vegansaurus!

Giving you the gift of game, part 1.

Millenium
It’s a vegan cliché to go here for a special event, but take it up a notch by booking a table at the Aphrodisiac Dinner (next month’s is February 15), along with a room at the adjoining Hotel California.

Greens
While Greens is guilty of a more old-school, covered-in-butter, ’70s-style of vegetarian cooking, it’s so gorgeous you may just have to put up with it. Greens is offering an $88 prix fixe menu on V-Day (double the price of their normal prix fixe menu) but if you want to drop the cash while admiring the ocean (and the good looks of your date), be sure to call ahead to make sure you can actually eat something.

Saha
Another restaurant that you can also parlay into an overnight hotel rendez-vous (it’s inside the Hotel Carlton ), Saha is a small plates, Middle Eastern restaurant that’s vegan-friendly. They even feature that holy grail: a vegan dessert at a non-vegan restaurant.

Dosa
Yes, you can eat the same genre of food cheaper at Udupi Palace paces away but it’s Valentine’s Day, not Tuesday night takeout. It’s time to have some class with your potato-stuffed pancake and array of chutneys. Expect a long wait. Remove some of the class you just earned by going to the liquor store across the street and drinking on the sidewalk.

Beretta
In the erstwhile Last Supper Club space, Beretta has only recently started catering to vegans in a real way by offering vegan cheese (we think it’s Teese) and vegan sausage on their tasty thin-crust pizzas. They also have an excellent drink menu. This would be a nice V-Day option for a “special friend” or someone you just started dating who you don’t want to freak out. It’s nice, but it’s still casual.

The Front Porch
A Vegansaurus Favorite, the sexy Front Porch rarely disappoints (and if they do, they are very nice about it and will continue to push French fries on you). They have a daily rotating vegan special and wine in a box! No prix fixe, but they say they’ll have some special treats on the menu. As with Dosa, expect to wait for your table.

Restaurants With Explicitly Labeled Vegetarian Options for V-Day That We Haven’t Been To:
Cafe Majestic: ($70 prix fixe vegetarian menu)
Citizen Cake
Maharani ($42 vegetarian menu)
Mission Beach Cafe ($75 five-course dinner with champagne toast. OpenTable also says there will be vegan options, but no menu on the website yet!)

Know of any other restaurants offering veg options on Valentine’s Day? Any other nice restaurants that you’d recommend? Leave it in the comments!

Check it out, vegans: the guest chef tonight at Mission Street Food comes from Greens (our nation’s very first gourmet vegetarian restaurant!), and in the spirit of not killing other animals to make our meals, all the dishes at MSF will be vegetarian! What’s more, four are explicitly vegan, and two look easily veganizable—one of which, the king trumpet mushroom on flatbread, we have raved about before. That one is delicious!

A portion of the proceeds tonight will go to Food Not Bombs, a vegan institution, so if you were playing coy about going, there is your Reason: you’re going to support a staunchly pacifist organization that provides vegan meals to the homeless and hungry around the world. You may also be (definitely, of course, obviously) going for the crazy-delicious-sounding menu, but we will not say anything about that. Too much anticipation.

Mission Street Food operates out of Lung Shan restaurant, 2234 Mission Street at 18th, from 6pm to midnight. Come say hello if you see us!

And remember: This is TONIGHT ONLY! Next week, they’ll most likely be back to bacon snow and rabbit leg and whatever the hell else thrills omnivorous chefs, I don’t know. The point is: Vegans, DO NOT MISS THIS.

Please dispel a myth for me: please tell me you have heard of and shop at the San Francisco Herb Company. Presently I’m under the impression that I am one of five people who know about this little treasure, and I have such a big head about it, and it needs deflating.

Vegansaurus is both an eating and a living guide, and without SFHC you are not living as well as you coul

d be. At this delightful store, open just 10 to 4 Monday through Saturday, you can buy all the herbs and spices your heart desires, in bulk, on the super-duper cheap.  Tell me, how can you go wrong with that? You cannot, is how!

If you’re especially smart, you’ll know that you can freeze herbs and spices to keep them fresh, so you can buy a package of cumin or cinnamon or fines herbes the size of a baby without the risk of losing it to staleness. Amazing, right? YES, YES IT IS.

SFHC carries wonderful things for baking, like arrowroot and cream of tartar; also pints of almond, vanilla, and lemon extracts for just under $11 each. I’ll give you a minute to recover from your understandable shock; who knew quality extracts could come so inexpensively? Not you, until now!

