garces - 2 for 2

you may remember our first GLOWING review of chef jose garces' mexican themed restaurant distrito from last summer. we talk about this dining experience a lot in our normal, non-internet lives as the perfect situation one could hope for when requesting special dishes due to dietary restrictions (whether they be voluntary or involuntary, mind you!). my second go round with garces was at the new garces trading co. on 11th and locust and, let's just say the dietary restrictions are a little more lax this go round.

i was acquainted with only the shell of the soon to be bistro, as i attended an open call for new employees back in january. offered a job on the spot, i ended up turning it down as brighter prospects were on the horizon. i promised chef greg (sweetest little chef dude i ever met!) i'd come back and see him when they opened. and let me say, i'm glad i did.

take the "tour" on the website, and you'll see the welcoming open room, lined with a cheese and charcuterie counter, coffee and housemade cookies and pastries, a PLCB wine store (where you purchase a bottle and then BYO to the restaurant) and a lovely little flower shop in the foyer. as well as bottle your own olive oil station and an assortment of housemade jams, jellies and sauces.

we nabbed a table during a busy lunchtime rush but were still graced with good service. a friend of ours working the line sent us a few treats which ended up sending us into the realm of LOTS OF FOOD. however, we happily ate everything knowing that a sunny walk home would calm our bellies. the meal:

the "chef's mix" of olives

baby artichokes with preserved lemon, olive oil and date walnut cake

Kunik - a soft ripened triple cream cow and goat's milk cheese
from Nettle Meadow Farm in New York, with white sangria honey
ordered as an app, eaten for first dessert.
yes, that's right, i said FIRST dessert.

eggplant antipasti with roasted red peppers, cherry tomatoes confit
aged balsamic and microgreens
my dining partner had a pretty insane duck salad
opposite me for this course that i neglected to photograph
it was pretty beautifully presented, i must say

funghi pizza with maitakes, royal trumpets, taleggio and black truffles;
this is one of my favorite pizzas i've had in the city since eating cheese.

i have no idea how we ate all this food, although i suppose i requested a small box for the last piece of pizza. after a meal that took over an hour, we relaxed and ordered coffee. i strolled up to check out the coffee bar when i discovered ::gasp:: cute little pastries! so tiny, so delicate, only two or three bites each, how could i say no? a small tart goes superbly hand in hand (fork in mouth?) with a cup of good coffee.

the marjolaine - almond daquoise, chocolate ganache, coffee buttercream

and so we ventured back into the sunshine. wallet a bit lighter, bellies a bit more distended. one hell of a lunch behind us, and no foreseeable need to eat again for the next 24 to 48 hours...

zahav - a must hav

now, i know i throw around the word "best" quite a bit, but this time i'm not the one slinging the word. i recently ate at zahav in old city and, post-meal, discovered i had eaten one of the "best restaurant dishes of 2008" as declared by food and wine. that's a serious title if you ask me!

always one for a bargain, i decided to check out the slightly-above-my-price-limit restaurant during restaurant week, where a price fixed lunch menu was only $20. i really enjoyed the bright and airy quality of the dining room - where 2 out of the 4 walls sport floor to ceiling windows - as a departure from my usual dark and cozy night time haunts.

feeling cheery in the bright light of day, i ordered a "saz-arak" cocktail which had basil-hayden bourbon, st. germain, lemon, orange bitters and an arak rinse. i don't know what most of this means, i copied it off the website, but i can't say i much care because it was SO GOOD. fresh and fruity, but at $11 i had to sip slowly!

the price fix menu started off with salatim (4 small salads) and hummus with laffa, a softer than pita flat bread. the salatim was tiny little portions of smokey tomato okra, roasted spiced carrots, twice baked eggplant and fennel salad. the hummus was amazing smooth. it didn't blow my mind but that's kind of expected, as hummus isn't really a mindblowing dip. it's just creamy, smooth and goes great on pita. zahav has it down, for sure! the salatim were super cute and a couple bites of each went perfectly the the hummus and laffa as an appetizer.



our mezze dishes then arrived shortly after the salatim and we chowed down on fried cauliflower with a dill, mint and garlic yogurt sauce. the cauliflower was insaaanely good, crispy on the outside but still juicy and semi-firm on the inside. definitely my favorite dish of the meal! the other mezze plate was beets with a mustard green tzatziki and crispy shallots. i thought the mustard green tzatziki was really interesting twist on the usual version, but my lunch companion didn't like the leafy texture of the greens in the sauce. (it still got eaten, trust me!)



our "al-haesh" dishes, which means grilled over coals were really good but i was pretty full by this point in the meal. it seemed kind of crazy as every dish was on the smaller side. somehow we soldiered on and were able to eat the Galil: baby eggplant, pomegranate, pistachio, tahini, and a seafood dish that i, of course, took no part in. the baby eggplant was really soft and smokey from being cooked over the coals and the pomegranate was a reduced syrup that really worked with the tahini and pistachios. again - delicious!

