Lanta Animal Welfare.

I'm not going to remove this post but it needs an update as Lanta Animal Welfare is no longer the place it was when I visited in January. I just spent a month volunteering there and I no longer recommend Lanta Animal Welfare as a place to financially support. If you're heading to Koh Lanta please check out my more recent post here.

After a brief stop on the beautiful and super quiet northern edge of Koh Pu Nick and I arrived on Koh Lanta last Tuesday and are loving it so much that we've already extended our stay twice. There's great food to be found and beautiful beaches to chill out on but one place that we've really fallen in love with is Lanta Animal Welfare. We'd read about both Lanta Animal Welfare and their partner restaurant / cooking school Time For Lime before we left the UK and were excited to check them out. We decided that we couldn't squeeze a stint volunteering into our travels at this early stage so we were excited to note that you can just rock up and take a tour, cuddle some kitties or walk a dog so we headed down there as soon as we could.

The tours run every hour on the hour but we made sure to arrive early enough that we were able to squeeze in a whole lot of kitten cuddling beforehand. Lanta Animal Welfare have over 20 cats looking for homes right now and every single one of them is beautiful. ACAB!

Jasmine was the friendliest out of this bunch of super affectionate cats and as soon as I sat down in the shade of the van she climbed onto my lap and then up onto my shoulder. She stayed there and snuggled me for a full 30 minutes until the tour began and I sadly had to put her down. 

Despite the fact that the stories of how some of the dogs and cats ended up at Lanta Animal Welfare saddened me to my core I really enjoyed looking around, seeing how the sanctuary is run and hearing about all of the amazing work they do there. They have a wonderful spay & neuter programme which includes a mobile clinic that not only travels around Koh Lanta but has also travelled to the neighbouring islands of Koh Jum, Koh Phi Phi and Koh Lipe. Every animal that passes through the clinic gets a free rabies vaccination which is wonderful; the island hasn't had a single case of rabies in 15 years. Amazing. They also reach out to children with their Education Programme which teaches local kids about the needs of animals through the mediums of interactive games and role playing - it's such a great idea to start teaching compassion from an early age.

If you're considering volunteering with animals this would be a wonderful place to do it, they have some space for volunteers onsite and the shortest amount of time you can sign up for is a month. Nick and I are already working out when we'll be able to come back and do this as it seems like the perfect volunteer opportunity for us. We love the island, we adore cats and I know I'd love to spend some time getting to know dogs better.

One of the ways we were able to get involved during our short stay was by taking dogs for walks either in the morning or afternoon, the dogs like the hot part of the day about as much as I do! The rescue centre is located near Relax Bay beach which is where we took these two cuties.

They wanted to sniff every single thing along the way! 

Pin was the first dog we walked and Nick and I are both a little (a lot) in love with him. If we were nearing the end of our travels we'd have totally offered him a forever home. Look at those ears!

Pin arrived at Lanta Animal Welfare after being hit by a car and then abandoned by his owners but thanks to their help he's now happily walking again - we scamped all over the beach with him! Pin loves chasing crabs (which are thankfully pretty great at making a fast getaway!) and walking in the shallows (no waves though please!) and LAW's description of him on their site is spot on, sweet, playful and affectionate. Please do get in touch with Lanta Animal Welfare if you could offer him or any of the other dogs and cats on their site a home. Thanks to the wonderful Flight Volunteer Programme, where people travelling home from Bangkok or Phuket can accompany an animal friend on the plane on their way to their forever home, the cats and dogs from Lanta Animal Welfare have been able to find homes all over the world.

If you aren't considering a rescue cat or dog as your forever friend you need to. For every animal bought from a breeder, pet store or puppy farm another one dies in a shelter. That's a straight up fact. Not every shelter is no-kill and not every animal gets to find that perfect home before their time runs out. I cannot for one second comprehend how anyone could make the decision to buy an animal when there are literally hundreds of thousands or amazing ones waiting for homes.

If you're visiting Koh Lanta and are unable to take a new friend home with you (like us) then a visit to Time For Lime is probably in order. They do a six course tasting menu every evening and all of their profits go towards helping the animals at Lanta Animal Welfare. They're able to accommodate vegans and even (to a slightly lesser extent) someone with an allergy to peppers! Nick and I dined on spring rolls (the best I've ever eaten), red and green curry (Nick not me!), beautiful fresh mango summer rolls and fresh fruit. It was a really fun experience and it was great to be able to watch the cooking classes taking place just below us. Time For Lime also make excellent cocktails which, if you visit during Happy Hour, you can enjoy from the comfort of a deckchair on the beach for only 99THB / £2 / $3. Get some spring rolls to go with them and I call that a party!