You can buy catnip, for sending your kitties on harmless and hilarious drug trips. For people who can stand this sort of thing, SFHC sells pre-mixed potpourri and

ingredients for making your own blends. This is not my pleasure—potpourri being the devil’s perfume and all—but if it’s yours, this is a good place to purchase some.

As for specific recommendations, you absolutely must get some smoked paprika. I know ordinary paprika isn’t much besides pretty red powder, but smoked paprika is a 

miracle spice: it makes your cooking taste meaty. What? YES. Add it to your lentils, to your tofu, to your anything you want to taste barbecue-ier and to which you want to impart a deeper and more complex flavor. Smoked paprika: spice of the now. If you need more advice, the staff of San Francisco Herb Company will definitely give you their experienced opinions.

Herbs and spices are expensive, which sucks, because without them, your cooking is bland and terrible, which tends to deter you from cooking, but eating out all the time is expensive too, so what do you do? You buy your herbs and spices from San Francisco Herb Company, saving lots of money, improving your cooking, and letting you spend that saved money in nicer, more delicious restaurants than the closest/cheapest taqueria.

I’m all super-bummed that Souley Vegan is closed. Like, really fucking bummed. It was the only place in the Bay Area where a vegan could go for some delicious Soul Food. In observance of their closing, I will review a lesser Soul Food restaurant that can fill your need for Southern fried goodness—KINDA SORTA. Hard Knox Cafe is a meaty-meat Soul Food restaurant with two locations, one in Dog Patch and the other in the Outer Richmond. They have a few vegan items on the menu: the red beans and rice, black-eyed peas and rice, French fries, string beans, and the side salad are all vegan and all very tasty. They have an outstanding veggie burger that they make there with fresh veggies and it’s vegan. I mean, it has nothing on the mac n’ cheese or mashed potatoes of Souley Vegan. OR THE YAMS. The yams. I’d write those yams a sonnet. They tasted like Christmas. Or what I imagine Christmas tastes like in a family whose mother didn’t cancel Christmas every other year because she was having a psychotic breakdown. Alas, some things are better meant for therapy than they are

for Vegansaurus. Lucky you, I don’t distinguish between the two so hey: I had a difficult childhood.

MOVING ON.

If you are a vegetarian or vegan or prefer to not die of animal-fat heart attack then you can get a big-ass plate of three vegan sides for only $7! Combine that with a jug of fruit punch (I usually have Diet Coke but whatever, I am not from the dirty dirty) and maybe some white sandwich bread and you, sir, have yourself a meal deal cheaper than Mickey D’s! And you’re not supporting the devil, you are supporting an adorable Vietnamese-owned Soul Food restaurant! That is not as good as Souley Vegan but it’s ALL WE HAVE. Ugh. So depressed.

ONE SUGGESTION FOR HOW THEY COULD BE MORE AWESOME: add a vegan po’ boy to the menu. Yes. Excellent idea.

[photos via yelp]

I am on some kind of cold dessert kick lately. Can I tell you when I last had a cold-n-creamy dessert? No, because it has been rather a long time. Still, I am reminded of the delicious gelato of La Copa Loca several times a week, as I find myself walking past the delivery truck parked on Capp and 26th Streets, or the storefront on Capp and 22nd. If we start reviewing by familiarity alone, my next write-up is going to be about the guy selling oranges on 23rd Street, I see that guy almost daily.

Right, but that’s not the point. We were discussing the beauty of La Copa Loca and its three vegan flavors of vegan gelato: vanilla, chocolate, and coffee. I will grant you that Gelateria Naia’s vegan chocolate hazelnut tastes exactly like Europe (yes I mean the continent), and Copa Loca only ever makes the three flavors, none of which can really match Naia in depth or richness. Color me extremely biased; I did spend many months in Germany eating as much chocolate and ice cream as possible.

Of course not everyone feels this way. Copa Loca’s vegan coffee gelato is very good. Also, it is much more accessible than Naia—longer hours, around more restaurants, in a much more walkable neighborhood—what’s better than a nighttime stroll with a scoop of gelato in a colorful fluted cup? (because obviously it’s the cup that makes it.) You can say hello to all our friends in the Mission: the recovering mentally ill from the halfway houses; the cold, underdressed prostitutes; the rowdy guys spilling out of bars after international soccer games. Oh the friends you can meet while enjoying your tasty Copa Loca gelato! It’s inexpensive, too; you can get two cups of two scoops each for under $5, which in these economic times is so cheap it’s basically free. I mean, right?