(ok, so this isn't the most appetizing picture,
eggplant doesn't photograph too well, but trust me it was banging)

i didn't think i'd even be able to take one little bite of dessert, but again, i had no trouble once it got to the table. I MEAN LOOK AT IT!

i really wanted to go for the baklava, but once we found out about what the "konafi" was, the decision had been made for us. our waiter described it as "the closest you'll ever get to eating a cloud". konafi is basically really finely shredded puff pastry topped with ricotta cheese and fried in a frying pan, then topped with rose water and pistachios. HE WAS RIGHT! it was like taking a bite out of a cumulonimbus. the chocolate semifreddo was like a sort of melted gelato, really soft and creamy, atop a chocolate hazelnut crunchy wafer and candied cumquats (pictured above).

this is the texture of the finely shredded puff pastry

doesn't that sound like an insane amount of food for just $40? it was. it really was. i'll be back, zahav...maybe not until next restaurant week, but i'll be back.

love,
lauren

p.s. the waiter told that all of the kitchen staff and some of the waitstaff was flown to israel to taste and see how the food of israeli culture is made. um...it worked.

birthday dinner round II - blue sage veg grille

what do you get the foodie who has everything? ok, while she doesn't have the fully stocked kitchen of her dreams, sissy lauren has been gifted numerous cooking items. in fact, she's just been gifted many things from me in general over our 24 year-long course as sisters. so for her recent birthday i found myself at a bit of a loss. an extra special dinner out is always fun, i figured, but where? we've been to horizons enough times to give it a rest, mi lah has recently been super disappointing, and sadly, that kind of covers it for fully vegetarian restaurants in the city. maybe upstairs at govinda's but...eh, i dunno that just never seems appealing to me. so i literally googled "vegetarian restaurants philly," and amongst all the crap that came up from the search, i saw one name i'd never heard of, blue sage vegetarian grille.

i looked over the menu and excitedly sent the link to lauren. she agreed that we should try it out, and we finally got our schedules to click (it is a few weeks past her actual birthday), and made the reservation for this past wednesday. now, blue sage is not in philadelphia proper; it's actually about a 1/2 hour drive, up 95N and then down street road, in a town called southampton. if you weren't specifically looking for it, you could easily miss the restaurant, tucked away in a little shopping center, very suburban. bottle of white wine in hand - it's a BYOB - we ran into the joint (we were a bit later than our rez...driving down those main drags always takes longer than you think), and the place was packed! a good sign on a weeknight. the restaurant is pretty small, and it took us little while to get seated, and our impatience was heightened by our growling bellies.

finally at our seats, we took stock of the interior. overall, pretty non-descript and boring, as you can see from the photo on their website. many of the tables were really close together, but we had a more generously sized personal bubble up against the front wall. not spacious enough to shield the comments of the nerdy, tact-less older couple next to us, who kept quietly commenting, as if we couldn't hear them from 3 feet away, on how we were photographing our food. forget the BYOB, just MYOB. geez.

more importantly, the wine was poured, and we made our menu selections with our cute, non-invasive waitress. the menu was about 1/2 vegetarian and 1/2 vegan, with some interesting options. some of the descriptions were a bit overdone, nearing paragraph length at times, and "simple" is not what i'd call this food. in that cliche gourmond way, everything had tons of ingredients. one interesting thing that we noted was the absence of tofu, or any other "meat substitutes." just tons and tons of vegetable dishes, which is awesome. anyway, soon the food started coming and i stopped analyzing and just started eating. first, a little bonus starter: walnut honey pumpernickel bread with pumpkin seed butter and cranberry jam, a cool twist on pb&j.


