Sarajevo Vegan Scene: Tavola Italian Restaurantby Randi / August 28, 2013
Karuzo is a shining star in the Sarajevo vegetarian scene. (I mean, there’s not really a scene.) Karuzo is the kind of restaurant that focuses on your experience, works with you, and provides you with great food (and dessert).
So, NB: You really need a reservation – not because it’s crowded, but because the one owner/chef/waiter/host needs to know to expect you! We showed up for lunch one day, but O/C/W/H said it would take awhile to get food to us since he wasn’t expecting us and nothing was prepped yet. So instead we came back later for dinner. It was a good move! A varied and extensive menu was available, even with some specials added to the regular long menu.
So, NB: You really need a reservation – not because it’s crowded, but because the one owner/chef/waiter/host needs to know to expect you! We showed up for lunch one day, but O/C/W/H said it would take awhile to get food to us since he wasn’t expecting us and nothing was prepped yet. So instead we came back later for dinner. It was a good move! A varied and extensive menu was available, even with some specials added to the regular long menu.
Lentil soup with chard
To start, we ordered two soups – one Thai mushroom, one lentil soup with Swiss chard and spiced tofu. Both were great! The Thai mushroom soup had the right amount of tanginess and an interesting mix of vegetables. The lentil was much brothier than lentil soup as I know it, but it was good and still comforting. Boyfriend was nervous about the tofu (he hates tofu chunks) but it was shredded so tiny that you couldn’t tell it was tofu.
 Thai mushroom soup |
 Chana dal |
Seitan with vegetables
For our entrees, I ordered the homemade seitan with vegetables. I couldn’t pass up the chance to have his homemade seitan, and while it was much different from seitan that I’ve had, it was pretty good. It was cut into matchsticks, which must have helped develop the good texture.
Boyfriend ordered the chana dal, because he can’t go too long without Indian food. This was also delicious, which was impressive considering we weren’t in an Indian restaurant! The beans were on a bed of really good rice, sprinkled with herbs, scallions, and cashews. Everything was just great.
Well, I thought I knew what great was, but then the dessert came. The man (I really should have gotten his name. Maybe it’s Karuzo? Robinson Karuzo it is) said he had a special ‘strawberry surprise’, a towering take on strawberry shortcake, with plain and chocolate-coated cake rounds, berries, and ridiculous vegan cream.
Boyfriend ordered the chana dal, because he can’t go too long without Indian food. This was also delicious, which was impressive considering we weren’t in an Indian restaurant! The beans were on a bed of really good rice, sprinkled with herbs, scallions, and cashews. Everything was just great.
Well, I thought I knew what great was, but then the dessert came. The man (I really should have gotten his name. Maybe it’s Karuzo? Robinson Karuzo it is) said he had a special ‘strawberry surprise’, a towering take on strawberry shortcake, with plain and chocolate-coated cake rounds, berries, and ridiculous vegan cream.
Strawberry surprise
I was astounded by the cream. My boyfriend joked “The surprise is that it’s not vegan!” but I was assured it was. This was so freaking amazing.
All in all, we had a great time at Karuzo. We expected it to take a really long time, and while it wasn’t quick, the service was fine. We talked with the owner about veganism and special diets for a while, and looked through his cookbook (which is available for sale). It’s a very cute restaurant, tiny and narrow, with perhaps seven tables lining the inside, and a handful outside. It’s decorated like an old ship, with dark wood, nets, maps, and other knickknacks. Also – it takes credit cards. Very few places in Bosnia do, so this was a huge benefit. Not that it was a huge problem here to come up with cash – for this kind of higher-level dining experience, it cost only 63 marks before tip, about 30 euro.