La Copa Loca makes good vegan gelato. It’s open late, for San Francisco (ugh, city, we don’t all go to bed at midnight), it’s inexpensive, the vegan supply hasn’t run out on me yet, and the sign outside is so cheery and appetite-whetting, you have to be of great willpower to deny its siren song of vanilla-chocolate-coffee goodness. La Copa Loca’s storefront makes the neighborhood a little brighter, as it will your day when you give in to the gelato. Or do what I do, and don’t ever carry cash if you’re just out running errands. OR-or, succumb to the music and get a scoop every time; a little gelato now and then is good for you. It’s certainly good for your peace of mind. And happiness of tum.

[photos, top to bottom: acordova, mswine, mattdork]

Café Colucci is my favorite Ethiopian restaurant in the Bay Area. That’s saying a lot because I love Ethiopian people. They are seriously the greatest. Also, their food is MWAH! (I’m making the Italian chef “IT’S-A-NICE” kiss into the air.)

Now, at Colucci, you’re going to want to start off your meal with some of the veggie sambussas. Sambussas are heavenly fried dough balls that are like samosas but filled with lentils. They are super-tasty. Next, you’ll want the vegetarian combo. It’s 100 percent vegan and 100 million percent delicious. The veggie combo consists of Azifa, Buticha, Messer-Wot, Kik-Alicha, Gomen, and Atakilt. I know that means nothing to your uncultured ass but just know that it’s a plate filled with delicately spiced yellow lentils, spicely spiced red lentils, cracked wheat (you have to request this but just trust), potatoes and carrots and cabbage and collard greens. You eat it all up with their perfect fluffy and just-the-right-amount-of-sour injera and it’s just sofuckinggood.

The service is kinda slow (hey! they’re on Ethiopian time! Which I can only assume is roughly seven days behind the rest of us) so it’s best to pretend to go into labor or something right after you order so that they hurry it up. Worth the trip to Berkeley from SF and that’s saying a lot because Berkeley is basically the devil’s playground. I seriously hate that city. It’s filled with the dirtiest worst fake hippies with their WHITE-PERSON DREADLOCKS and HACKY SACKS and the whole scene makes me want to vomit. My best friend lived a block from Telegraph Avenue for a year and I swear to god, I cut the bitch off. I couldn’t hang. Every time I went to see her, I would get protested at by someone on a bicycle with BICYCLE BUMPER STICKERS. I’m sure we just lost half the readership of this blog but really, you have computers in your co-op? Is that okay? Well, relax. You can blow off this rant by having sex in your communal hot tub OH MY GOD I’M DRY-HEAVING.

P.S. Café Colucci often has gift certificates at Restaurant.com. Basically, you buy a gift certificate from them for hella cheap and then get a lot more money to spend at the restaurant. I know, that was the explanation you would give a five-year-old, but it’s what I got right now. Anyway, I’ve gotten one for Colucci through them and it worked perfectly. I ate like a king with a pauper’s pocket change. If you’re from Berkeley, you probably go to the Ren Faire, so I’m totally speaking your language.

[photos, top to bottom: stu_spivack, mlinksva, artnoose]

If you are so lucky to live in San Francisco, you know that we vegans have especially good regional products. One in particular is by Double Rainbow, the official ice cream of San Francisco (as proclaimed by Willie Brown!); accordingly, the company makes some of the best soy ice cream you’ve ever tasted, too.

The company started in 1976 making gourmet ice cream, you know, from “quality milk products,” whatever that meant in the mid-’70s. Wonderfully, however, they later started their line of vegan Soy Cream, “in direct response to customer requests.” Amazing, right? “[I]n direct response to customer requests”! We—the vegans, the lactose-intolerant, the kosher—asked for animal-free ice cream from a local producer, and they listened and made it for us!

Double Rainbow soy cream comes in many flavors (more than listed on the site!), because Double Rainbow loves you and wants to satisfy your craving for ice cream, whatever you yearn for. The vanilla bean is the best vanilla soy cream I’ve ever tasted, absolutely. I know I say “best” a lot, but would you want me to review a mediocre product? No, that would be useless. How about this: Of all the soy ice creams I’ve ever had, Double Rainbow’s is the richest and creamiest, using vanilla as the standard. You do not even have to take my word exclusively for it. Even better, they make flavors like dulce de leche, all caramely and rich, and I hear that their mint chocolate chip is high quality as well, for those who like a mint chocolate chip (I do not—cold flakes of chocolate just gross up the texture).