the pumpkin seed butter was so wondrously flavorful, definitely something we want to experiment with making at home. next up were two relatively standard, but delicious appetizers. in the end, i think these were the strongest dishes of the whole evening:

green curry summer BBQ rolls: not-fried rice paper roll encases baby spinach, thai barbeque glazed vegetables, smoked red onion, fresh ginger & basil. served with soy syrup, dipping oils, side of jicama slaw

these were unlike any spring rolls i've ever had. the veggies inside were absolutely soaked in BBQ sauce, but not in a bad way. i can't really remember how the green curry factored in, maybe it was just mixed in with the soy glaze drizzled on the plate. either way, these were really satisfying, savory little snacks.

red pepper hummus sampler: smoked red pepper hummus with chive infused olive oil, falafel topped with tomato almond romesco & pistachio topped baba ghanoush. served with toasted rosemary focaccia slivers.

it's hard to go wrong with a middle eastern sampler, and this was no exception. i love, love pistachios, so the baba ghanoush really rocked my face off. the falafel balls were just okay (not green inside, which i've learned is the telltale sign of really fresh falafel), but the almond romesco was rich and spicy. the hummus was average, but the focaccia, stuffed into a cup with huge sprigs of fresh rosemary, was top notch.

as you may have noticed, the portions at blue sage are way generous. suffice to say, we were getting full-ish, but were still psyched for the entrees. i gotta say though...the entrees did not truly meet our expectations. my hypothesis is that there was just too much going on on the plate. exhibit A:

cubano supper: flaky plantain pastries stuffed with sunflower seed-smoked red pepper pesto surround tower of yellow tomatoes & avocado corn salsa. served with chipotle jicama slaw & mango-papaya relish.

this was certainly the stronger of the two entrees. the plantain pastries were hearty and not too greasy. all the stuff piled up in the middle (my attention span is barely long enough to get me through the end of the dish description), was fresh and tasty, and though i despise papaya, the fruity relish was quite a nice palate cooler. now, when i hear "cubano" i think of those awesome ham, cheese and pickle sandwiches, so i have no idea if this dish reflects authentic cuban food. my guess would have to be not really. but still, it was a decent eat.

next up:

east-west bento box: avocado cucumber salad with thai peanut dressing, steamed dumplings with red lentil filling in pea broth, and red coconut curry with exotic mushrooms, edamame, and corn.

i had really high hopes for this dish and was rather disappointed. i harbor deep affection for steamed dumplings, and these were so bad, we didn't even bring the leftovers home. the pureed lentil filling had an unappealing texture, just mushy mush in your mouth. ugh. also, the pea "broth" was more of a puree, in a wholly baby food kind of way. not good. the red curry was spiced with a heavy hand, and the coconut flavor was faint, at best. the mushrooms were left in huge caps, not sliced, and hard to eat in any graceful manner with that tiny ceramic spoon. the salad was actually great, but an easy score. i dunno, it's also possible that we were so full by that point that eating was becoming a bit of a chore. we took the bento box leftovers home (sans diaper dumplings), and it's sat untouched in the fridge for the past 3 days. i just don't think we can get excited about it, which is sad, and very unlike us.

so we passed on dessert, paid the check, and headed home, driving past the endless shopping centers and fast food joints. the bill came in somewhere around where horizons might if you kept the booze to a minimum, but the quality of the food simply did not compare. it was fun to adventure outside of the city (dudes, the 'burbs are weeeeeird), and it's awesome that there can be a successful fully vegetarian restaurant operating in a decidedly non-urban locale. but honestly, next time i might opt to save the gas $$, call in a double order of spring rolls to vientiane, spread a blanket under a tree in the park, and pound a bottle of birthday wine with sis lauren.

love,
emily

we'll always love big pop-pa

today i crossed to bridge and headed to the always pleasing enigma that is the pop shop in collingswood, nj. the pop shop has been on our radar ever since we heard they had 30 different kinds of grilled cheese, all available with a soy cheese substitute.

a lot of things are enigmatic about this place. first of all, it's in collingswood, which is a cute town in new jersey. yes, cute and new jersey in the same sentence (sorry all you jersians out there). second of all, it's prettttty kitschy, with a retro 1950's diner vibe where kids and the elderly abound. there's a lot of things that could potentially go wrong with that sentence. kitsch. 1950's diner vibe. kids and the elderly. somehow, the pop shop pulls it off.