Hill House, Koh Yao Noi

After settling on Koh Yao Noi as our first stop in Thailand we wanted to find somewhere comfortable, convenient and affordable to spend the first week. Our accommodation budget for SE Asia taps out at around 1100THB which works out at around £21 / $32. I'm sure we'll spend less a lot of the time, I'm writing this from a 700THB / £14 / $21 room by the beach in Koh Lanta, and a little more on occasion when we're feeling the need for a fancier bathroom or hear of somewhere spectacular or with great vegan breakfast options. We stumbled upon Hill House during one of many Google / Trip Advisor searches and it sounded perfect and just squeezed within the confines of the budget.

It was exactly as beautiful as it looked online. Oh how I love it when that happens! We stayed in Bungalow Lek 1 which is located right at the top of the hill meaning it has truly amazing views out across the bay. I spent a lot of time reading in the hammock on our balcony or just watching the squirrels running, and in some cases flying, in-between the trees.

The room itself is pretty open to the elements with open walls in the bathroom as well as slatted windows and sliding doors. We loved this after we got over the initial five minutes of mosquito / bug panic. The bed was huge and comfortable despite being quite hard and the mosquito net they provide is great and more like a tent than a regular mozzie net. We liked that there were curtains across the back of the room separating the bathroom and wardrobe area from the rest of the space which meant that you could get dressed without worrying about shutting all of the other windows, doors and curtains.

Breakfast isn't included in the room rate but it is available for 160THB / £3 / $4.50 and for vegans it includes fresh fruit, mango sticky rice and unlimited tea or coffee.

Sadly all of the bread on the island (and almost everywhere else in Thailand so far) seems to have eggs, milk or honey so there was no toast for us. We only partook in breakfast a couple of times because as non coffee / tea drinkers (I tried that first day as you can see in the picture!) it worked out a little better for us to buy fruit in town. The mango sticky rice was totally delicious though and these breakfasts definitely sparked a new love affair for me.

The view from the cafe area is ridiculously beautiful whether the tide is in or out. In this photo the tide is in but sometimes it goes all the way out to the little island you can see in the middle of the picture.

One thing I read over and over in guidebooks and on websites before visiting Koh Yao Noi was that the beaches aren't that great. We thought they were pretty epic especially the one right outside Hill House, yes sometimes you had to walk quite far to reach the sea but it's all sand and not stone or rocks like on some of Koh Yao Noi's other beaches so it's totally walkable and I had one of the most serene and breathtaking moments ever when I floated out there in the shallows with Nick at dusk one evening. The sea was super still and there was just something amazing about the light and the way that it illuminated the limestone karsts that dotted the horizon. It was almost unbelievably beautiful. You'll have to go and check it out for yourself one day.

The lovely people at Hill House were also happy to rent us a scooter for 200THB / £4 / $6 a day despite seeing Nick get off to a pretty shaky start trying to ride the thing. I braved getting on the back and aside from some minor incidents (You totally cannot put your feet down to stop when travelling at speed on a scooter, it is not like a bicycle! Dirt tracks are dangerously bumpy! ) it wasn't too terrifying and it made getting around the island super easy. Koh Yao Noi is actually a great place to learn to ride a scooter because it's relatively quiet and there aren't that many other new-to-scootering tourists haring about the place. Here's Nick getting gas...

One day they also organised for us to borrow a kayak for a super reasonable 500THB / £9 / $15 for the whole day. 

We set off around 9am and kayaked both into the wind and against the tide for a couple of hours before stopping at a secluded beach which also happened to be a- totally empty and b- a nature reserve. It was covered in crabs, big and small, and it was so fun to watch them scurrying about doing whatever it is that crabs do. 

After a quick dip in the sea to cool off we were off to the next beach which was just around the corner and again it was not only mind blowingly beautiful but almost totally empty. There was one other couple at the far end of the beach but we couldn't even see them from where we were sitting. It was the perfect place to enjoy the lunch our hosts had made us. They totally understood our request for a strict vegetarian meal with no egg, fish sauce, oyster sauce or shrimp and clarified that soy was okay. This simple looking veggie fried rice dish was super delicious, seasoned with white pepper and lime juice it's one of the best things we've eaten on the trip so far.