Double Rainbow also makes some really good sorbets; my favorite is Meyer lemon, but the berry flavors are good too. They’re available at quality grocery stores around the city and the Bay Area; you can also get a couple of flavors at Trader Joe’s, relabeled as TJ’s house brand of soy ice cream, though if you want variety, buy the pints at other places. Apparently there are Double Rainbow parlors, and the website says it’s sold “nationally and internationally,” but don’t take my word for it, I just buy it at the grocery store. The official address is on 14th and South Van Ness Streets, but don’t be fooled; that place is a warehouse, and they will not sell you any soy ice cream there, no matter how sweetly you ask.

To be honest, as an adult I’ve sort of lost the voracious appetite for ice cream I had as a kid, but the goodness of Double Rainbow’s soy ice cream is such that whenever I want a pint, I want Double Rainbow. Nothing compares to it. The price is lower than  other local brands, which is curious considering how much better it is than the rest of them. You cannot think of a reason not to buy this stuff. Serve it to your omnivorous friends and see if they even notice it’s not made with torture-milk. Because they won’t, I swear it. Now, Double Rainbow could carry as many flavors of Soy Cream as they do regular death-n-torture ice cream, such as the magical and amazing peppermint stick, and perhaps with increased customer demand they will. My point: get to buying. A homemade soy cream sandwich makes a well balanced breakfast!*

*This is not a lie. I would not lie to you about something so serious as balanced breakfasts.

[photos, top to bottom: eprescott, Andrew Teman, Veganbaking.net]

While I’ve already declared the best falafel in the city to be found at Sabra Grill, there are certain obstacles to attaining  this heavenly food that prove sometimes insurmountable. To wit: mandatory closings on the Sabbath and all Jewish holidays, location, lack of delivery services. So what does a person do when she wants a tasty falafel on a Saturday afternoon, or a Tuesday night? Especially if she lives in the Mission, or Bernal Heights, or Noe Valley?

The answer is Old Jerusalem.  It offers hands-down the best falafel in the Mission, the moistest and tastiest, plus they make two varieties: regular, and stuffed, which has fried onions, roasted pine nuts and sumac in the middle. You can substitute the stuffed falafel for the standard in the falafel sandwich, which I recommend because the stuffed ones are much, much tastier than the regular, and better overall than any other falafel I’ve had in the city, Sabra’s aside, of course.

I suppose a drawback is that Old Jerusalem doesn’t offer the eggplant or french fries that come standard in other falafel sandwiches. Then again, when those extras are fancying up what are bland, dry, crumbly falafels, then I will take Old Jerusalem’s sandwich of less diverse but ultimately way higher quality ingredients. So there.

Old Jerusalem has really long hours, and delivers, so you can have your Middle Eastern food without having to leave the house. If you live too close to justify delivery, call your order in ahead. On weekend nights especially the place is really busy; it’s tiny, and doesn’t take many people to fill up.

If you are for whatever reasons interested in other things than falafel, they make good stuff like ful—hummus made with fava beans instead of chickpeas—and fatta—hummus plus bread and olives—and of course, the Arabic salad, which you assume no place could get wrong, but some restaurants buy crappy tomatoes and ruin everything. Not Old Jerusalem, though. You can also get a vegetarian combo plate, and a lentil soup. They do make a great deal of meat dishes, lots of lamb, and yes that is disgusting! Still, not a reason to skip the really good falafel, especially when your choices are so few and far between around here. Honestly, I have had better hummus, on its own, but Old Jerusalem’s falafel sandwiches are quite good, and so available! Go, eat one, it will make you full and happy.

[top photo via Old Jerusalem; food photos via yelp]

As much as it’s possible for a person to appreciate her circumstances, I appreciate how good a vegan has it in San Francisco. All we’re missing, aside from the utopia of course, is a place to get a good tofu scramble.

This city is utterly devoid of good tofu scrambles.

Strangely enough, the best tofu scrambles I’ve ever had were cooked in Davis, Calif. and Pittsburgh, Penn. OK, not so strangely to find good vegan food in Davis, but what is delicious vegan breakfast doing in Pittsburgh? Well! It is waiting for you to order it at the Quiet Storm.

They serve a daily breakfast that Joel is partial to, the Nothin’ Fancy, a good amount of tofu, potatoes and toast that is very good. They say their secret is to bake the scramble, but I believe that is a lie; the secret is also in the seasonings, because you could bake a thousand tofu scrambles from a thousand Bay Area restaurants, and none would taste as good as the one from Quiet Storm.