finally, the true veganness of this establishment has always eluded us. the soy cheese is vegan. the soy cheese isn't vegan, but there's a different dairy free cheese. there's no vegan cheese at all. the veggie burger is vegan, the veggie burger isn't vegan, etc. etc. etc. every time we go to the pop shop we grapple with these issues. it seems like they're changing their vegan and veg options pretty frequently. restaurant owners can do whatever they like with veg friendly dishes, but when you have this printed on your menu, you better have the food to back it up:

We conscientiously and consistently strive to respect and accommodate vegetarian/vegan practices and palates. The majority of our menu does start vegetarian or vegan and can be altered to accommodate special requests if circumstances permit. For example, all grilled cheeses can be made vegan. Keep in mind that we are a creamery and we love dairy so your salad, sandwich or bagel may have spent some time along side some beautiful bovine bounty before it reached your table. Enjoy!
- The Pop Shop Kitchen Staff

i mean, throw me a [vegan] bone here! also, the staff isn't the most knowledgeable and often times isn't even sure what we mean by vegan. i know i sound like a complainy caroline here, but when you so clearly try to highlight your vegetarian/vegan food policy, is it so much to ask that the staff actually know what they're talking about?

enough kvetching, my trip to the pop shop today was phenomenal. best ever. the waitress was SUPER sweet and answered all my questions without a twinge of annoyance. best of all, yes, the soy cheese was definitely vegan! i ordered a veggie burger with soy cheese, dijon mustard, mixed greens, tomato, caramelized onions and avocado on a ciabatta roll with a side of spicy fries.

is that teese? what is that!!

the ciabatta was probably a bad choice as i took the first bite of the crusty roll and half the ingredients inside fell out. also mixed greens does not a neat burger experience make. i blame myself and my poor choices, not the kitchen staff. after some really difficult knife navigation, i cut my burger in half with mild success. half the burger and a plethora of spicy fries (cajun spiced fries with sauteed onions and jalapeno peppers!) plus trying to save room for dessert equals leftovers!! and i will very happily eat those leftovers tomorrow. the burger was delicious.

speaking of dessert, the pop shop offers vegan ice cream options (read: chocolate and vanilla soy ice cream). i decided if i was going to order one of these less than exciting flavors, i should probably go for a sundae and not a cone. i went for it, like taking back sundae (this is terrible, but is it as bad as "just another manic sundae"?). a scoop of each vanilla and chocolate topped with peanut butter sauce, crushed peanuts, oreos, bananas and cherries. it was a true sundae!!! one i haven't had the likes of in years.

that was our waitress, making my sundae. no whipped cream please!

they also have killer buffalo wings made from tofu which i've had before, but not today. and apparently they have a new option: vegan pancakes! good for you pop shop, i applaud you. next time, i'm looking at an ice cream soda. they have a painting on the wall that says "be a jerk" and today, i'm feeling pretty jerky.

-lauren

oh so good

during my first few years living in philly, i worked a 9 to 5 job at a small non-profit in center city. i will save my mixed feelings and thoughts regarding office jobs for another post, or perhaps just keep them to myself. one thing that i will say, is that each day by lunch time i was so ready to get out from behind my desk, breathe some smoggy outside oxygen, and be amongst the humans. during spring and summer months, i'd often pack a little lunch and find a nice grassy corner in LOVE park or meet up with other working lady friends (mostly mary, kate and karina) in our secret garden on chestnut street. but on rainy days, or in the colder months, what was i to do? the dim atrium in the building i worked in was somehow more soulless than my office, as was the quizznos built right into the ground floor. so i stopped packing lunches as frequently, and started to explore the "under $6" options in the neighborhood. one of my most favorite discoveries was a little deli/salad bar place on 19th street, between market and chestnut, sort of embarrassingly called Oh So Good Eatery (there is another location at 17th and market but it's not as good). sure, i'd been to other little grab-and-go buffets in town, but oh so good trumps them all! and since working at 20th and sansom for the past 2 years, i treat myself to a special oh so good plate once in awhile, and damn is if doesn't still do the trick.

a fair warning: it's not all so good. over half of the buffet is greasy "chinese food," too-yellow mac and cheese, fried chicken and more in that genre of boring and gnarly fare. tucked in another little corner is an odd selection of sushi, as well as a fresh fruit and jello bar (seriously). that, too, is silly and weird and never finds a place in my plastic containers. there is also a deli counter on the far left side of the store. i got their veggie burger once, and even though it was only $3.75, it never felt worth revisiting.