It was so good that we decided to eat dinner at the Hill House cafe one night, they do food to order but you need to let them know what you'd like for dinner at breakfast or lunch if you want dinner that day and at dinner time if you'd like lunch the next day. The menu is in the pink folder under the desk in reception. We wished we'd eaten dinner there sooner because the veggie fried rice and veganised Pad See Ew meal we shared was wonderful and I could have happily eaten there night after night.

As you can tell I really loved Hill House, our stay there was the perfect welcome to Thailand and we'd love to return one day. If you'd like to read more about our experiences in Koh Yao Noi you can check out my earlier blog post here.

Koh Yao Noi, Thailand

I made it! Everything I own is in storage, there are officially people living in mine & Nick's house (which totally feels weird!) and for the next four months I'll be exploring SE Asia!!! The jet lag has subsided and given away to a cold but what better place to have a cold than in the hammock of a gorgeous bungalow on a beautiful island? No complaints here!

Despite the plan for the majority of this part of the trip being There is No Plan Nick and I spent a fairly decent amount of time researching our first stop. As well as wanting to strike the right balance between having some infrastructure (a hospital!) and not being overdeveloped (full of teenage backpackers!) we wanted pretty beaches and some shops where we'd be fairly certain we could stock up on snacks. Thanks 7/11! Koh Yao Noi really seemed like it would hit that sweet spot and we haven't been disappointed. Just in case you haven't heard of it (I had a lot of blank looks when I was telling people where we were headed first) Koh Yao Noi (or Ko Yao Noi as Lonely Planet would have it) is a small island off of the Andaman Coast closet to Phuket and not too far from Ao Nang and Krabi. We arrived by boat from Phuket's Bang Rong Pier which you can get to by taking a taxi ride (around 600THB / £12 / $18) from Phuket airport. The boat thankfully only costs 200THB / £4 / $6.

The island's population is mostly muslim meaning that a lot of the stores don't sell alcohol and there's no real nightlife to speak of - perfect for us! It also means that you need to dress conservatively away from the beaches which is something some of our fellow travellers seem to be having issues with - seeing people wandering around the town centre topless or in short shorts and bikini tops when the majority of the locals are covered from head to toe or at least shoulder to ankle is pretty icky to say the least. We've heard from locals and people living here a long time that the island's much busier than it used to be and you can see that it's rapidly changing just because of the amount of construction happening on the west coast but it does't seem busy at all. We've spent most of our time on deserted beaches and the roads were even quiet enough for Nick to brave learning to ride a scooter (I don't have a driving licence) and for me to give in and just hop on the back despite my fears / abject terror after seeing him try to stop once already...let's just say we got off to a wobbly start & now I only think we're going to crash into the bushes once a day!

Despite there being no Happy Cow listings for Ko Yao Noi (don't worry, I'm on it!) vegan restaurant eats have been relatively easy to come by although we have become obsessed with the vegan Jay labelled frozen ready meals from 7/11 to the extent that we've actually eaten them all. Not all as in we've tried them all, all as in there are none left on the island. Oops.

We're especially loving the Vegetarian Fried Rice but the mock meat and tofu filled vegetarian Chinese Five Spice Stewed with Rice is also a fun meal. There are a couple of others, including Red Curry and Stir Fried Basil with Vegetarian Protein, but being allergic to chilli means I have to pass on them. They're pretty simple meals but at around 38THB / 80p / $1.20 each they're budget friendly as well as tasty and filling.

Rice Paddy was one of the first restaurants we tried as it had both good reviews and was listed as having veggie options on Trip Advisor. The German owner totally understood both veganism and my allergies and was able to recommend dishes from their vegetarian menu. The veg menu includes both oyster and fish sauce as they're considered veggie here but there's a note at the top of the menu reminding you to specify if you want to avoid fish, oyster or eggs.

We picked the Pad Pak Ruam, vegetable stir fry, which we had stir fried in soy sauce. We also ordered a Sweet & Sour Seafood dish minus the peppers and a couple of sides of rice.

On one visit I also tried the vegetarian lamb which is made from mushrooms rather than wheat gluten. It was peppery and delicious but no good for Nick who may be the world's biggest mushroom hater - this works out well for me though!