Even better, on weekends you can have a “country” breakfast burrito featuring this amazing tofu, plus the potatoes, little mushrooms and vegan sausage. The tortilla all this goodness is wrapped up in is made warm and crispy, and then topped with onion “jam.” Whatever onion jam is, who cares, just eat it, it is delicious.

I tell you, I have never eaten a better tofu-based breakfast outside of my own kitchen. OK, I’ve never eaten a better tofu-based breakfast, period, as I do not generally go to such trouble for one little breakfast. Besides, like I said, there are secrets to making this scramble that I haven’t cracked; replicating it would be impossible.

Let’s go to the close-up:

As for matters non-scrambled, their vegan cheesecake is very good, texturally perfect if a bit lacking in tartness.  Do not, absolutely do not ask for “vegan cream cheese” to put on your toast, though; from what I could surmise, it’s cold whipped tofu, probably silken, and that’s it. Imagine taking a bite of that on your hot and toasty bagel. Are you shuddering? I shuddered. It was disgusting. This is entirely avoidable, of course, when you order your breakfast in a tortilla instead.

If you are ever in Pittsburgh, go eat at Quiet Storm. I have it on a native’s authority that they make good lunches and dinners, too, so there’s that. You should really go to breakfast, though, and Pittsburgh is supposed to be one of those big Sunday brunch cities, and Quiet Storm does that up right, too, so I’m told. Someday soon maybe one restaurant in our so-called vegan-friendly city will take a lesson from this little cafe across the country and make an edible tofu scramble, and I won’t have to keep pining for this one breakfast burrito I had this one time.

[all photos—and breakfasts!—courtesy Joel]

Last year this project began on the street; flatbread sandwiches served out of a taco truck parked just off Mission. It took off immediately, popular with omnivores and us vegans, thanks to Wonderful Person Anthony Myint’s crispy scrumptious king trumpet mushrooms + roasted garlic + triple-fried potatoes number. Oh it was heaven on flatbread, and even $1 less than the posted price when we asked for it vegan-style, without the creamy sauce. (for pictures, revisit Laura’s review)

After just a few weeks (and only one public fuss), the taco truck line grew too long, and the street food moved to a borrowed restaurant on Mission. This is where they started to lose me. First, they expanded the menu, which ought to have been a boon, but this meant they eliminated their two vegetarian items, and introduced a “meat-smoked rice” dish. The next week, it was rare beef with glass noodles. I kept track of these changes through the Mission Street Food blog.

On the last December night of business, MSF offered their first new vegetarian entree since leaving the street: smoky rice with shiitake, cauliflower, and tofu tempura. This in contrast to the smoky rice fried in duck fat with duck confit AND duck “cracklins.” Had you gone the previous week, you could have enjoyed the return of the mushroom sandwich, or pie with “bacon ‘snow,’” your choice.

Now Mission Street Food leaves me conflicted. I love the idea of a line cook at an established restaurant wanting to create his own menus, without the funding—or even desire, I don’t know—to open his own restaurant; Myint established a little place in his (our!) neighborhood where he could serve whatever food he wanted, and collaborate with other chefs to make fun crazy meals with bacon! and rabbit! and whatever the hell else they felt inspired to make that week. The community-togetherness part is integral to this Mission ideal so many of us love idealize, and the inventive-food part is integral to our stomachs.

Misson Street Food is a project that brings the Mission closer to being that creative, unpredictable, community-oriented neighborhood it’s supposed to be. I would sincerely recommend it to anyone who enjoys tasty plates of murder. But OK, glibness aside, when the MSF crew began eliminating their vegetable dishes and expanding their meaty foods, they disappointed me. I read the menu every week, hoping for something vegan or at least easily veganized, but until recently the best we’ve been given is an occasional side dish. I love my neighborhood, but I do not love it enough to wait an hour to split three orders of the same single side.

Do I think that MSF is obligated to “cater to all of us” and all of our diets? Not necessarily. Still, the Mission is full of vegan-friendly restaurants, and hungry vegan people, so in that spirit of community and neighborliness, it makes sense to offer a vegan dish. Cooking without animal parts doesn’t limit a person’s choices so much as shift your focus to other ingredients—not that I wanted to make that argument, but it bears repeating—and with the variety of dishes the MSF crew has offered so far, I’m sure they’re capable of making some good vegan food as well. Why they haven’t so far, I don’t know; then again, I haven’t asked, either. Clearly the demand from the omnivorous crowd is high enough that they haven’t needed to court us, and if business keeps on hopping, they may not ever have to.

