Dubrovnik Vegan Scene: Moskar Konoba Restaurant

August 31, 2013

Seed, New Orleans: A Vegan Paradise & My Favorite in NOLA

September 3, 2014

Seed also has fun artwork for sale on the walls!

Seed, the wonderful vegan restaurant in New Orleans, uses a tag line that goes “Garden Based. NOLA Taste.” If you can get past this, you will undoubtedly love any meal here, unless you only get the mac & cheese.

Honestly, I have to thank the universe again. We ended up at my favorite restaurant in NOLA by pure dumb luck – and what we first considered misfortune. At about 8:30pm (not late in NOLA!) we decided to head out for dinner. Our three choices were 1) crazy hot dogs at Dreamy Weenies, 2) Killer Po’ Boys at the Erin Rose Pub, and 3) the restaurant I’ve heard nothing but raves about, Green Goddess. Well: 1) Dreamy Weenies closes at 9pm, 2) Killer Po’ Boys doesn’t operate at the pub on Tuesdays (the day it was), and 3) worst of all, we went to Green Goddess and saw this awful terrible no good sign:

ARE YOU F-ING KIDDING??? Is food some sort of JOKE to you Green Goddess, if that’s even your real name? We were there on like the 11th. That is a ridiculously long closure for something called a Decadence Festival. My goodness that is the lamest f-ing thing I have ever heard. (Actually I mean of course it sounds like the most amazing thing ever BUT F THAT NOISE NOW.)

Anyong, I am so disappointed that I didn’t get to eat here, but I’m hopeful that I’ll be back. Okay, enough sads. Thanks to the stupidest festival I’ve ever heard of, we got to eat at Seed, a more upscale restaurant that we were hoping to get to at some point during our trip. So yay! It closed at 10pm, so I called to make sure that arriving at 9:15 wouldn’t be too much of a problem, because I didn’t want our waiter to spit in our food. All the staff members were very nice and made us feel welcome. And, the meal was one of my absolute favorites in any city, really!

We weren’t even that hungry, but this was our one shot here and man alive did we order good. We started with the gumbo with added seitan, and it was fanfreakingtastic! Just absolutely perfect gumbo made from a traditional roux, with okra, peppers, collards, and mushrooms, with a lovely scoop of brown rice on top. It was so good! Oh man. I recreated a gumbo inspired by this dish that I’ll be sharing later this week.

Then, on the waiter’s suggestion (he said it was his favorite dish on the menu!) we got the southern fried tofu nuggets. Oh holy crap, these were uhhhhhhhmazing. So many h’s. The tofu was coated with chickpea flour and deep fried, naturally, with the agave mustard dipping sauce and oh my god it was just perfection deep fried on a plate. Even now, my omnivorous husband just said “That shit was phenomenal!”

We then tried our best to attack the mac & cheese side, which we of course had to try. The consistency was great, super creamy, but the flavor was a little bland. We added the mustard sauce from the nuggets into it, and that made it actually really good.

Next we tried to tackle the eggplant po’ boy, which was really yummy if a bit basic. The bread was a little unsubstantial, and the fillings (eggplant fried in cornmeal batter, some lettuce, red peppers, mushrooms and onions) needed some bulking up, but the taste was great. Definitely a sandwich I could eat regularly. It also came with a scoop of quinoa, which is a nice unexpected addition but I would love if it was some kind of vegetable instead. Seed loves its grain scoops!

We were so stuffed, but we had to have dessert because dum da da dummmm (trumpets) Seed is the only place in New Orleans (as far as I know/was told) that makes VEGAN BEIGNETS. Oh my goddddd. These were amaaaaazing. Little perfect fried doughnuts absolutely drenched in a bowl of powdered sugar. Oh man. They were so amazing that, after we devoured them, I started just eating the sugar in hopes that it would feel like more beignets. Also, husband had had the world-famous beignets at both Café du Monde and Café Beignet, and said they were pretty much the same. Yippee! I want more! We also tried the almond milk punch, which is bourbon, almond milk, vanilla, maple syrup, and nutmeg. A fantastic combination (especially without the bourbon)! This one, however, was the strongest drink ever! Whoever mixed it wanted us drizzunk. Crazy strong! I will totally make this kind of milk drink without the alcohol. So yummy!

This is the best picture I’ve ever taken.