The Pad Pak Ruam was our favourite dish overall and I especially loved the freshness of the snap peas and the inclusion of so many kinds of mushroom. The Sweet & Sour Seafood was fun, and I loved the prawns themselves, but I don't think I'll ever be a huge fan of warm cucumber.

A classic vegan treat in Thailand is mango sticky rice that, as far as my research tells me, needs no modifications. I wasn't in love with this version as I found the addition of coconut cream a little cloying but Nick loved it.

If you're on Koh Yao I would definitely recommend Rice Paddy especially as it actually overlooks a rice paddy. We saw water buffalo there one afternoon and on another there were loads of fun birds doing their thang.

We ended up at Italian run spot La Luna for dinner one night mainly because it was the only place with obviously veganisable food within walking distance of where we were staying. It's only around 15 minutes away which at night, as there are no pavements or lights, is about as far as I'd like to venture on foot. The pizza wasn't exceptional, the crust was a little on the thin side and they could have ladled on a little more tomato, but I was pleased that they were pretty generous with the veggie toppings.

One thing we did get excited about was the dessert menu, we assumed we wouldn't be ordering anything but a whole page of it was devoted to homemade, fruit based, vegan ice cream! Now I know that I've ranted about frozen banana not being ice cream in the past, and I do still stand by that, but this raw banana based sorbet / gelato hybrid was totally refreshing and actually quite delicious as well as being unexpected. We tried banana strawberry and banana raspberry and the raspberry was my favourite. No pictures because it was really dark by then and slightly melty fruit doesn't look good after dusk!

Pyramid Bar was another easy but western leaning place to get a vegan meal. Pizza without cheese again as their pasta is made with egg, I preferred the pizza from La Luna because they had more plentiful toppings but we loved the side of chips we ordered (they reminded me of the ones from Voner in Berlin!) and were excited that they were happy to whip us up some garlic bread with olive oil rather than the usual butter.

It was SUPER garlicky, we rode home on the scooter we hired and with the visor of my helmet down I felt like I was in a delicious garlic bubble!

Chaba Cafe and Gallery is a veg friendly spot that we ended up visiting a couple of times after I was originally lured in by the "Vegetarian Food" sign outside!

When we went for lunch earlier I had a big mixed salad with a slice of bread on the side (they make their own) and some fried potatoes with tomatoes and onion. Nick had fried potatoes too as well as some toast with peanut butter.

The salad was epic, I'm not usually a huge salad person but this was so fresh and delicious and totally different to anything else we'd eaten since we arrived. It came with lettuce, shredded red cabbage, grated carrot, cucumber and two types of tomato and I added olives and went with the olive oil mustard balsamic dressing which was perfect. Sadly I think the potatoes were cooked in paprika or maybe even a really mild chilli oil which I can't eat so as soon as I realised I handed them over to Nick. Sadness. They were delicious! I had a little nibble of Nick's PB Toast to make up for it which was really great. I totally miss toast already and I think we'll probably head there for breakfast tomorrow before we leave the island.

Chaba also sell raw energy + protein bars which are actually made on the island and you can grab them to go from the fridge in the little shop onsite.

Unsurprisingly I much preferred the date, cacao, almond and cinnamon to the broccoli, quinoa and chia seed one - I frankly don't know what I was thinking when I picked it! Too healthy for me I think.  Speaking of healthy I've been eating SO MUCH fruit since we got here. I'm in love with mangoes. They taste a million times better here than they do in the UK (duh!) and there's a fruit stall opposite 7/11 where we've been stocking up on bananas, oranges and the aforementioned mangoes daily. I'm yet to be convinced about starfruit though and I feel pretty meh about dragon fruit - it's so pretty but there's something about it that I'm not quite feeling yet.

I'll be back soon with a review of our guesthouse, Hill House, and the vegan food they've been making us as well as some fun pictures from our kayaking excursion.

Gimme Chocolate!

I sat down to write this blog post and ended up in a BABYMETAL You Tube hole so here's one of their songs, Gimme Chocolate, which is a great soundtrack to this post as well as being one of my favourite songs of the moment.

I first discovered Pana Chocolate a week after London Veg Fest (this is not a VegFest endorsement, just a fact) when I went to my friend Justine's house to hang out and play with her kitties. She was kind enough to share a bar of Orange Pana Chocolate with me and "OMG yum" were the first two words out of my mouth after taking a bite. I'm not usually a huge raw chocolate fan, most of it is either too bitter, too coconutty or the texture is off but this chocolate is seriously great. You definitely wouldn't mistake it for regular chocolate, this is new and different and my favourite flavours were texturally reminiscent of the insides of a gooey brownie.