the real appeal is the fresh salad section, where for $5.25/lb, there is a rotating selection of wondrous vegetable dishes. some of my favorites are: kale salad with sesame dressing, angel hair pasta w/ mixed peppers salad, and big triangles of cold tofu stuffed with avocado and sun dried tomatoes. true, many of the salads feature crumbled feta or slices of grilled chicken, but same can be said for lots of the dishes in the infuriatingly overpriced salad bar at whole foods, right? of course, there are also salad greens and all kinds of other veggies, so you can make up a super plate of stuff that resembles real food that you might actually pack for lunch if you had enough time or discipline to assemble 4 salads a day at home.

the atmosphere at oh so good is rather dull, but they always have a big stack of philly weeklies by the door, and the people who work there are really nice. and - little secret for ya - after 3:30 p.m., the entire salad bar is 30% off. they close around 4:30 or 5, so i guess they just want to get rid of stuff. and that's a good sign! because i'm pretty sure it means salad-y things are made fresh daily. another small bummer is that they are closed on the weekends, as their main patronage comes from the monday-to-friday drones. but if you're in center city on a tuesday, or whatever, and want a quick, cheap snack, this place kills it.

this is my container from the other day:

clockwise from L to R: angel hair pasta with peppers, kale salad, cucumber dill salad, avocado stuffed tofu, and sesame string beans

love,
emily

belgique tragique

as part of the 2009 philly beer week, the belgian cafe hosted a 4 course vegan dinner, paired with beers from high & mighty beer company. being healthy young people who love beer almost as much as we love vegan food, we called the belgian cafe last week to RSVP and were like "we're so there!" this event, which we'd been psyching ourselves up for for many days, was last night. team VR (including our esteemed friend and long time veeg queen halimah) arrived to the bustling cafe with parched throats and rumbling bellies, ready to be wowed.

not to be total ingrates, but wowed we were not. the beer was pretty solid across the board, though the high & mighty brew master will shelton, who introduced each of his beers throughout the meal, had a weird chip on his shoulder about how "big" (read: high alcohol content) american craft brews are. get this: part of his mission is to make beer with super low alcohol content. yaaaaaawn. i say, if you can sip slowly on only one or two beers and get a decent buzz going, right on! people in my position (low on cash), want awesome tasting beers to be extra boozy because we can only afford a few at a time! anyway, maybe it's just generation gap or something; it doesn't really matter, it just rubbed me the wrong way.

regardless, the beer was miles ahead of the food offerings, but let's take a look course by course:

first course
the drink: beer of the gods, a light, floral beer made with german yeast. it was a nice, drinkable beverage to start with.

the food: white bean and sage dip with pita. a safe standard, but touted robust flavors. the presentation, on the other hand, was on a 5th grade level. who wants to eat off dirty, wilted lettuce?


second course
the drink: novar red, a hoppy sour beer. the brewman said it was an "american twist on a flemish sour." the first whiff was reminiscent of cherries. the first hit of the sip had an almond extract feel, followed by a deep, malty, almost vinegar-y strangeness. i rather enjoyed it but i think my compatriots did not. a direct quote from halimah - "this is what the salad would taste like if it was juiced and turned into beer."

the food: spinach salad with roasted grapes (in my opinion, they were wrinkled but had no roast-y flavor), black olives, and balsamic shallots. this was a really boring salad. maybe i'm just spoiled, but there was nothing fun going on on the plate. presentation wise, it looked like someone had literally flung a handful on the plate and sent it out of the kitchen. it wasn't even worth photographing.

third course
the drink: st. hubbins abbey. this was my favorite beer of the night! it seemed pretty loyal to other dubbels i've had, but had these cool notes of cantelope. i could've drank many, many glasses of this.

the food: indian spiced tomato vegetable soup. this was also my favorite of the night! delicate spiced tomato broth with lots of chickpeas and vegetables, it reminded me of a soup-y version of chana masala. delicious!


fourth course
the drink: home for the holidays. this was a dark, syrupy ale. i wasn't crazy about it, but rich, ultra malty beers aren't usually my go-to.