All in all, we had a great time at Karuzo. We expected it to take a really long time, and while it wasn’t quick, the service was fine. We talked with the owner about veganism and special diets for a while, and looked through his cookbook (which is available for sale). It’s a very cute restaurant, tiny and narrow, with perhaps seven tables lining the inside, and a handful outside. It’s decorated like an old ship, with dark wood, nets, maps, and other knickknacks. Also – it takes credit cards. Very few places in Bosnia do, so this was a huge benefit. Not that it was a huge problem here to come up with cash – for this kind of higher-level dining experience, it cost only 63 marks before tip, about 30 euro.
Karuzo, Sarajevo
- Water speed: We were given a big glass pitcher, which I love. Took a bit to get it refilled, but that’s understandable given the setup.
- Bathrooms: It’s down the stairs, past the small kitchen, and behind a birdcage (with a bird in it). I kind of love it.
- Service: Understandably slow, given that one man is doing literally every job, but not maddeningly so
- Food: Great! Especially dessert. Oh man.
- Bonus: Takes credit cards and has free wifi! Bring your smartphones!
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Happy Purim! Eat This Rhubarb Caramel Hamantaschen !
Hey it’s Purim! Last year it was better than Halloween; this year it’s better than Mardi Gras. (I learned that the latter is a more apt comparison because of the costumes or the food orrrr the time of year.) It feels like just yesterday when I shared the story of Purim on the blog. Since it would be silly to write a different version of the story, and also I’m tired, I’m going to share last year’s before we get to the new recipe.
[Purim is] about when King Ahasuerus got super drunk and ordered all the young ladies to line up so he could pick his favorite to be his wife, and he picked Esther, a Jew who didn’t let on that she was a Jew, who had been raised by her uncle Mordechai, which is a name that you always have to say with the required Yiddy question mark at the end. So the king’s Jafar, named Haman, decides to kill all the Jews, but then Esther tells her hubsking, ‘Hey I’m Jewish! You can’t kill the Jews!’ and the King is all ‘Oh man you are right! Jafar Haman get thee gone! You are evil! We are going to celebrate this holiday by making delicious cookies in the shape of your three-cornered hat! I don’t know why the celebratory traditional food should be in the villain’s honor, but there we are!’ So that is Purim.
It still stands. So, I wanted my hamantaschen this year to have a fruit filling, but fruit in London is too expensive for me to waste by cooking and then putting in cookies so I used jam. In hindsight, my decision to open the fancy jar of rhubarb preserves that we bought in Paris and have been saving seems a little more extravagant than buying fruit that’s 20c more than I want to pay, but eh it’s a holiday and I’m permitted to have some errors in judgment. You can make your own jam if you want to be a baller about it but ain’t nobody got time for that.
This year’s batch capitalized on the coconut caramel I made for a test run of vegan Samoa (Girl Scout) cookies that didn’t get thick enough. So, not good enough for my Samoas, but perfect for this! Last year’s dough was puffier and a little sweeter. I changed up the dough a bit to make it a little denser and a little less sweet. Pick whichever you want, but I highly recommend making both fillings, last year’s rosewater baklava and this year’s rhubarb caramel. Yummm!
This year’s batch capitalized on the coconut caramel I made for a test run of vegan Samoa (Girl Scout) cookies that didn’t get thick enough. So, not good enough for my Samoas, but perfect for this! Last year’s dough was puffier and a little sweeter. I changed up the dough a bit to make it a little denser and a little less sweet. Pick whichever you want, but I highly recommend making both fillings, last year’s rosewater baklava and this year’s rhubarb caramel. Yummm!