After I was unable to find any Pana Chocolate in my local health food store, Infinity Foods, I contacted Pana Chocolate themselves to see if they'd consider sending me any to review and to my delight they not only said yes but sent me a whole box full with 8 new flavours to try (alongside my favourite orange bar) all the way from Australia.

I decided not to dig into these alone and over the last month I've invited all sorts of people over to try them, vegans, vegetarians, and even a health conscious gluten free omnivore. Across the board people were seriously impressed. Okay, my vegan chocolate obsessed friend Josh wasn't won over but that's only one person out of ten or so people. I'd say if you've liked any raw chocolate in the past or are a dark chocolate fan then you'll love these. As well as being delicious the packaging's gorgeous dontcha think? 

I enjoyed almost all of the flavours (I still hate goji berries!) but Orange and Sour Cherry & Vanilla were definitely my favourites closely followed by Mint and then Raw Cacao which all sit at the 60% cacao mark. The Sour Cherry & Vanilla bar is full of big cherry chunks which I loved and they aren't kidding about the sour part. I could have easily eaten the whole bar in one go. Mint on the other hand packs such an intensely minty punch that one square makes the most perfect after dinner nibble.

Pana Chocolate's motto is "Love Your Insides, Love The Earth" and it's stamped all over their bars, they take the motto seriously and all of their packaging is recycled or recyclable and printed with vegetable inks. Everything they make is vegan and their chocolate bars are made from fair trade certified, raw, organic ingredients with no refined sugars.

Pana Chocolate can be found at Brighton's Sunny Foods and Eastbourne's Pathway Pantry as well as at As Nature Intended and Planet Organic stores in London and all over Australia. I'm really hoping to be able to visit one of the Pana Chocolate stores in Sydney or Melbourne next year especially as I just noticed they make a rose flavour, yum!

The Final Nail, Brighton.

I don't consider myself to be a make up person. I gave up wearing make up years and years ago just to see if I could, and because in summer my allergies are so bad that I'd spend 90% of the time looking like a panda anyway, and I went years without it. Now I occasionally wear a little eye sparkle, mascara or lip colour for fun but it's nice to not feel like I need it y'know. Nail polish is a whole 'nother thing, I don't really even see nail polish as make up, it's just another way to add a pop of colour to my day to day look and I love colours and patterns and glitter! Nail polish is totally one of the things I'm going to miss whilst I'm travelling as those little glass bottles aren't carry-on compatible...I totally stashed a couple of bottles of polish and a box of Superdrug's nail polish removing wipes amongst the extra stuff I'll be taking in the van though and boy was picking those two colours a challenge!

I'm super conscientious when I'm choosing nail products because animal testing was at the forefront of my veganism. For me veganism definitely isn't just about what I'm eating, it's what I'm wearing and where my money's going when I shop too. I actually stopped buying animal tested household, make up & personal care products years before I quit dairy, eggs and honey but I would still say that it's the the most challenging part about being vegan. Why? Because big companies and corporations are shady as hell when it comes to animal testing! They make confusing statements which will insist that they didn't test the product on animals (so, they paid someone else to) or that the final product wasn't tested (read: but we did test the individual ingredients / paid someone else to do so on our behalf) and then there are the parent company issues which mean that even Vegan Society certified products like Original Source aren't actually cruelty free because they're owned by PZ Cuzzons one of the worlds biggest animal testers. Amimals die in horrific ways in laboratories every day and buying products from a company who are owned by someone who tests on animals, like with The Body Shop and L'oreal or Tom's of Maine and Colgate, means that your money is supporting that. Same in the case of companies like Urban Decay who made the decision to sell in China despite knowing it meant that they would need to test on animals, to simplify that decision they basically chose profits over bunnies which isn't cool at all. 

I definitely know vegans who think that these parent company issues don't matter and I think it's up to you as an individual to draw your own line but these issues matter to me and I think I'm showing that it is possible to avoid giving money to these companies if that's what you want to do. I'm not claiming to be perfect (I still haven't found an acceptable alternative to Mitchum's antiperspirant deodorant - update! Yes I have. In love with Lush's Aromaco!) but this is an ideal that I strive towards. To find out more check out this guide from Uncaged or come and chat to the beauty obsessed peep's in The Mall area of The PPK forums.