So, if you are going to New Orleans, I would definitely recommend Seed. While I liked the po’ boy, I wasn’t blown away, and the menu is too stuffed with other great-sounding dishes to try it again. Better mac & cheese can be had elsewhere as well. But, go and go again for the gumbo, the unbelievable tofu nuggets, and the super important and VITAL beignets.

SEED, NEW ORLEANS
Water speed: I remember it being decent.
Bathrooms: Clean, very big single-serve room. I always wish that the big singles could be turned into two, but luckily there was no wait here (it was late).
Service: So nice! Everyone was very friendly and helpful.
Food: Overall, fantastic. Necessary for the beignets…and the nuggets…and the gumbo.
Bonus: BEIGNETS PEOPLE!

Final Meal of 2014: Excellent Food & Great Value at Manna, London

January 2, 2015

Thank goodness for Manna! It is, to be extremely lame and dorky, from heaven. For the most part.
Although England is where veganism was formed, where the Vegan Society was founded, and where like everyone cool wants to live, its biggest city is kind of weak when it comes to vegan food. It’s easy to be vegetarian here — restaurants still think it’s necessary to mark options that are ‘vegetarian’ instead of marking the much more necessary ‘vegan’ (seriously, you can tell from descriptions and names what is vegetarian, without fail). But, while there are many wonderful vegan options at omni restaurants, wonderful all-vegan restaurants are few and far between.
Despite the dearth, the all-vegan Manna, in Primrose Hill, London, would still be the best we have to offer even if tons of vegan restaurants existed here. The food is fantastic, mainly comfort food in large portions. So freaking good. And aside from a few service issues aaaaand a few kitchen hygiene issues (we’ll get there), there’s little else to complain about.

Husband and I ate at Manna on New Years Eve, when they offered a special set menu: 7 courses (5 legit, 2 more like extras), aperitifs, wine, coffee and tea, all for £54. That is a freaking steal under normal circumstances (especially on New Years Eve, when restaurants love to gouge you), and here even more so. The portions were enormous. After the canape and the soup, I was pretty happy. And then all the other courses came and mocked me with their size and deliciousness. It was crazy. Let’s look at it!

First, we were asked to choose a complimentary aperitif from the drinks menu. I asked for tap water, and please keep it coming. And then I figured well it’s included, might as well get our moneys worth and have husband finish mine. On the menu was a Calvados, an apple brandy from Normandy, served with apple juice. On our trip to Normandy a few years back, I actually liked Calvados – at least the more apple and/or pear-flavored kinds – and so I ordered that. It tasted like alcohol. But it was better than other alcohols.

The first food served, the canape, was a buckwheat blini topped with horseradish sour cream, beluga lentils, and beetroot caviar. I imagine that the taste of this bite is what Russians would be referring to whenever they say “this tastes like home.” It was bright and dilly and reminiscent of borscht with cold sour cream on top. So, yeah, Russian. It was pretty good, considering I always think I hate sour cream and dill kinds of things and I liked this.

“Like it! I could eat 100 of ’em!”

Next up was the delicious soup. As you may know, soup is pretty much my favorite thing, and not just because I am good at it. Manna’s offering was celeriac and fennel bisque (hehe bisque) topped with cream and roasted chestnuts. We didn’t get the whole ‘topped with cream’ thing, and we only found a few chestnut pieces when we reached the bottom of the bowl, but the soup was really delicious. It was perfectly salted and wonderfully simple. And it came with two small bread rolls! Yay bread!

Soup I love soup.

Big bowls of thick soup are pretty darn filling, but luckily we waited so. damn. long. until our next course came that we were hungry again. The waitstaff was getting confused between where we were in the meal and where the table next to us were. While we both started at about the same point, we were still at this post-soup point when our neighbors were finishing their main! That’s 3 courses away! So messed up! But like I said we did get hungrier so that’s good. And it wasn’t the food’s fault.

Finally, our ‘starter’ came, the tempeh cabbage rolls with miso sauce. I expected a cold kind of sushi-roll thing, but surprisingly these were warm, hearty rolls, with grilled cabbage holding tempeh and matchstick veggies that tasted like a standard Chinese stir-fry. They were hard to eat with your hands and harder to cut apart nicely with knife and fork, but I really enjoyed them.

