October 2008
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Recipe: Microwave potato chips!
I am fat, poor, and love electronics. Hence, the birth of the microwave potato chip. All you need are some large russet potatoes, salts, spices and herbs of your choosing and a microwave. If you’re one of those people who don’t have a microwave on principle, go away, you disgust me. If you’re one of those people who don’t have a microwave because you’re too poor, come...
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Review: Rick and Ann's!
Rick and Ann’s is a good breakfast and brunch spot for vegetarians and vegans as the tofu scramble is delicious and they serve a yummy potato hash, made with sweet & white potatoes, sweet bell peppers, corn and apples! I like to get the tofu scramble and substitute the vegetarian hash for the home fries. HOWEVER, I also LOVE the french fries (of the shoestring variety, which you can get...
10 tags
Review: El Metate!
El Metate is a solid choice for a vegan burrito or taco. They don’t make me walk into light poles so hard I’m knocked nearly unconscious because I’m so preoccupied with their deliciousness (like an El Farolito burrito MAY or MAY have made me do once) but they’re very good. One thing they have going for them is the best Mexican rice in town. It’s just magical...
22 tags
Unexpected vegan finds!
A few places in town that are surprisingly vegan-friendly.
1. Pork Store—two locations: one in the Haight; one in the Mission. This is how much San Francisco wants you to be happy: it gives you a diner called the Pork Store and throws a really nice, garlicky tofu scramble on the menu, the “Vegan Delight.” From my numerous times sitting at the counter at the Haight location, I...
14 tags
Review: Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe!
Fuck the waitress at Rudy’s Can’t Fail Cafe here for the following conversation:
My mother: Oh this is fun music, is it a Halloween tape? Hooker Whore Waitress (ROLLS HER M’EFFIN’ EYES AND SAYS): Um, NO, this is The Cramps. My MOTHER (MOTHER, PEOPLE! AS IN, THIS WOMAN BIRTHED ME, HAVE SOME FUCKING R-E-S-P-E-C-T, RESPECT!): Oh, well, it’s very Halloweeny! Hooker Whore...
13 tags
Review: XOX Truffles!
I was given a box of truffles from XOX for my birthday last year and fuck me if I haven’t been hooked on these amazing bite sized bonbons since. The vegan flavors are Dark Chocolate, Orange, and Noisette (Hazelnut! in French!). They are rich and creamy and they literally MELT IN YOUR MOUTH. AND ALSO IN YOUR HAND. BE CAREFUL. Just thinking about these things, my mouth waters. And I’m...
15 tags
Road Trip: Mineral in Murphys!
Okay Bay Area fat-asses, time for a road trip!
Murphys, California is about a two-hour drive from SF, or maybe more if you obey the rules of the road. Not me! I drive like a bat out of hell because YOUR LAWS DO NOT APPLY TO ME, I MUST BE FREE! Also, I have no regard for human life, yours or my own. However, should an animal cross my path, I will cause a 10-car pileup to avoid hitting it. I am a...
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Friday link-o-rama!
It’s that time of the month, er week again as we take you on a tour of the internet. Some stuff we liked this week:
1. The folks at Ethical Pizza gave local vegan donut baker People’s Donuts a visit and showed us some vegan donut-making and -frying in action. It’s amazing to me how quickly People’s has expanded, I remember when they showed up on Yelp just a year ago. It...
16 tags
Review: Udupi Palace!
The first time I went to Udupi Palace, we were a group of eight, and our bill for eight dosas, four (or five) appetizers, and six (or seven) beers was something like $120. That is (hang on, I have to work out the math) $15 per person, for that much food! Incredible. I guess their overhead is lower because they are a vegetarian establishment and do not have to pay for things like the bodies of...
18 tags
Recipe: Vegan mac 'n' cheesecakes!
So yesterday, Jonas sent me a link to this video on the New York Times website. It features Kenny Shopsin, this fabulous cursing muppet dude—basically, Bruce Vilanch done over as a truck stop chef; seriously, watch the video, this guy’s the best*—making something that blew my mind: MAC ‘N’ CHEESE PANCAKES! I knew I had to have them for dinner, if not right now! So,...
11 tags
Recipe: lemon curd!
I love citrus desserts. More precisely, I love citrus flavors in both sweet and savory dishes, just more in sweet ones. Thus I am happy to share today this recipe for vegan lemon curd, tastiest of spreads, tart and sweet, gooey and delicious.
Laura had given me a great deal of Meyer lemons from the tree in her common backyard, and they needed using before they went bad. Why lemon curd? Because it...
13 tags
Review: Papalote!