The reasons I've just laid out are why I was so happy when I got an e-mail from local salon The Final Nail a few days ago letting me know that after 6 months of research and sourcing products they are now the place to go in Brighton if you want a 100% vegan & cruelty free manicure or pedicure. How awesome! I've actually e-mailed many local salons in the last two or three years trying to find someone to fancy up my nails and had come up with nothing, sure there are some places with vegan nail polishes if you're willing to let the cruelty free thing slide or places where yep they know what's in the polishes and they're ok from a cruelty free perspective but they have no idea about polish removers, hand creams etc. The Final Nail is refreshingly different and I could tell after a quick e-mail convo that they knew what they were talking about, excitingly they also use Floss Gloss, a brand I'd been dying to try for a while.

I went in yesterday for a complimentary mani pedi from Alex and Lilli the ladies behind this alternative salon where piercings and coloured hair are a-ok.

We started with the manicure and after Alex put on the Orly base coat I picked Floss Gloss's Con Limon which I luuurve. It's SO BRIGHT which is getting me extra excited about it only being six days until I'll be lying on a beach in the sun. It was topped off with Seche Vite's topcoat which is what I use at home thanks to my make up loving buddy Sal's expert recommendation. 

Tofu 4 Lyfe

Having a pedicure was just as lovely as getting a manicure and I chose Floss Gloss's Wet which just so happens to match the flowers I have tattooed on my feet. Perfect.

Despite having wanted to give having a mani pedi a go for a while I was a little nervous about the whole experience but Alex and Lilli were ridiculously easy to talk to and soon an hour and a half had whizzed by and my nails had been all fancied up!

The Final Nail is located below PORTA at 4 Bond Street which is wonderfully close to all sorts of vegan friendly eateries including Infinity Foods Kitchen, Larder, and Gelato Gusto. Vegan manicures start at £25 and they also do vegan and cruelty free Gelicure manicures and nail art. You can find The Final Nail on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. 

Top Ten Eats of 2014

I don't really believe in new years resolutions. If I really wanted to do something why would I wait until the new year to start doing it? It makes no sense to me! I do like to look back over photos and flick through my journals and reminisce about the year that's just gone by though so instead of a list of resolutions I write an Awesome Achievements & Wonderful Memories list at the end of each year. I think that I do this to remind myself of the little successes that could get forgotten otherwise and to make myself focus on doing more of the stuff I love in the year to come. I haven't written 2014's list yet because who knows what could happen tonight and tomorrow! One fun new thing that literally just happened is that I've given the blog a new look that helps illustrate the journey I'll be going on as I leave Brighton to travel full time early next year. My adorable new header was designed by fellow vegan and lovely human Amanda Chronister, you can check out her other work here.

Despite refusing to take part in creating a list of resolutions I do love a good list so I thought I'd put together a Top 10 Eats of 2014 list and wow, this was one of the hardest things I've ever tried to put together. I've eaten so much amazing food this year and I had to make serious cuts to the list as I travelled to some of my favourite places and ate some of my favourite things this year. The Pad See Ew from Pukk in NYC and the Formosa Pancake from Formosa in Vienna, to pick a couple of examples, have been on my favourites list for years so I had to discount them. So ruthless!

So, in the order that I ate them because rating them 1 - 10 would have been far, far too difficult, and all in one post because this isn't driven by an inherent need to flood your timelines with click bait, here we go...

1- The Mac Attack from Vinnie's Pizzeria in Brooklyn

This amalgamation of my two favourite foods pizza and mac & cheese was always going to be a winner and I can't believe it took me until my third NYC trip as a vegan to try it. It was a thing of much beauty and wonder! Vinnie's also serve up BBQ Chicken pizza, amazing (and amazingly cheap) garlic knots and because they sell by the slice you can try all of the vegan options in one evening if you so wish.

Vinnie's Pizzeria 148 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn

2 - Crunch 'n Munch Roll from Beyond Sushi in Manhattan

The kiwi topped Crunch 'n Munch which comes stuffed with baked tofu, english cucumber and sprouts only just pips January's roll of the month, the Grilled Aubergine and Kalamata Olive roll, to the post by a hairs breadth because, as that one was limited edition you can't go and eat it yourself right now. The Crunch 'n Munch also comes with my favourite of Beyond Sushi's mayos, the miso mayo, which I would happily put on everything everyday forever.

