my heat tolerance it was totally amazing. 

This was the first time I'd ever tried Beyond Meat and I loved it, the texture was spot on and I still can't believe how meat-like it is. The soy curls were super smokey and flavourful and the mac no-cheese was out of this world delicious and creamy. I had no idea what to expect from the corn fritters but unsurprisingly I loved them and the corn bread was by far the best I've ever had. I will definitely be going back to Homegrown Smoker to order this again but next time I'll just be sure to specify no extra hot sauce!

There were plenty of other food carts I never got the chance to check out including The Cheese Plate, Native Bowl and Potato Champion. I did make it to Flavour Spot though and you can read about that here.

Moving back to brick and mortar vegan eateries Back to Eden is right up there with my favourite places in the world. On my first visit Nick and I just grabbed some soft serve, chocolate of course, which I insisted on topping with their house made caramel sauce even though the dude told me it was for ice cream not soft serve and it'd probably slide off.

He was totally wrong and it was brilliant, it even stayed on long enough for me to take a picture and it elevated my cone to the next level.

On my second visit with Randi I ordered the Quiche which was the most delicious quiche I've ever eaten vegan or not. It was perfect, really eggy and perfectly browned on top. Now, if only I'd managed to get the asparagus the right way up for the photo...

I followed my quiche with a 5" Strawberry Rhubarb pie, it had a perfect crumb topping and exactly none of it got saved for later!

Back to Eden is definitely on my re-visit list, the pastries and ice cream I tried were wonderful and if I'd had more time I could have stayed in there all day eating my way through their bakery case. I found out after my visit that Back to Eden is totally gluten free which blew my mind, I can't believe pastries this good were made without gluten and it makes me feel like I need to up my xgfx baking game.

One place I'd never envisioned myself checking out was Prasad but I'd heard so many good things about it over the weekend that I gave in and headed there with my slightly kale obsessed friend Randi. This restaurant is in the Pearl district and shares its space with a yoga studio, it was really busy when we visited but it was somehow still a relaxed and mellow environment - it must be all that yoga!

I'm not exactly sure what came over me when I ordered The Mightly Bowl which is made up of quinoa, steamed greens, lentils and a garlic tahini sauce. It was simple and tasty but looking at the menu there are so many more exciting choices!

I had a carrot and orange juice on the side which is one of my favourite juice combos. Whilst we were eating I noticed a note on the menu beneath The Mighty Bowl stating that Prasad believe that everyone deserves a warm, healthy, organic meal and therefor they offer this bowl on a donation basis, nobody is turned away. I think this is a wonderful thing for a business to do and they're not wrong, everyone does deserve a nutritious, filling, healthy meal no matter how much money they have. Nice one Prasad.

This last spot was probably the most surprising to me because I kinda went into it thinking, sure, bowls, how good can they really be? And, well, when you're at Canteen they can be pretty fanfuckingtastic!

I ordered the Portland Bowl which consists of a base of quinoa topped with steamed kale, baked maple tempeh, noochy cheese sauce, chopped local hazelnuts and grated carrot. They even have shakers of nooch so that you can go extra crazy with the cheesiness. This was a magnificent bowl and it's something I've been craving and working on recreating since I got home!

In the next instalment of my travel-ventures I'll be posting about two upscale Portland eateries, Departure Lounge and Portobello.

Portland Part 1

I am finally over being overwhelmed by my backlog of pictures from Portland, the food's still there for the eatin' so I'm damn well gonna blog about it!

As soon as we arrived in town we headed straight to Sweetpea Baking Co to grab some tasty eats and to say hi to my buddy Ms Panda With Cookie because it'd been three whole years since I'd seen her in real life. Three years! I needed a panda hug. Sadly on this visit there was no panda hugging to be done, something which I think we definitely made up for during the rest of my trip. We even double-team-hugged a large chimp together. Ah, memories.

I ordered a delicious Chickpea Tuna Salad Sandwich...

Note : I took this before anyone taught me how to take a picture of a sandwich. All things considered I don't think it's that bad! 

...and a Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownie.

Both of which I loved but the real jewel in Sweetpea's crown as far as I'm concerned are their deeeelicious biscuits and gravy. I chose to get mine with some tempeh bacon and I've seriously been waking up thinking about this almost daily ever since. It was amazing. I wish I was less lazy and could be bothered to learn how to make my own biscuits, it can't be that hard can it?!