So Mission Street Food is a success! I’m happy for them. Of course, I wish they that they needed vegan community support. I also realize that the vegan community is small enough that our support wouldn’t mean much either way, and I wish that were different too. I wish I had a satisfying, full-time job and health insurance. We all wish a lot of things. In the community spirit, perhaps if we ask the MSF people nicely, they’ll put more vegan-friendly dishes on future menus. They just announced that from now on all MSF profits will go to charity; they are obviously really good-hearted people. There’s no harm in asking, anyway. 

At the end of the week I’m flying into Philadelphia to make my way to the Inauguration (AND I’M NOT COMING BACK UNTIL OBAMA IS VEGAN OR UNTIL MY RETURN FLIGHT ON THURSDAY) and I’ve been gearing up for eating many vegan Philly cheesesteaks at Govinda’s in Philadelphia by eating many vegan Philly cheesesteaks in California. If you access the Fat Logic part of your brain, that makes perfect sense.

Lucky for me, Phat Philly* opened up about a block from my place last month. They offer a few vegetarian sandwiches that can be made vegan by taking away all the flavor. All of their delicious-sounding sauces have mayo in them and of course, no vegan cheese. We got the tofu sandwich and it was basically tofu stir-fried with some onions and peppers and put on a roll. Not horrible but certainly no Jay’s. Other options include grilled veggies and portobello mushroom, and if you’re looking for a grilled veggie sandwich (BLAH), this would be a good place. Just remember to bring your own condiments. One thing I will say, the waffle fries are the JAM. It’s been a while since I indulged in some waffle fry deliciousness and those suckers tasted GOOD.

I recommend taking them home and making your own special sauce of ketchup mixed with Wildwood vegan aioli (or Vegenaise) and then dunking each fry completely in that magic and going straight to heart attack heaven. If you’re feeling extra-awesome, you could make that sauce at home and bring it with you to Phat Philly and make your sandwich taste better.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m stoked that they are thinking about vegetarians (and vegans, to some extent) but I’d love some more options. From eating at Govinda’s and at Jay’s, I know a really tasty vegan Philly cheesesteak is possible and will bring in a shit-ton of customers. Never underestimate a vegan’s ability to travel to great lengths to get something awesome. I mean, I’m basically going to the Inauguration so that I can eat cinnamon rolls from Sticky Fingers, YOU FEEL ME?

*I woulda gone with Fat Filly because that’s hella clever, right? And then your logo could be a fat horse eating a sandwich. GENIUS, NO?

[photos via yelp]

I discovered Gelateria Naia and its many sorbet and soy-based flavors on my way home from working out. I think god is doing this to punish me for the one time I called Marc Fransen a fat-ass in gym class. I am cursed. And also BLESSED. Because this isn’t your typical ice cream shop where you have to get a scoop of crappy, icy raspberry flavored sorbet. NO. They have many soy gelato flavors in addition to their awesome sorbets (which includes flavors like fig, Meyer lemon, pomegranate, peach, rhubarb and prickly pear! Fancy!) The soy gelato is outstanding. Rich, creamy and not overly soy-ee tasting. I like to mix the vanilla soy gelato with the peach sorbet and have a delightfully smooth peach fantasy. Also, that would be a great name for a stripper. The best, most delicious stripper.

According to their site, “[Naia] soy gelato is completely dairy-free and can be enjoyed by the lactose intolerant and both vegetarians and vegans. [Naia] soy gelato is made using fresh organic soy milk and sugar processed without bone char.”

Honestly, it’s super-cool that they put that on their website. They are actually thinking about vegans and that’s fresh. A+++ will do business with again!

This is a local chain with locations all over the SF Bay Area (including outposts in some Whole Foods!) but my favorite store is in the heart of the Castro. The location can’t be beat for tourists and locals alike, i.e. PEOPLE. WATCHING. And I don’t mean just the gays, you homophobes. The Castro is world-class people-watching for people of all sexual orientations, colors, heights, weights, piercings, manipulations, tooth count, leg count, arm count and different forms of crazy-eyes-itis. And their cute-ass dogs. Plus, there are some great shops ranging from the ultra-adorable to the downright skanky. Enjoy! And it’s super-close to Muni, folks!

In conclusion: I don’t care that it’s rainy and freezing right now, GO! Your ass will thank you!

[top photo via yelp; bottom photo via gelateria naia]

HAPPY NEW YEAR, BITCHES!!!