Beyond Sushi at Chelsea Market, 75 9th Ave

3 - Croque Monsieur from Champs Diner in Brooklyn

Back in January I described this sandwich as The Best Breakfast I've Ever Had and I stand by that to this day. I mean it's melty cheese and mock meat sandwiched between two slices of French toast, I'm not sure it could ever be beaten especially if you order a pancake on the side like I did!

Champs Diner, 197 Meserole Street, Brooklyn

4 - T's Shoyu Ramen from T's Tan Tan in Tokyo

This simple but flavourful ramen is spot on perfect. Nick and I ate it for both our first and last meals in Tokyo and a few more in-between of course. T's in located in Tokyo station so it's easy to get to and it opens at 7 so it's perfect for early birds or jet lagged travellers!

T's Tan Tan Tokyo Station, 1F Keiyo Street

5 - Margherita Pizza from Vegans Cafe and Restaurant in Kyoto

As you can see this pizza is so much more than a margherita, it has potatoes on it for gods sake! It also has spinach and a creamy homemade soy cheese and I am to this day kinda amazed that one of the best pizza's I've ever eaten was from a vegan cafe in Kyoto. I loved it.

Vegans Cafe and Restaurant 612 - 0029 Kyoto-shi Fushimi-ku Fukakusa Nishi Uramachi 4 chome 88

6 - Three Bites Platter from VBites in Brighton

As soon as VBites put this on the menu I was right there ordering it. No joke. I live 10 minutes away. This platter includes their Hickory Chick Burger (my very favourite if I'm being pushed to choose only one), a fish burger with tartare sauce and capers, and a classic VBeefy burger with ketchup and mustard. There are also fries. So. Freaking. Great.

VBites 14 East Street, Brighton

7 - Vegan Terre à Tier Tea from Terre à Terre in Brighton

As you can see by my list it's not usually the upscale stuff that wins me over but Terre á Terre's afternoon tea was one of the fanciest things I ate all year and I adored it. It was also a birthday celebration with three of my favourite people which made the experience extra special. The tier's are made up of a savoury tier, a sweet tier and a scone tier. I was particularly enamoured by the sweet tier which included churros, filled mini polenta cakes and a divine chocolate raspberry cake.

Terre à Terre 71 East Street, Brighton

8 - Brownie Ice Cream from Veganista in Vienna

An all vegan ice cream store just hours away by plane, I'm there! I'm lucky to have wonderful friends in Vienna and I couldn't resist a visit after hearing all about Veganista. They have about 20 rotating flavours and brownie was my favourite. Other standouts included Matcha and Hazelnut. I will definitely be trying out some more flavours next summer so stay tuned for updates. 

Veganista Neustiftgasse 23/3, 1070 Wien

9 - The Classic Cheese from Via 313 in Austin

"How did a third pizza make it onto the list?" I hear you ask, well one, I'm obsessed with pizza! And two, this pizza's amazing. It's Detroit Style which means that it's deep dish style and it's baked in a super well oiled rectangular pan which means there's a crisp almost fried thing going on with the crust which, when you add marinara and Follow Your Heart cheese, makes for pizza perfection.

Via 313 @ Violet Crown Social Club, 1111 East 6th, Austin

10 - The Del Ray from The Vegan Nom in Austin

If I was rating these from 1 - 10 this would probably have to be numero uno. This is, in my opinion, the greatest taco of all time. As a chilli allergic vegan tacos can be a minefield fraught with hurdles and disappointment but this is spot on delicious and needed no modifications. Crunchy cabbage, breaded faux fish, avocado, a perfect lime crema and plenty of black pepper meant that this taco rocked my world. I ate it more times that I can count on one hand on my last trip to Austin and I'm hoping to be counting my Del Ray encounters on both hands and feet during my next visit.

The Vegan Nom 120 E Northloop, Austin

And the honorable mention goes to... 7/11 onigiri

Without the help of Shawn and Chiaki from Vegan Japan my travels in their country would have been tougher for sure. They helped me suss out which convenience store foods were suitable for vegans and both Nick and I ate our weight in delicious 7/11, Family Mart and Lawson onigiris. You can check out my pictorial guide to Japanese convenience store food in my post Planning Your Trip to Japan.