RHUBARB CARAMEL HAMANTASCHEN
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For the dough
Ingredients:
Directions:
For the caramel
Directions:
ASSEMBLY
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 Yes this is last year’s pic but I didn’t have a good starter and also the bowls are so much prettier.  Balls o’ dough! And my little pink recipe book.  Roll out your dough on parchment paper for an easier time! Also have more surface area than I do.  My circles  My beautiful? caramel sauce    I put the extra sauce in a squeeze bottle because so fun! |
“Vegwells” Supper Club: Tredwells Joins the “Plant-based” Menu Craze in London & Straight Kills It
The renowned restaurant Tredwells, in the Seven Dials area of the West End (close to “Matilda”!), has joined the happy trend of mainstream restaurants doing special-night plant-based supper clubs. And yes, they do mean vegan. Calling their one-night-a-month supper club “Vegwells” to be adorable, Tredwells in their attempt this past Monday has lept ahead of the competition. I’d expect nothing less from a restaurant of Marcus Wareing, the celebrity chef with the two-Michelin starred restaurant in Knightsbridge (remind me to look into whether that one is vegan-friendly too, and thus a candidate for the Vegan Michelin series). So I just googled Marcus Wareing and was like ‘hmm why is he sooo familiar looking’ and realized it’s because he was on an episode of Masterchef that Husbo P and I watched during our short but EMBARRASSING hate-fueled obsession with that terrible addictive af show. Anyway, the Tredwells chef, Chantelle Nicholson, has created this ‘plant-based’ supper club to highlight the magic that can unfold when you focus on good, sustainable ingredients. As the author of an apparently vegan (!!) cookbook called Planted, she seemed up to the challenge of impressing me with this meal. Spoiler, she did.
Chef Chantelle spoke at the start of the meal, which is when I realized that like a true supper club, every table in our basement room was part of this special night and we were all going to be served the same courses at the same time. I like that! It made it seem extra special and like a real event. I am pretty sure this was the first edition of this new version of their supper club, which will be held on the last Monday of every month and must be booked (and paid for) in advance. I am not sure how often the menu will change, but given the restaurant’s dedication to sustainability, seasonality, and innovation, I assume that it will be different each time. Although if the desserts wanted to stay the same, I would be happy.
The concept focuses on five ‘plant-based’ courses, and I was assured that everything was vegan. I’m always nervous when places use the phrase ‘plant-based’ (more on that later), so even when someone tells me it’s all vegan, a part of me never really is certain. Well, thanks to Chef Chantelle’s welcome speech, I was finally at ease, because she mentioned how they were using fun new ingredients like ‘the water from chickpeas’. GIRL I almost screamed! High caliber chefs embracing the magic of aquafaba (remind me to ask her if she’s familiar with this name for it) (I’m asking you to remind me of a lot of things but like it’s in writing now so don’t worry) makes me so happy. And I figured, if they’re using aquafaba, I’m pretty sure that means everything is vegan.
Our waitress was very sweet, and after I quickly and repeatedly emptied my small-to-medium (it wasn’t a thimble, but I downed it in a sip) water glass, I said ‘would it be possible to get a pitcher? I think it would be easier for all of us’ and she laughed and brought me one so huzzah.
The concept focuses on five ‘plant-based’ courses, and I was assured that everything was vegan. I’m always nervous when places use the phrase ‘plant-based’ (more on that later), so even when someone tells me it’s all vegan, a part of me never really is certain. Well, thanks to Chef Chantelle’s welcome speech, I was finally at ease, because she mentioned how they were using fun new ingredients like ‘the water from chickpeas’. GIRL I almost screamed! High caliber chefs embracing the magic of aquafaba (remind me to ask her if she’s familiar with this name for it) (I’m asking you to remind me of a lot of things but like it’s in writing now so don’t worry) makes me so happy. And I figured, if they’re using aquafaba, I’m pretty sure that means everything is vegan.
Our waitress was very sweet, and after I quickly and repeatedly emptied my small-to-medium (it wasn’t a thimble, but I downed it in a sip) water glass, I said ‘would it be possible to get a pitcher? I think it would be easier for all of us’ and she laughed and brought me one so huzzah.
The first course was a little jar of mushroom mousse that sounds weird but was great. The caramelized shallots seemed to be concentrated at the bottom, which I didn’t know, so my last few bites were a little too full of them, and the pickled mushrooms were big ole strips to be eating out of a tiny jar with a teaspoon. But those are just little quibbles because this was hella delicious. I’d be happy eating that again.