the food: tempeh mushroom stew with roasted brussel sprouts over basmatic rice pilaf. this was the biggest disappointment of all. i'd really hoped that the entree would blow it out of the water, but instead, it just blew. i've had better food from lunch carts, and i'm not just being a brat. the tempeh was in tasteless cubes, there was no seasoning on the vegetables. i feel like i might cry a little just thinking about it. i've had some incredible food from the belgian cafe kitchen, but this, my friends, was a resounding C-...and not worth wasting the battery power of my digital camera to document.

dessert
a beer float! vegan vanilla ice in two headed beast beer. the beer was super dark chocolate-y and bitter, and a bit hard to stomach after all the other food and beer we'd ingested. but it was good.

and that was it. the plates were cleared, we each pitched in $45, and i think we all felt a little lost. on the one hand, we had a lovely three way friend date, and it was fun being exposed to some new beers. it's so awesome for a restaurant to have a vegan dinner as part of beer week, and i don't want to slam it too hard but on the other hand, the food was not special, or even really that good.

should we have just gotten a PBC mixed case and whipped up an infinitely better 4 course meal at home? i hate to say it, but maybe so.

love,
emily

food womb

o, horizons, mother of them all. for years you have nourished the people of philadelphia with true culinary vegan genius. you have given the naysayers of vegetarian dining a miso marinated middle finger, a delicately pan seared F U. you have given our taste buds a magic carpet ride, you have put a joyful song in our hearts and bellies.

last week, to celebrate our friend halimah's new found freedom from employment (and the inauguration of our very special 44th president), we made a reservation for 4 in the food womb. let us amend our ode above: horizons, while a spectacular vegan dining experience, is not perfect. the artwork on the walls is laughably bad and the service, while totally acceptable, is a little overbearing. we were waited on by no less than 4 people, which always kind of rubs me the wrong way; one server + busser seems like plenty. fancier restaurants always seem to want to pile the workers on your table, and why? anyway, we're not writing this post to critique the ambiance or waitstaff. we're writing to talk about food!

the booze: i arrived half an hour earlier than the rest and sat at the bar and read a wondrous book. i ordered a bottle of sprecher bavarian black lager, which was dark, smooth and malty, the perfect pint for a ten degree january evening. when the girls arrived and we were seated, halimah promptly ordered a martini straight up with olives and the rest of us decided on a $28 bottle of red. i forget what it was called, but it was from france! it was sort of a one-note pony, but that note was mild and juicy and nothing to complain about. it also sported a charming label, never a bad thing:

sipping our spirits by the soft candlelight, we came to the group consensus to order the chef's tasting menu: a 5 course, $45 per person parade of delights. can you argue with 5 courses? no.

first up: a winter vegetable bouillabaisse with a roasted red pepper pesto crouton. it was a charming soup, with a one-of-each selection of small, tender vegetables in a hearty, but refined, tomato broth. the stand out for me was the single, buttery, elegant brussel sprout, floating in the bowl like an emerald.


the second course was a wild mushroom crepe topped with a golden beet tartare and seaweed caviar. it sat in a nice truffle cream dotted with sharp parsley puree. the crepe itself had a right-on texture, just the right amount of spongy. the flavors were well balanced and the caviar was (according to the lone diner who has tasted the fish egg variety) eerily similar to the "real" thing. as a second course goes, it was a tempered medium of rich flavors without being too heavy.


third course was a riff on mock scallops: pan seared tofu rounds on a creamy hearts of palm risotto, with pesto and kalamata olives. the texture of the tofu was lovely (though really like a scallop? probably not), and the risotto was nicely cooked. however, the pesto was terribly over salted and invaded the entirety of the dish. i guzzled the remainder of my second glass of wine just to help it go down easier. while not ruined per se, the dish was disappointing to me for this reason. the others at the table agreed that their portions were also salted with too heavy a hand. this is a bummer because i've never had anything but righteously seasoned food at horizons and this was the first dish to deviate from that winning streak. nevertheless, we cleaned our respective plates. this is what they looked like before:


lauren here, taking over for the last two courses (you know i had to review the desserts!). our fourth course would fall under the label as 'entree' as it were. it consisted of grilled seitan with smoky eggplant over braised black beluga lentils with a grain mustard sauce. as much as i hate to talk smack on the best/only vegan gourmet restaurant in the city, much like the pesto topped pan seared tofu, this dish was sorely over salted. while the seitan had a beautiful texture and a solid grilled flavor, the smoky eggplant was nowhere to be found and the black lentils tasted more like black beans. the whole shebang was topped with an "avocado taco" which was really just a tortilla chip with a dollop of guac. i didn't really understand where this fit in with the rest of the dish, except i suppose it complemented the black bean-like lentils, but i don't think those were even supposed to taste like black beans in the first place. weird, BUT, still damn edible and the mustard sauce really rounded out the seitan nicely. once again, no plates went uncleaned:


as our plates were cleared, we wondered aloud, "how can we possibly eat dessert?" let me just say first and foremost, i love dessert. (when i was little, i pretty much had a problem, a sugar problem. at a picnic once, i asked my mom when i could have dessert and she sternly told me to finish my lunch. "but mom, the cookies are calling me!" - if that's any indication.) however, i usually don't eat dessert when i'm out to dinner because i'm just too full. at home, dessert - a square of fancy chocolate, a cookie, a few bites of ice cream - is eaten a half hour to an hour after dinner, once the dishes have been done, the leftovers put away, the wine bottle emptied and the party moved to the living room couch. it's then that i've had enough time to digest and need to satisfy that one little tiny space in my stomach saying "sugar. sugarrrr!" however, at our chef's tasting, a mere eight to ten minutes passed before our dessert platter arrived. yes, i said platter:


left to right: coconut cheesecake, cinnamon ice cream, peanut butter bomb chocolate cake. sighhhh. the little sliver of coconut cheesecake was a silky creamy consistency and touted a not-to-sweet coconutiness. the tiniest mini melon ball sized scoop of ice cream was delicately spiced, and the icy texture was a nice respite from most overly fatty store bought brands. what really took the cake (ha!) was the pb bomb cake. i would say it was the bomb, but i can only fit so many puns in. it was a moist, dense chocolate cake topped with peanut butter mousse and the whole thing was dipped in chocolate, dusted with crushed peanuts and drizzled with more chocolate! whew. this was a pretty decent size piece of cake and was very decadent. i would have been totally fine if this was the only dessert they had brought, and probably a bit less painfully full as well.

we sat and finished the wine, our used napkins thrown in like towels after a particularly rigorous boxing match, and talked until the rest of the dining room was empty. we toasted halimah and her generosity. she thanked us for coming with her, and we thanked her for not using her gift card for four solo visits instead of bringing us along. i don't know the next time we'll be back to the food womb, but i do know that each and every time i emerge a reborn vegan.

Get to Know Your Locals

As much hype as has been buzzing around the new Local 44, I'm going to have to hop on the wagon here and review it as well. The beer geek's paradise/pub grub haven (also known as a "gastropub") on 44th and Spruce opened New Year's Day to much acclaim and a lot, A LOT of business. We decided to hit the place up the Saturday after New Year's (a.k.a. January 3rd, a.k.a. the third day they were open) and my initial response was sheer and utter claustrophobia. At 9:30pm, the place was packed to the brim with a mixed crowd of, well, locals. Barely a body could squeeze past the bar, let alone even begin to think about getting a table. We quickly high-tailed it out of there, tails between our legs.

After quasi-writing the place off, I decided to give it another go a few days later. At the more quiet hour of 3:30pm, the place was near empty, service was prompt and the food ruled. Vegan options weren't super plentiful, but for a small menu the ratio was very admirable. We started off having the spinach potato croquettes with a creamy vegan dill sauce; the sauce really sold me and really made the dish:

Of course I had to try the seemingly infamous Oyster (Mushroom) Po' Boy with vegan remoulade. When I first read a review of this sandwich online, it was only called an "Oyster Po' Boy" and man, was I surprised and delighted when I realized the truth of the matter. Behold, my second favorite sandwich in the city:

I didn't get a Kenzinger, as the picture misleads you to believe, but a Victory Brewing Company Prima Pils, one of my favorite beers, and one of TWENTY that the Local has on tap (and two on cask!). I was also fortunate enough to try the taco trio, as we made a special request (yeah, I kind of hate when people do this too, but the waitress was totally cool about it) for 2 tofu tacos and one mahi mahi taco (for a friend). The taco kind of reminded me of a giant fish stick on a little corn tortilla, and was a little scant on fixins, however, still tasted pretty darn good. Did I mention the totally killer fries? No?

My recommendation: go there, early, like pre-5pm on a weekday early. It'll be worth it I promise!