Tempeh and miso are like my favorites

The salad, up next, was really lovely, despite the fact that I tend to stray from vinegar-y salads (or ‘bowls of lettuce’, as husband tends to call my unadorned…well…bowls of lettuce). Manna’s salad on offer was a complex mixture of an arugula base (which they call rocket in Europe becauseeee NASA?), roasted squash, sundried tomatoes, kalamata olives, and roasted pepitas in a sherry vinaigrette. Despite the vinegariness, I really enjoyed having an interesting and refreshing salad instead of my usual lettuce bowls. It was really good, especially with the warm squash addition. I used to hate olives but now I absolutely love them. It took a trip to Portugal when olives and bread were all I could eat for a few days. Now I’m all yay olives.

Warm squash should go in every salad.

Next we were given glasses of house organic wine. It tasted like alcohol.

hair today, gone tomorrow

The piece de resistance was next. Our main course was a mushroom stout pie with whole grain mustard champ (mashed potatoes with green onion, weird ass name) and braised kale. A lot of braised kale. And a lot of mash. It was quite the plate. The pie was pretty great, with a fantastic sturdy crust and lots of little mushrooms inside. It was all going swimmingly…and then I saw it. The beginnings of a hair coming out from the middle of the pie. I pulled and it was long and dark — my biggest restaurant fear. See, normally I’m the type of person who would report to waitstaff when there’s a hair or a bug or generally anything wrong. But if it’s a long dark hair, I tend to keep quiet out of the ridiculous fear that someone will say ‘WELL MAYBE IT’S YOURS!’ and I can’t deal with that possibility of someone thinking I’m not telling the truth. It happened first at Blossom in NYC. I was about to say GIMME NEW FOOD but then I had a flashing vision of the waiter saying “Maybe it’s yours?” and me peeing myself in frustration and embarrassment. It’s so messed up, I know. But I can’t help it. No feeling is worse than not being believed and I didn’t want to risk it so I just ate around it and omg I didn’t say anything until now. AHHHHHH. (And no, imaginary people in my head, it’s NOT mine, because unlike the people MAKING my food I always tie my hair back when EATING the food.) Anyway.

Luckily, dessert was up next. The hair incident made me a little nauseous but it was nothing a change of palette wouldn’t fix. They offered two options: a chocolate orange hazelnut delice or a coconut rice pudding brulee. Obviously, with two people, we got one of each, the only way to do things properly. Both were beyond words. Seriously. Probably the best desserts I’ve had in London so far that I didn’t make myself. The chocolate orange one was like a really thick fudge on top of graham-like crumbles that tasted exactly like a certain cereal from my childhood that I cannot recall, but I know I loved it. The vanilla ice cream on top may have been Swedish Glace but it worked so well with the dish. It was wonderful, as was the rice pudding. I normally require chocolate in my desserts but I actually preferred this one. The bruleed caramelly top was ridiculous and it didn’t even need the mulled cherries it came with. So creamy, so comforting, so delightful. I would love to eat this every day.

Apparently this was supposed to be like a Jaffa cake, but if you can believe it, I still haven’t had one.

Delicious rice pudding with a hidden foe.

When we picked up the gooseberry to split with one bite each, we noticed another unwanted villain in our midst. Another hair! This time small and lighter, hanging off the gooseberry. I mean. This means TWO people are to blame for poor kitchen hygiene. I actually think Manna should be investigated by the board of health now. I mean but the food is so good I can’t really say another worse about them. Like I still want to eat there because it’s the best vegan food in London!

Lastly, we were served coffee (for husband) and tea (fresh mint tea, gorgeous, for me) and – the best part – a plateful of cookies and truffles EACH. One plate would have been more than enough but one each was like the coolest thing ever. Even better, they offered to wrap up the extras (the entire second plate) for us to take home. Win! The cookies were a delightful end to a pretty spectacular meal, foodwise, though it left much to be desired in terms of what goes on behind the scenes.

MANNA, LONDON
Water speed: Poor but eventually gets there, which makes it the greatest water speed in London.
Service: See above. Service in England is notoriously bad. Luckily all the staff is super nice.
Bathrooms: Down the most awful set of stairs ever – seriously, it would be closer to normal if they took out every other step. You have to be very careful. But they are surprisingly nice for basement toilets.
Food: Wonderful comforting vegan food. Just watch out for hairs.
Bonus: Such a great value!