Course 2 was avocado, lemon, and kohlrabi, which the chef said was her idea of summer in a dish. And it was very summery and bright, and I was glad to have something fresh and refreshing, even though it wasn’t anything revolutionary. You always need something to break up heavier foods and stronger flavors.
For the main course, we were served a chickpea panisse, which is a fried chickpea flour cake kind of thing from the south of France. If you know me, you know I’m obsessed with chickpea flour and run out weekly because I make socca probably too often. It’s the best stuff and there are endless ways to use it. So I was excited to get it as my main, especially since that meant at least a little bit of protein. It’s rare to see someone at one of these ‘plant-based’ shibangs give us more than vegetables, so I welcomed these sort-of frittery, sort-of cakey slabs heartily. I was also just happy that we got this dish because the other ‘plant-based’ item on their restaurant’s regular sample menu was grilled cauliflower, and you know what happens when a restaurant tries to give vegans a slab of cauliflower as a meal (I burn it down). The socca fingers (new name) were very good and not super dry like mine always are. They were served with grilled onions (a few too many/too big for my taste), mint salsa, and very thin slices of whatever white veg that is, fennel maybe? Good stuff.
As good as all the savory dishes were, dessert brought everything to a whole nother level. I know what you’re thinking: um, y’all crazy. Dessert on ‘plant-based’ menus at non-vegan restaurants are universally tragic. They’re always futile attempts that show zero awareness of what vegans want (they always seem to be trying to be low-sugar or healthy or whatever and you’re like I’m eating out at a restaurant do you think that’s what I’m here for?). But against all odds (take a good look at me nowwww), dessert at Tredwells was the best freaking part. These little jars of deconstructed strawberry meringue pie were astounding. It was one of the best desserts I’ve ever had, and probably the best in the Non-Chocolate category. Simply sublime. It actually made me giddy (probably the sugar rush) and I started acting a little loopy and I shouted “ANOTHER ROUND GOOD SIR” and husband was sooo embarrassed but I wasn’t because I wanted more. Like Jon Lovitz and his rock shrimp ravioli, I could have eaten 100 of these. Man alive I really want to have this again. They had to have used aquafaba for the meringue, which was a little more mousse-y and not as stiff as you’d expect if it was on a pie, but considering it was all in a little jar it worked for that form. The strawberries were perfect, and that scorched surface was gorgeous. LOVES IT!
I also loved the second dessert! Yes we got a second dessert that was also wonderful! Screw every other ‘plant-based’ menu! This was toasted hazelnut pudding with hazelnut caramel, just out of the oven so the waiters warned everyone not to touch the dish (I did of course because they said not to and it was extremely hot even ten minutes later). The pudding-y cake was great itself (I didn’t really see where the caramel came into play? it was probably mixed in maybe) but what made this dish was the dark chocolate sorbet on top. The little discs of sorbet were extra extra frozen, so that when it was first served, you literally could not cut into the sorbet with a spoon. They were softened by the heat of the cake! So they slowly melted a little and would mix into the hazelnut pudding and it was so lovely and delicious and I was very very full and very very happy. You know how many ‘plant-based’ menus we’ve tried in London and elsewhere over the years – have you EVER seen a place provide two incredible desserts (besides Alinea?) like this? I can’t think of anywhere right now and I’m impressed.