Mandee and I chased our breakfast biscuits with some pastries because we're awesome like that. You know what else was awesome? Sweetpea's pastries that's what. Yet another thing I'm scared to try to make after an epic croissant failure back in '08!

One spot you simply cannot miss on a vegan tour of Portland is Voodoo Doughnut. They have two PDX locations, one Downtown and one in NE and I managed to squeeze in five or six visits during my stay.

Voodoo Doughnut have a vegan version of almost every doughnut on their large menu and they're crazy cheap so you can buy loads.

The day I realised that Mandee and I would be forever friends was the day she went out early and brought doughnuts back to our room before I'd even emerged from under the duvet. Best. Roomie. Ever. 

Doughnuts in bed are the best, I hope Nick reads this and gets the (not so subtle) hint that he should get up early in Vegas, drive to Ronald's, and bring all of the doughnuts back to me!

That chocolate topped, peanut butter drizzled, cookie covered monstrosity, named the Old Dirty Bastard, was amazing. I kept ordering it again and again not needing to branch out because this doughnut is perfect. The Gay Bar on the right was full of cream, not jam as I had suspected, meaning that I didn't love it but everyone else did!

Another place I fell head over heels for in Portland was Sizzle Pie, vegan pizza, by the slice, open until late, what more could you want? Well, honestly, I'd like their brunch pizza to be available at all times but I'm pretty demanding like that!

This Raw Power slice was my favourite and every time I walked through this neighbourhood I made whoever I was with stop for a slice. Sorry, not sorry.

Nick and I went for brunch at Hungry Tiger Too before he left, due to someone's (ahem, Nick) time consuming hairstyle it was super late by the time we arrived and I was the kind of hungry that has crossed passed hangry and into a whole 'nother dimension. I ordered the most epic sounding thing on the menu...

...and then got some corndogs on the side much to the amusement of our waitress.

My Greek Scramble came packed full of olives, tempeh bacon, spinach, garlic, tomatoes and Daiya cheese and was served with with sourdough toast and an enormous hash brown. This was one of my favourite meals of the whole trip. The scramble was super flavourful and if somewhere has sourdough toast on the menu I will love them forever. 

The corn dogs on the other hand? Good god no! I didn't actually realise that a corn dog is a sausage on a stick covered in sweet, yes, SWEET, batter. Now I love maple syrup with my tempeh bacon these days but this? This was taking it too far! American's, you crazy! I am glad I tried a corn dog though and if you haven't ever had the pleasure you should give 'em a whirl, but don't say I didn't warn ya!

This next delicious brunch is from Blossoming Lotus where Nick and I were lucky enough to have a brunch date with the lovely Jess Scone and her hilarious ladyfriend Jules.

This Coconut Bacon BLT was perfect and was made all the more delicious because it was accompanied by a mimosa and wonderful company. We both wish that we lived closer to these ladies so that we could have brunch together all the time! I'm still a little obsessed with coconut bacon right now, you can't buy it in the UK like you can in the US so I've been making my own using this recipe.

Last but by no means least Nick and I managed to make it to flavour spot, a waffle cart with two locations in North / NE Portland. There's only one vegan option, the No. 3 Vegan Sausage & Maple, but that was a-ok with us. Why would you need anything else?

It was as epic as it looks and for $5.50 it was a total bargain. This delicious crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside, waffle was folded around vegan sausage patties and slatherd with organic vegan maple spread. I love this sandwich SO HARD. I really, really wanted to visit this cart more than once but, alas, opening hours and a base downtown made it impossible.

That's not all I ate in Portland though, Portland Part Deux is coming up real soon. Watch this space.

Olympia and Cannon Beach

When we were looking into places to stop on our way from Seattle to Portland Olympia was top of my list. So much of the music I love came out of Olympia in the 90's and visiting the place that Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney hailed from was something I wasn't gonna miss.

Our first stop was obviously Sleater-Kinney Road!

We checked out the Happy Cow app as soon as we got hungry and we decided on Saigon Rendezvous, partly because Olympia's one veg place is closed Mon - Thurs and partly because it had a couple of good reviews and we do love a good plate of mock meat!

To start with we ordered the Vegetarian Teriyaki Beef on a Stick. We were slightly underwhelmed by the presentation of this dish as we'd imagined the skewers to be on a plate drenched in sauce but they were tasty nonetheless and the strange fire gel thing the skewers surrounded was quite fun!