Laura threw down the burrito gauntlet* the other day, making the claim that El Farolito makes the best burrito in the city. It may be less “autentico,” but I’ll stake my claim at Papalote.
Most burrito places have only one vegetarian option (helpfully labeled “vegetarian”). Papalote has a staggering six (count em! six!) veggie options, and all are also available as...
19 tags
Review: Loving Hut!
Loving Hut. Yes, it has the grossest name around. Loving Hut. It reminds me of somewhere a girl would go to lose her virginity to an elder. And I mean ELDERLY elder. I’m Gonna Puke Hut.
Other than that, this place is delightful. I am reviewing the SF location today but there are two others that just opened in Palo Alto and Milpitas. It’s apparently part of a huge chain that’s...
16 tags
Review: Ananda Fuara!
Ananda Fuara is run by a cult! Who cares? They are not creepy. They are a peaceful cult comprising some sweet folks who love to weight-lift and eat healthy, delicious vegetarian food. Frankly, I know more than one fat-ass who might benefit from such a lifestyle. And yes, I’m talking about me. And also you, Sir Fatty Fatton of Fattinshire.
Pet peeve no. 52: When meat-eaters complain about...
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Review: Fraîche frozen yogurt!
As Maria has said, Fraîche’s storefront is cold and joyless. I would think that places serving frozen treats would want to make customers more comfortable, rather than forcing them to sit on freezing metal chairs at pointy-cornered tables. And yet, they do not, so when you leave you can see the bruises you got from bumping into those pointy table-corners already forming underneath the first...
13 tags
Review: Love & Haight deli!
San Francisco is a town that goes to bed early. Or rather, it stops eating at around 9 p.m. Then, it takes itself to the Power Exchange for a nightcap. We are a city in which you can come to be who you want to be and everyone will love you and ask you to get married illegally, unless the person you want to be is someone who wants to eat a meal that doen’t come from the liquor store after...
12 tags
Product review: Match Meats!
I don’t miss meat. I do, however, enjoy fake meat—not as an approximation of what I don’t eat anymore, but simply as an expansion of my available menu. If soy and TVP and wheat gluten taste good, then I’m all for it. Whether or not they’re anything like the real deal is pretty much beside the point for me. That being said, this new Match Meats stuff tastes really good, and...
14 tags
Review: Boogaloo's!
Laura is out of town for the weekend and I am taking over her review duties for the day. As the token omnivore of the VeganSaurus gang, my view is mostly as someone who really likes food and as someone who is always looking for places where my vegan BFFs can feast along with me. Here is my first installment!
Suggest brunch to a vegan friend and their eyes get a little shifty. Oh no, they think,...
19 tags
Friday vegan blog link-o-rama!
1. A whole blog dedicated to vegan cookies. Cookies are delicious and so this blog is BRILLIANT!
2. Vegan Soapbox asks an always interesting question for the omnivores in the house (i.e., me!). “If I care about animals, but still eat animal products, isn’t it better to buy “humane” animal products?” 3. Ezra Klein talks about tofu. We love Ezra Klein. 4. Farmer in Chief, by Michael Pollan....
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Review: Golden Era Vegetarian Restaurant
Golden Era is the original Supreme Master Ching Hai enterprise restaurant in San Francisco. Nearly every item on the menu is vegan; the mock meats are the delicious, mysterious kinds made of fungus and gluten and some such; and the menu is longer than a tabloid. That said, I will try to be brief.
Lettuce wraps = ¡muy delicioso! House rice clay pot = ¡muy delicioso! Wonton soup = ¡muy delicioso!...
14 tags
Review: Mission Street Food cart!
Mission Street Food is a most delicious little cart that sets up once a week (details below) to serve you some of the most delicious flat bread sandwiches ever known to man (me + you) or beast (i’ll get to this later). There are three sandwich selections—I expect they’ll expand the menu and maybe even how many nights a week they are out there based on the popularity of their...
12 tags
Review: El Farolito!
I believe this is the best burrito in San Francisco. This is, of course, a hotly debated topic and honestly, I don’t care what anyone else has to say, they’re all a bunch of fucking morons. El Farolito is the best, even if it comes with a side of hep C. And it does. Seriously, this place is not the cleanest. AND WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT USE THE BATHROOM. I can’t say anything more...
11 tags
Review: Crocker Galleria farmers market!
Farmers Market Thursdays can make a work-week. The Crocker is attached to the Hunter Dulin building, a.k.a 111 Sutter (one of the most beautiful buildings in the city, incidentally), which makes it ridiculously convenient for the suits on the West Coast Wall Street, and because it’s so small, the nice vendors don’t have to make much of an effort to get to know you. The people I used...