Now, down to business.

Back in the day when food was not repulsive to me—it feels like I can’t remember such a time*—I used to love the seitan cheesesteak sandwich, minus the cheese and mayo, with extra extra onions, from Jay’s Cheesesteak. It is the perfect sandwich and vegan! Yay! If you are feeling extravagant, you can have them make any of their cheesesteaks vegan. You can choose from tomato and pepper, mushroom, pizza, teriyaki, and more. The pizza cheesesteak is especially super-fantastic, all marinara-sauced deliciousness and shit. Go on with your bad self, pizza cheesesteak.

I like their garlic fries too, they are big and fat and super greasy. Even if you are a fat pig and think you can eat more than anyone ever, still get the small. Trust.

One gripe: These fools recently started charging 50 cents extra for the seitan cheesesteaks. WRONG! And before anyone is like, “Well, Laura, seitan is probably more expensive than government-subsidized ground chuck,” I will tell you this: JAY’S CHEESESTEAK USES NIMAN RANCH DEAD COW. Niman Ranch is the poster boy for “humanely” raised, grass-fed, sustainably farmed, Michael Pollan Richy-Rich-style beef. You ain’t at Food 4 Less anymore, Dorothy. This shiz is $$$$$. And I, for one, am so sick of paying extra for food that COSTS LESS. I’m looking at you, soy milk at Starbucks. Oh also, no vegan cheese. Boo.

A few logisticalities: There are two Jay’s Cheesesteak locations, one in the Mission on 21st Street near Valencia, and one in the Western Addition on Divisadero. Both locations are open 7 days a week from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. They are both in good bar neighborhoods, which is excellent because they are ideal drinking food. Very limited seating, so see previous sentence about going to a bar.

*About 10 hours ago. I have mild congestion/am dying.

[photos via yelp]

Alternately, I KNOW IT’S MID-DECEMBER BUT I AIN’T DONE WITH YOU YET, PUMPKIN!!!

Every once in awhile, a food products sings to your heart and takes your love by storm.  For me, this happens daily. Yesterday, this storm turned into a level-5 hurricane in the form of this amazing pumpkin bread from Artisan Bakers that we got at Rainbow Grocery. It is usually sold out but we were lucky enough to grab the last loaf. Suckers. As an aside, there is huge satisfaction in getting the last of something that other people want. It’s like when I went to H&M for the Stella McCartney line and waited in the freezing cold for like four hours until they finally opened only to make a mad dash to buy anything, everything Stella and ended up with a SATIN HAMMER PANTS four sizes too small that cost me $150 and I’m still so stupid that I was pleased about this purchase for a FULL TWO DAYS until I realized what god hath wrought and came down with a deep depression for a week. This bread is like that. Except that you will feel no remorse because it’s CHEAP! and DELICIOUS! and if it has anything to do with the blues, it’s in the curing of them.

This isn’t a typical pumpkin bread in that it’s not a sweet loaf. It’s more like a traditional seed loaf but made round and with pumpkin. It’s rich and textured and covered in pumpkin seeds and is perfect toasted in the broiler and then slathered in Earth Balance. I’m guessing it would make a damn fine PB&J too. That’s PUMPKIN BUTTER and jam to you! Actually, it’s not, but I bet that would be good too. If a little sweet. Maybe pumpkin butter and peanut butter?? Who knows, go crazy, this bread can handle it.

Artisan Breads are sold all over the Bay Area. I would call the store closest to you to make sure they carry the pumpkin bread. It’s seasonal too so don’t be looking for this shit in May. Unless you’re in Australia. Wait, does that work? Anyway. Their site is fresh, and includes a pretty detailed description of their bread-making process and some recipes! They are obviously super-passionate about making tasty bread and have won all sorts of awards and shit.

An aside: I was looking for a cute pumpkin photo to put up on the blog and I came across this. This seems like it should be a punishable offense. I mean, you can’t urinate in public but you can do that? I don’t get it.

[photo via Time Out Chicago]

Lanesplitter is a local pizza-and-beer chain in the East Bay that serves up some fantastic thin-crust vegan pizza. It’s not made with a traditional fake cheese, instead it’s like a ricotta style tofu mixture…sounds fucked but is actually pretty damn good. They have lots of veggies to choose from and everything mixed up tastes amazing. They also have vegan calzones which make a good grab-and-go item if you call ahead. The vegan eggplant bake is heaven for everyone.