I opted for the Vegetarian Almond Chicken main course because two of the reviewers on Happy Cow said that it was awesome. I love it when reviewers mention specific dishes, it really helps reduce my ordering anxiety and I hate getting it wrong when I'm only going to be visiting a place once.

The reviews steered me right and this dish was fantastic. It came with a side of steamed white rice and the deep fried mock chicken was covered with loads of perfectly thick flavourful sauce.  Nick ordered a cashew tofu and vegetable dish which wasn't bad, if you aren't into deep fried food I would say that it's a good bet but Nick is and he spent the majority of the meal swapping bits of his broccoli for my chicken. At least it wasn't bell pepper, that is not a swap I'd have been down with!

After lunch we swung by Oly Vegan, Olympia's very own all vegan store. Unfortunately even though we wanted to love this place we were unimpressed by their product range and later on a little annoyed by their prices.

We really wanted to support this indie vegan store so despite the sparse selection of products we grabbed a copy of Veg News and some Dandies and went on our way. As our trip went on we realised that $8 is not even remotely close to the $4-something Dandies seem to sell for everywhere else (including the Oly Food Co-op) and it left us feeling a little ripped off.

I was much happier with our post lakeside stroll and our visit to the zine section of Olympia's library!

We sat there reading zine's and using the wifi for ages and nobody hassled us, it was lovely. I love libraries!

On the way out of Oly we hit the Olympia Food Co-op and Trader Joe's to stock up on fun treats for out little beach cottage. At the co-op we grabbed some baked goods, I chose a Poppyseed and Blueberry Muffin and Nick picked up a Cinnamon Roll.

We also got some of these cookies.

I'd seen these around before but neither of us had ever tried them. The verdict? Yum! Surprisingly the Oatmeal Raisin Walnut was both of our favourites.

We also bought some Dave's Killer Bread, Gardein tenders, Tofurky tempeh, Veganaise, Amy's mac 'n Cheese, Earth Balance and some delicious breakfast treats.

From Trader Joe's we picked up this delicious selection to keep us going. The TJ's Maple Leaf Cookies are a definite favourite of ours and the Dark Chocolate Covered Mini Pretzels have become my absolute favourite way to get chocolate into my system. Nick prefers the Dark Chocolate Truffle chocolate and we both looooooved the Cinnamon Rolls.

Of course we stopped off a few more times on our way to Cannon Beach to check out a national park and a couple of look out points.

We also stopped at the Astoria Food Co-op, we'd already stocked up on food because we weren't sure how big or vegan friendly this place would be but it was stuffed full of vegan goodies & if you're heading to Cannon Beach this would be a great place to buy supplies to see you through the weekend.

Once we arrived at the little beachside cottage we'd rented we made a pretty epic lazy person dinner of Daiya mac 'n cheese and Gardein Crispy Tenders with Veganaise and root beer on the side. It wouldn't be a trip to America if I didn't have root beer with almost every meal!

The next morning I went for a run on the beach. Now if you know me at all you know that I hate to run, I'm much happier working out indoors, but I couldn't pass up the chance to run somewhere this beautiful and unsurprisingly the cottage didn't have a gym. My main beef with running is that it's too hard on my hips and knees but running on the wet sand was actually pleasant, if only Brighton beach had sand. There were also SO MANY dogs at the beach which was pretty rad!

Anyway whilst I was out Nick cooked breakfast with some of the goodies we gathered from TJ's and the Olympia Food Co-op.

This was such a good breakfast. Seriously I find it crazy awesome that there are waffles and cinnamon rolls that you can just buy and mould / heat / serve in America. It really is a vegan wonderland!

Over the next day or two there were multiple TLT's on Dave's Killer Bread with Tofurky Sesame Garlic Tempeh (love!), avocado, tomato and Veganaise.

I could really do with one of these right now actually!

We also explored the town (and giggled about the separate Republican / Democrat benches outside of the store...we never saw anyone on the Republican bench!), hung out together and read books at the cottage, went for long walks on the beach, and watched the sun set every evening.

It was super lovely to spend some time together outside of the big cities we'd planned our trip around. Even when you're taking deliberate cafe breaks and time out to chill in parks big cities can be so frantic - especially when you're trying to cram all of the things into a short space of time! I'm glad that we always plan these more mellow sections into our travels and for two people with serious smart phone issues it's always nice to be somewhere with no internet connection at all!