10 tags
Product review: Purely Decadent Coconut Ice Cream!
Look at that picture! There was delicious vegan ice cream inside the coconuts all along, and it took the geniuses who work at Purely Decadent on faraway Turtle Mountain to discover it!
These guys are so smart! They cornered the market on vegan cookie dough ice cream before anybody else. Seriously, this is probably my most wished-for ice cream flavor ever, and it is such a no-brainer! Why did it...
9 tags
Vegansaurus wants to be your friend
…with benefits.
Please become our fan on Facebook, follow our Flickr pool, and add us on Twitter (as an added bonus, all of our posts are automatically linked on our Twitter stream thanks to the magic of the internet!).
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If you want more contact with us, we’re going...
13 tags
Review: Baladie Gourmet Cafe
The lentil soup at Baladie is one of the best deals in the Financial District. A mere $3.25 for 16 ounces of delicious, hearty, spicy-if-you-want-it vegan lentil soup, plus toasted pitas, should you care for them. You know what you get for $3.25 at the wretched San Francisco Soup Company? NOTHING.
I had falafel in a pita once and it was all right; the hummus was good but the actual falafels were...
9 tags
Review: Bi-Rite Creamery!
Bi-Rite Creamery is so fucking good that I ate here twice the other day. I got one scoop of delicious raspberry soy cream—they always have one and sometimes two flavors of soy cream, in addition to a few sorbets and AMAZING popsicles in flavors such as pineapple mint and satsuma tangerine—and ate it on my walk home, got home, took off my pants (don’t ask), was like, “Fuck...
14 tags
Review: Club Waziema!
Club Waziema is my favorite Ethiopian restaurant in San Francisco. Not so much because it’s autentico (I stole that from Jonas, I believe it’s Mexican for “authentic”) but because it’s delicious food in a fun space (dive bar meets whorehouse. See: the ridiculously wonderful and sexy wallpaper) and it’s super-cheap and there is an excellent jukebox. Oh and...
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Vegan October Beerfest! →
Vegansaurus Weekend Edition!
Poking around my RSS feeds, I have found a new blog (thanks to the addition of Vegan MoFo to my reader, I now have something like 1 million vegan blogs I am reading every day) that is very appropriate for your Saturday nights: Beer Is Vegan! Enjoy and hope you’re all having a wonderful weekend.
And don’t miss our favorite beverage directory, Barnivore, a...
17 tags
Friday vegan blog link-o-rama!
A tour through this week in vegan blogs:
1. The Obligatory Vegan Post—a sweet essay by someone who just started being vegan and is loving it,
2. Sabor de Soledad—is vegan!
3. Amazing Vegan Ice Cream—a blog with such flavors as Barack-y Road (a delicious vegan take on Rocky Road and a nod to our favorite candidate!) and Pumpkin (Pumpkin).
4. Vegan diet good for Type 2...
12 tags
Review: Sabra Grill!
You climb a narrow staircase to get in here, and the noise from Chinatown/FiDi/Union Square fades away. The walls are covered with Jewish and/or Israeli art/photography/iconography (the Dalí print is a highlight). The owner is a big, friendly, intimidating man. The last time I was there, the waiter’s yarmulke had Mario (as in, one of the Super Nintendo Brothers) embroidered on it.
Important...
12 tags
Review: Medjool!
Medjool is located in the fake Mission District. It’s where people from the Marina* come when they want to slum it in the scary, scary Mission. It’s pretentious and ridiculous (look at all those a-holes out front in the picture. What a bunch of a-holes) but they have a fair amount of vegan items on the menu—which is advertised as “more than a menu. It’s a cultural...
12 tags
10 tags
Recipe: BBQ Pizza!
At Vegansaurus we talk a lot about restaurants, but even we can’t eat out every night (especially in these harrowing economic times, blah blah blah). A lot of vegan blogs tend to feature recipes like this or this, a LITTLE out of the reach of everyday eating. So from time to time we will post recipes that are, above all, easy, cheap, and creative, in addition to being delicious. This recipe...
13 tags
Review: Ali Baba's Cave!
OK, what genius/saint thought it smart to grind, spice and fry chickpeas into little fried balls of perfection? I’d like to shake that man’s hand and then possibly simulate oral sex on his fingers. Was this man Jesus himself? I’m not one to speculate on whether or not Jesus invented falafel balls but whoever did most likely can do other crazy shit like turn water into wine and...
13 tags
Review: Weird Fish!
