So here I am in freezing, sleeting Wisconsin. I called ahead to the little restaurant downstairs to ask if their “hamburger and steak” pub could whip up something vegan for me. They not only said yes, but they offered to have the chef call me! I said there wouldn’t be a need for that, that I’d be happy for them to just make something, anything, that was vegan.

When we sat down the server told me that they had already started making risotto for me! Out of all things, risotto? Like I haven’t been making that enough lately. But I was still excited not to be getting a salad.

It ended up being pretty good! I had a nice black pepper zing and fresh thyme and little bits of tomato. Not bad for a pub! I’d like to think they had fun making it as opposed to me being a pain in the ass for them. Tomorrow night is the “fancy” dinner, so we’ll see what they make me. If the causal dinner was this nice, I have high hopes for the fancy one. Way to go, Horse and Plough!

While it’s no San Francisco or New York, Boston does have a few vegan restaurants. One of the most popular is Grasshopper in Brighton. Today Stewart and I went there for lunch with Nikki of ILoveHeeze.blogspot.com and her fiance, and Sarah from blogisthenewblog.com. Sarah had been on the red eye all night from Las Vegas with vegan donuts for Nikki and me, so we figured we’d make a get-together out of it. But more about the donuts later!

Crispy Taro Nest
Assorted Vegitables, Vegi-Chicken, Beef, Seafood

Kale and Mushroom Delight (I think!):
A stir-fried combination of kale, white mushrooms, tofu, and veggie-beef gluten in a tangy ginger sauce.

Stir-Fried Chow Foon Noodles with Tofu

Sauteed Kale with Black Mushrooms

The No Name
Battered gluten in a sweet and sour sauce served with assorted steamed vegetables and topped with sesame seeds.

Strawberry Cheesecake for dessert!

Everything was great, but I can specifically speak for the No Name since that’s what I ordered. It’s sweet, sour and salty all at the same time, with a delightful crunch. The portions at Grasshopper are enormous, but no one in their right mind splits a dish to ensure leftovers. I can’t wait to heat mine up for a snack later tonight!

Oh, speaking of snacks, I also have a box full of vegan donuts direct from Ronald’s in Las Vegas, courtesy of Sarah. Thanks Sarah!!

While in D.C., I forced my lovely host to take me to Sticky Fingers Bakery, a completely vegan bakery that I have been dreaming about for the last three years. It’s such a weird feeling to walk into a bakery and realize that I can have anything I want. My friends and I ordered four different things so I could try as many things as possible without being totally ridiculous.

The dark chocolate square of loveliness you see up there is a Little Devil: chocolate cake bisected by a sweet vanilla frosting, and topped off with a thin layer of chocolate ganache. It was good, but the cake part was a little dry.

The scone in the foreground was simply labeled as “scones” in the case, but after tasting it we realized that it was very much a cranberry orange scone. The orange flavor was wonderful, but unfortunately the texture was not up to par. My friend Katie tried to break the scone in pieces for us all to try, but ended up with a large pile of scone sand in front of her when it completely disintegrated.

We also took a gamble and ordered their breakfast sandwich. It’s an english muffin, a thin layer or a mustard-y nutritional yeast sauce, a couple veggie sausage patties and some material that vaguely looked like egg. It would have been better warmed, but it wasn’t bad. I think I liked it more than my counterparts, but then again, I haven’t had an egg or cheese or three years, and I haven’t had sausage for fourteen years. I’m used to the impostors.

The best thing we ordered, however, was a cinnamon bun.

A fresh tray of these lovely things came out as we were deciding what to order. They were so light, so soft, so perfectly spiced. The only improvement I can think of would be a cream cheese frosting instead of a regular glaze, but that’s my own personal preference.

If you’re ever in Washington DC, stop by Sticky Fingers. It’s pretty tasty.

Our meal at Mani’s in LA was by far the most disappointing. The service was very slow, the food sub par.

I ordered the tofu scramble which my waitress said, “was popular with the health types” when I asked about it. After a generous helping of salt it approached being edible. I’m sure the asparagus came from a bag in their freezer, and the fruit tasted like it came from a can. Next to my toast were several pats of butter, much to my dismay.

I know not everyone knows what “vegan” is, but if you’re going to offer specifically vegan things on your menu, labeled as such, it’s a nice touch to make sure the vegan plates don’t go out to the tables with butter on them. Thankfully they were in little foil wrappers so we could easily remove them from the plate, but it didn’t give us much confidence that butter, or other non-vegan things, weren’t used in the preparation of our meal.

Stewart’s meal wasn’t great either, the Vegan Wheat-Free Pancakes:

Perhaps the bakery section of Mani’s is good – they seemed to have a decent selection of vegan baked goods in their pastry case, but I wouldn’t recommend going there for a sit-down meal. The service was slow and the check was quite large, making the entire experience a bit of a let-down.

We only went to one raw vegen restaurant while in California, but I had the pleasure of visiting twice: once with a local friend of mine and again with Stewart in tow.

Here is the first dish I tried at Cru, formally the Jade Cafe: Raw Pad Thai. The noodles were described as “root” on the menu with no other specifics, and they were impossibly long and unbelievably thin. It came with bell peppers, cucumbers, cabbage, cilantro, lime wedges, and a spicy sauce which my server informed me was not peanut based. Whatever they used, it was sure tasty. I finished my entire meal, washed down with a glass of watermelon juice.