So yes, you’ll notice I’ve been using ‘plant-based’ in quotes allatime because I forking hate that phrase, especially when the user is using it instead of vegan. I’ve said in lots of posts (and probably ranted to you in person if we know each other (and on twitter) (and instagram) (complaining is my jam)) why it is problematic, but for a quick refresher: Plant-based is not a real term. Businesses, including restaurants, pop-ups, AND companies selling regular supermarket goods have been using the phrase – for a while now – to mean anything based on a plant. Meaning, when I found a protein bar at the grocery store that screamed “Plant-based!” on the box and I went to check the ingredients, it contained milk and egg. Its first two ingredients were oats and apples – so it was “plant-based” in the truest in-quotes meaning possible. Bless their f-ing hearts, it was founded on plant materials, I guess they were saying, but they added non-plants to it and no one can do shit about it because who is defining ‘plant-based’? Honestly, to me it makes more sense, to get into the semantics of the word ‘based’, that it would mean something that is centered on plants but not 100% entirely made of plants. Like how movies are ‘based on the true story’ or ‘based on the book’ but are never exact copies. They’re just based on it. And I realize that mainstream companies do this because using the word ‘vegan’ would scare away potential nonveg customers – but would it really? Is there any evidence that Joe Spare Ribs wouldn’t try the new vegan menu if it said Vegan at the top but he would if it said ‘Plant-Based’?
And this rant, and be sure that I’m always going to make this rant (see, e.g., my review of Plates) is a little unfair to put on this review, because the chef and staff at Tredwells seem much more amenable to using the V word than others; I mean the chef even has a vegan cookbook. But, it’s messy to me that they commit so hard to the phrase that it informs the code for their regular menu – V means vegetarian, but P-B is used for plant-based. That’s not a very commonsensical code for vegans to look for on a menu. I see that on a menu, I think there’s peanut butter in there and they’re coding it to warn the peanut allergy sufferers, but then, as a fanatic lover of peanut butter, I would do my peanut butter dance and order every peanut butter thing on the menu and so when it turns out it was all the vegan stuff I would, well I would be fine but disappointed because hot damn I love peanut butter. You get what I’m saying. I’m joking yes but it is a wee bit unintelligible for something that is supposed to easily inform customers, especially since vegans are probably the ones looking for the plant-based items. People just trying to eat more vegetables but without real restrictions can use the common sense skill of reading item names without needing a code. I would never think to look for p-b next to a dish name to see if it’s ok for me. And I’ve never seen that before anywhere, so it seems like bending over backwards to avoid using the v word. That kind of mental acrobatics is a big turn-off and I wish people would just embrace the word vegan, especially as ‘plant-based’ continues to get more and more bastardized by commercial ventures.
Aside from my requisite p-b rant (not peanut butter) (I know you thought I meant peanut butter right), the experience at Vegwells supper club was a real treat. Everything was delicious and some dishes were extraordinary. I have no idea how they will top these desserts but I believe in them. And I’ll let you know, because I will definitely be going back.
Tredwells “Vegwells” Supper Club, London, England, United Kingdom, Europe for right now
Water speed: I was happy to get a pitcher so I didn’t have to worry about it, but before that, the waiters did a good job filling the water glasses of normal people and their normal drinking speeds.
Service: Overall very nice. It was really hard to get the bill at the end (we paid before, as I said, but you had to pay for service and any drinks you got at the end) because everyone was finishing at the exact same time, so I wish next time you could just pay for service beforehand too, like we did for Plates and others.
Bathrooms: Around the corner so you pass a little window into the kitchen on the way. Fine, clean individual doors marked separately for men and women.
Food: Fantastic! And we’re getting closer and closer to getting sufficient protein at these things! Sun’s out guns out!
Bonus: Amazing desserts! Like seeing a double rainbow.
Water speed: I was happy to get a pitcher so I didn’t have to worry about it, but before that, the waiters did a good job filling the water glasses of normal people and their normal drinking speeds.
Service: Overall very nice. It was really hard to get the bill at the end (we paid before, as I said, but you had to pay for service and any drinks you got at the end) because everyone was finishing at the exact same time, so I wish next time you could just pay for service beforehand too, like we did for Plates and others.
Bathrooms: Around the corner so you pass a little window into the kitchen on the way. Fine, clean individual doors marked separately for men and women.
Food: Fantastic! And we’re getting closer and closer to getting sufficient protein at these things! Sun’s out guns out!
Bonus: Amazing desserts! Like seeing a double rainbow.