Weird Fish. OK. First, their mascot is a fat mermaid. DOPE. Second, they have lots of vegan options, including vegan fish and chips (made with either tofu or tempeh!) on a bed of regular and sweet potato fries, seitan buffalo wings (WHAT) and deep-fried green beans (WHAT) and pickles (WHAT) with vegan dipping sauce (WHAT) and c) THEIR MASCOT IS A FAT MERMAID. I love me a fat mermaid. I want this...
9 tags
Lunchtime Poll: What's the best vegan sandwich in...
As I eat a very mediocre veg sandwich from a local sandwich shop (at least it has avocado and they toasted the bread, sigh), I must ponder, what are the best vegan sandwiches in town? Off the top of my head, I can think of two:
1. Ike’s—which we have covered before and I think is currently the San Francisco sandwich king!
2. Love & Haight—their veggie chicken steak with...
13 tags
Review: Medicine Eatstation
At first I thought that I could not find the words to describe how much I loathe stupid Medicine stupid “Eatstation” (it’s not even a word and no I will NOT teach my browser to learn it, as I did my name and the various permutations of “vegan”), but then I discovered that yes, yes I could.
I used to work right next to the Crocker, and I didn’t have to...
13 tags
Review: Maggie Mudd!
One time when I thought I was giving up sweets for Lent, before I realized that because no one holds me to particular religious beliefs anymore, I don’t have to go through the motions of abiding by the behavioral dictates of a particular time of year (sorry, Jesus; I’m done), my boyfriend took me to Maggie Mudd for one last stomach-filling sugar binge, ostensibly to tide me over until...
11 tags
Review: Nabolom Bakery!
I used to date this fool who lived all the way in Berkeley and would occasionally bring me a vegan cinnamon roll from Nabolom Bakery. This is probably why the relationship lasted longer than it should have. Another reason that it lasted longer than it should have is that my neighbors at the time were a bunch of busybody old-lady assholes who would frequently comment on the fact that I had a lot...
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New restaurant alert: Loving Hut!
Via Eater SF, apparently a new vegan restaurant is opening up in Chinatown! It’s called Loving Hut. I took a look at the menu, and it appears to be a faux-meat bonanza, Chinese style, a favorite of the Vegansaurus gang! The dinner menu has a few nods to the “HK-style” Chinese cafe (a Chinese restaurant that also serves American dishes), so it has stuff like spagetti and a...
19 tags
Road Trip: Ubuntu in Napa!
Sometimes you just want to get the fuck out of dodge. On occasion, we’ll feature different veg-friendly places to visit and dine that are within an hour or two from SF. Let’s start with Napa because I’m a classy drunk. LET’S GET WASTED! SHOW ME YOUR BRA! WOO!
I’ve been to Ubuntu three times and look forward to a fourth visit like it’s my job.
First visit A...
11 tags
Friday vegan blog link-o-rama!
This week in vegan blogs!
1. All beef and no soy make Johnny a Dull Boy: how to take a vegan to Johnny Rockets and not have them plot your death afterwards.
2. San Francisco Veg Fest: Hot veggies (and some hippies, let’s be real here) take over the San Francisco County Fair Building for food, fun and uh, belly dancing? Our friend Sugar Beat Sweets will have a booth. Find out the whole...
7 tags
Review: the Fruit Guys
Once upon a time, a time we shall call “before Jan. 11 2008,” I was a gainfully employed young woman, working full-time in an office in a beautiful Financial District building. It seems so long ago, but how clearly I remember it. I had coworkers, and a view, and a big bottled water dispenser, and we took coffee breaks, and every other Tuesday we’d get a delivery of fresh...
8 tags
Review: Rainbow Grocery!
Rainbow Grocery is an all vegetarian grocery store complete with many vegan baked goods (including Sugar Beat Sweets! Ow!), a delicious bulk foods section and a bath and body section that you’ll never want to leave. I mean, never. It’s so great in there. I plan to conceive, birth and raise my child* inside its delightful womb. I’ll be the 2.0 version of Natalie Portman in that...
10 tags
Product review: So Delicious coconut yogurt!
Well, the philanthropist geniuses over at Turtle Mountain are at it again!* Having brought us delicious soy yogurts and soy creams for years, they now bring something to the market I’ve never had before, COCONUT YOGURT. And it’s good. It’s REAL good. That was meant to sound slightly creepy.
Flavors currently available are vanilla—THE VERY BEST, eat this all the time! Eat...
9 tags
Review: Blue Front Cafe!
Blue Front isn’t just in the Haight, it’s on Haight Street, so all the food is a little pricier than you’d like. The wraps are chock-full of deliciousness, however, and the texture and tang of the hummus is incomparable. I mean, for serious. I hear the gyros are good, but not being a meat-eater, I can’t vouch for them. The vegetarian selections are bountiful and tasty. The...