My friend had the Bento Box:

Lots of tasty marinated vegetables including collard greens, mushrooms, avocados, sprouts, cucumbers, carrots and red cabbage. She at all of hers as well.

Desert! Desert was amazing. A raw key lime pie:

It had pistachio “crust” which wasn’t crusty at all, but was still appreciated. The filling was tart, smooth, and unidentifiable. It was topped with fresh kiwis and coconut cream. This was so good I ordered it again when we stopped in the next day, but the second iteration was way too tart for my liking.

We also got a scoop of their chocolate gelato after a strong recommendation from the server, and it was delicious. I was afraid it’d be gritty or have a disturbing vegetal aftertaste, but it was perfectly chocolaty and creamy:

The worst pictures of the trip were taken here, at Fatty’s and Co in Pasadena. I had to battle the romatic low-light ambiance with nothing but a camera phone. My apologies.

First up was my meal, their Black Lentil Strudel: crispy wedges of strudel balanced on freshly steamed broccoli, surrounded by a nut based bechamel sauce. It was topped with a balsamic reduction and little purple flowers. The whole thing was delicious, and I nearly licked my plate clean.

Stewart ordered the Cacciatore:

I’m still uncertain as to what the little sand castle-like structure actually consisted of, but it seemed to be vegetables (specific, I know) that were tossed in a marinara sauce that Stewart was quite fond of.

The vegetables were surrounded by a barbeque sauce and wedges of zucchini. He said both parts of the meal were good on their own, but not mixed together.

We didn’t have room for dessert, but we ordered the Apple Pie A La Mode anyway:

It was a very decent specimen of apple pie. Delicious and served warm, but not by any means spectacular. The soy ice cream was standard, no surprises there either.

I got the Orange Chicken Dinner Special. I was really excited when the put it down in front of me. The orange chicken looked perfect – just the right color and an appetizing glaze. Upon tasting it, however, I was disappointed.

I’ve had a lot of meat analogues, but never I have I tasted one like this. The texture was fine, but it had a strange aftertaste. It wasn’t bad, but it was off-putting enough that I didn’t finish it.

The fried rice was decent but on the bland side, the salad was also decent with a pleasant peanut dressing, but the spring roll was by far the best part of the dish. It tasted vaguely crab-like (even though I think the last time I had crab was 15 years ago) and I wished I had more than one.

Stewart got a Chicken wrap which he didn’t like at all:

A side of perfectly executed french fires:

And we shared the Banana Spring Roll for Dessert:

The banana spring roll was tasty, if a bit oily. They lined won ton wrappers with shredded coconut and placed a whole banana inside, wrapped it up, deep fried it and served it with chocolate and cherry sauce. It was pretty good, but I ended up scraping out the coconut from the last piece because I’m a terrible dinner date.

Oh well!

While in Santa Monica, Stewart and I stopped in at Angelato after reading something online about them having a variety of soy gelato flavors.

We were disappointed to see that they only had vanilla and chocolate, but the wide array of vegan sorbetto lifted our spirits. Here is my Lychee sorbetto and Stewarts Blackberry Raspberry.

This is “two scoops” according to the sign, but I counted at least four. Super tasty, but I couldn’t finish it all.

Ah, much better. Real Food Daily on a Sunday morning with plenty of light for bloggers.

Here’s the French Toast Platter. The french toast was OK, but not great. In fact, my french toast is better, and this statement is backed up by my unbiased vegan husband. Theirs was just fine, but I think they made a poor bread choice. It just seemed sort of soggy and maybe even a little gritty. A thicker slice of sturdier bread would have been much better.

The potatoes came absolutely smothered in their cashew cheese melty sauce. The server even said, “I’m sorry, he’s not usually putting so much cheese…” when he set it down in front of me. They were pretty tasty, though. Stewart had the same potatoes sans cheese and declared them boring. The tempeh bacon was salty and bordering on too crunchy – it was nearing cardboard in terms of texture but I still ate it all.

Here is Stewart’s plate, The Weekender:

You can see the same french toast, the same tempeh bacon (peaking out in the back there), the same potatoes… The difference here was the tofu scramble that he ordered with avocados and cashew cheese. It looked a little watery and he said there were too many onions. He declared mine to be the better meal.

Real Food Daily was Real Dark. I apologize for the photo quality; you should have seen them before I adjusted them!

Here lies the Supreme Burrito. Brown rice, cashew melty cheese, crunchy tempeh bacon and various veggies served with a caesar salad. The burrito was really tasty, and the salad was decent but went mostly untouched.

Stewart had the Thanskgiving Teaser which came out not only dark but blurry as well, nevertheless:

It consisted of roasted vegetables, mashed sweet potatoes, their own version of tofurkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. He seemed to enjoy it, even though when he tasted it he said, “This is really good stuffing” and I pointed out that he had just tried the tofurkey.

Perhaps the best part of the meal, however, was sitting directly to the left of this shot: Yes, the one and only celebrity we saw in LA, and it could not have been a better one if I do say so myself…

Mr Ed Begely Jr.

He spent the whole dinner telling his wife (girlfriend?) some strange story about Paul Riser and Peter Falk. Yay LA.