I rarely eat in because the staff consists of incompetents, assholes, and incompetent assholes. I am told that their house-made micro-brews are pretty good but they just taste like beer to me. I dunno. Are you so fancy that you can tell? I can’t. If you put me in a blind beer taste test, I’d be able to recognize two beers: Bud Light, and everything else. I’d be taking shot after shot of beer, yelling out, “nope!”, “nope!”, “Bud Light!”, “nope!” Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun. Is anyone in? You buy the beer! Email me! So anyway, all their microbrews are on tap but if you want to enjoy them, you have to drink there. Apparently Lanesplitter (and Johnny Law) don’t trust me to leave my pint of fancy brew untouched on the ride home. They are smart.

[photos via yelp]

Ritual makes all right coffee. They charge 50 cents extra for soy milk, and I’ve never seen soy milk on the bar for drip coffee, though I imagine they’d give you some out of an open Tetra Pak (TM).

They are really, really proud of their coffee, the espresso especially, but the reason I go there is because they sell People’s Donuts, which have become more and more delicious the longer they’ve been in business, and this vegan sherry cake that no one seems to know the provenance of but most everyone agrees is excellent. It comes in standard (yellow) and chocolate flavors, and you can’t go wrong either way. With People’s Donuts it is always a fun surprise to see what flavors are available, and which of those flavors looks the best, and a lot of the time the Ritual employee will have as much knowledge as you on the donuts—i.e., you’re both eyeballing them—so don’t be afraid to say that you want the on the left in the back, or wherever, because they stack them on a plate all willy-nilly and if you want the only chocolate one, that helpful employee might have to move some other donuts around for you.

We will give People’s Donuts its own review later on; they definitely deserve one! For now, know that they are good and tasty and available at Ritual for $2.50 a donut, the average price citywide.

As for the coffee, OK, I don’t know. The drip coffee is fine; better to take it to go and use your soy creamer at home, I think, if you are partial to cream in your coffee; I am, particularly with Ritual’s, which gives my delicate tum a terrible ache when I drink it without whitening it down. If you take it black, then why not stay? Here’s why not: no atmosphere. It’s often very hot, and loud, not just because of the machines but the music (80 percent of the time good!) and the yap yap yap of the patrons, some of those jerks will NOT shut up. Granted, it is not a library, but when everyone around you is silent, maybe you don’t have to talk at volume level 25, you know? Ugh, loud people, it is so hard for them to realize the difference between THE LEVEL OF THEIR VOICES and the level of a normal person’s voice. It is all right when you want to talk at loud bars/shows/&c. but Ritual is none of those places. Shut it, jerks.

Ritual espresso is very bitter, and quite often tastes burnt. Why is this? They go on and on about how they were a runaway success, roasting their own coffee and training their baristas to be AWESOME and ORIGINAL and MAKE FANCY DESIGNS IN THE FOAM, but I swear every single flat white I had in New Zealand—essentially a latte—was tastier and creamier and better foamed than anything I’ve had at Ritual, and there were no delightful seitan cheesesteak sandwich shops or fancy gourmet non-dairy-ice-cream-selling groceries across the street from the place where this work of art came from. Just a big glacier. Yet, everywhere, even at highway rest stop cafes where there was not one vegan food item, there was vegan soy milk and someone with the skills to really foam it. Having never had a espresso drink made with dairy milk at Ritual, I cannot speak to the baristas’ ability to foam cow’s milk, but if they are good at that and just aren’t trying with the soy…? I don’t know what the damn hell ass problem is, but I’m tired of paying extra for soy milk and getting inferior foaming. Either bring your A-game, or stop charging the extra money, or WHY NOT BOTH, because COME ON, JERKS, how much money are you losing on those Tetra Paks that unopened stay good FOREVER that you have to gouge the vegans and the lactose intolerant for our conscientiousness and/or dietary needs.

The sherry cake is really good though! Ideally, get sherry cake at Ritual to go and make coffee at home, allowing you to have delicious coffee exactly the way you want it AND sherry cake at the same time in quiet and comfort. Besides, Ritual has free wifi, but no outlets, so it’s not like you’re encouraged to stay there to work unless you’re talking over everyone and everything else anyway, and we already established how obnoxious that is. Hide yourself away, watch television shows on the computer in your pajamas, dip sherry cake in your coffee, maybe gluttonously eat two pieces and feel all warm and good and full. There’s no place like home when you’ve got quality baked goods. And are an agorphobe, but focus on the sherry cake, Ritual’s the only place in the city that sells it.

[people’s donuts photo via the studied casual; flat white photo by the author]