Dubrovnik Vegan Scene: Moskar Konoba Restaurant

Before our very eyes, Baltimore has up and become a veritable vegan paradise! Well, if you know where to look. In the coming weeks, we’ll look at a whole bunch of vegan-friendly and amazing places (you can keep track of destinations, and read more posts about Balmore, as the kids say it, in the DESTINATIONS tab), but today is all about my new favorite restaurant in Baltimore: a French-inspired (hence the word I’m about to use:) brasserie called L’Eau de Vie, with an interesting all-vegan menu, some stellar dishes, super friendly service, and — WAIT FOR IT — the best water service maybe EVER (see the regular Laughfrodisiac Restaurant Review end notes). I KNOW! If you’ll find yourself in Maryland’s favorite city (but not its capital! some trivia for you)(are capital cities ever the best cities of the state? no), you must pay this place a visit. If not, read along with us and I guess pretend you’re eating this food; I know I am doing that right now. 

L’Eau de Vie (which means The Shape of Water) (just kidding it’s The Water of Life, not a best picture winner OR a fish-f***ing movie) is a rather large and rather lovely waterfront space right between Harbor East and Fells Point. We walked there from Canton (look at me KNOWING SHIT) and it felt relatively safe and fine. And it’s easy to walk up Fells Point after for the nightlife if that’s the sort of thing you’re into. Me, I would just sit in the restaurant and eat the entire menu over and over, that’s the sort of thing I’m into, which, you’ll see, we tried to do. The staff was super lovely and the chef even came out to talk afterwards, which was a treat. I love talking to chefs pretending like I have any more sophisticated food thoughts in my brain than “please I have moar?” or “IT WAS SO GOOD”, but we had a nice chat. Their plats du jour, which is what I had ordered for my main (you’ll see boyyyys (you’ll see! the beauty of a studioooo that let’s us do our work and get paaaaid)(TAKE THE DEAL, ROGER)), will most likely change seasonally to reflect the best of what’s available and you know the weather and what people like to eat when it’s hot or cold out I mean you know what seasonally means.

Okay so the food, let’s get down to it. Between four of us, we ordered approximately 34 dishes. No that’s jokes but we had plenty, and it was RG (real good). We had enough that I had a sandwich leftover for our flight the next day! That’s my favorite kind of leftover. For appetizers, we ordered: the caesar salad, the mushroom pate, the seitan Rockefeller, and the pretzel bites. Let’s give each their due. 

Let’s get the low point out of the way first, and it wasn’t even a low point, just underwhelming. With a little bit of luck work (My Fair Lady is next week’s show!), it could be stellar so hopefully some tweaks can be made. (“t-w-e-a-k-i-n-g tweaking, sounds like…he’s married” anyone?) The Caesar salad needs work. They need to double the amount of Romaine, and triple the amount of garlic-almond dressing, plus add some salt to the dressing and some more of the nut base for heft, and that’ll be great. It was too small and too nothing – there was barely any taste except plain raw garlic, which yes I love that but that’s not a Caesar. 

The mushroom pate, on the other hand, was wonderful, and all three of my omnivore companions loved it, maybe even more than I did! I liked that it came with chip points because they were sort of like a cross between crackers and pita and tortilla chips and I love all those things. Any hesitation we had from the Caesar flavor(lessness) was nullified by the perfectly balanced taste of the pate.

The seitan Rockefeller, which means richest seitan in the world, was stellar, one of my faves. Maybe it’s just because I always love seitan, and they make their own in-house (you can even buy pounds of it ‘raw’ to cook at home! There’s a fridge case!). The Rockefeller sauce was delicious. It’s a super green sauce, filled with herbs and possibly spinach, and I love how fresh and strong it tasted. The pickled veg on the side was unnecessary; maybe a few actual pickles (in the American sense) would be better (or – you know what I always want – a small salad), or just roast the veg (or potato wedges!), since these root veg shapes were meh. but they were the garnish so no real complaints. The actual dish, the seitan, was great.

The last of the appetizers was my favorite thing of the whole meal, and so good I almost cried. I’m just SO PLEASED. These are the pretzel bites with spicy beer cheese, a play on the movie theatre and ballpark staple of my childhood. You all know how important it is to me that milkshakes are thick (thin milkshakes are just milk and they are an abomination to the phrase and to my existence if we wanted sweet milk we would buy a carton of Alpro chocolate soy for $1) but equally important to me is the quality of soft pretzels. It is hard impossible to find decent soft pretzels in England (so I make my own (“I’m 100% that bitch”)), especially coming from the city that perfected them (Philly). I did not expect these soft pretzel bites to be some of the most perfect soft pretzels of any size or form I’ve EVER had. The texture, the bite, the chewiness, the flavor, it was all heavenly. Literally almost cried. How did she do it? HOW? Teach me your secrets! They’re amazing. And the beer cheese? STOP. It was INSANE. Oh my god this was the best dish ever and you need to go to Baltimore and order it and find out how she made both components because they made like a Vedge-worthy dish. UNBELIEVABLE. I want pretzels and I didn’t raise any dough today DAMMIT.

For our mains, the three of them ordered sandwiches which I found hilarious but it was smart because sandwiches are some of the best food on the planet; Joey Tribbiani would never steer us wrong. (On my 115th rewatch, he’s probably the best character too.) And I ordered a terrific plat du jour. Between us we shared:

• the BL-TBD panini: tofu-bacon, lettuce, apple, and herb mayo
• the grilled seitan sausage reuben: their housemade seitan-sausage, sauerkraut, cashew cheese, thousand island dressing
• the double-decker sandwich: tofu-bacon, seitan-sausage, cashew-cheese, hyphen-overload, herb mayo, lettuce, apple

And my plat du jour of the herb mushroom crepes, with seitan-filled crepes, creamy herb mushroom sauce, and a baby spinach salad. (Did I get it just because it came with more salad? No! Not entirely.) We also added sweet potato fries on the side of one of the sandwiches.

The crepes were by far my favorite, and for the first time I felt like I did the best ordering. I always feel order envy and regret but not tonight! I never have crepes, just not usually my thing, maybe because of Ricky Bobby, but these were incredible. The seitan cubes were great but that mushroom sauce was real French restaurant perfection. It was saucier than it appears in the picture but I would have appreciated a little cup of more of the sauce just because man alive it was so good. I want that now too! Writing about food before dinner is rough! 

The sandwiches were all good, but the seitan-sausage Reuben won the day for I think everyone. We have had our fair share of Reubens since vegan Reubens are also on my Very Important Food list, and usually I’m partial to tempeh-based ones. But this was GREAT. Inside shot:

The grilling really made it sing, and the combo of the sausage and the cheese and the sauerkraut was just right. SO GOOD.

I also liked the other two. The tofu-bacon, lettuce, apple, and herb mayo one felt very springy and fresh, and grilling it (it was also a panino) really made it work, especially with the fresh apple in there. The double-decker was good but I’m not a huge fan of an extra slice of bread in the middle of a sandwich so that’s purely just not my order. And this bread needed to be toasted; I think that would have been better. It was a little dry too, so a lot more of the mayo and cheese is definitely needed.

So that was our dinner at L’Eau de Vie, and despite my few bits of constructive criticism, it was sublime. It was pretty great all around, with some dishes spiking to absolutely amazing, making this my fave restaurant in the city and my #1 Must Return To If I’m Ever In Baltimore Again I Mean Surely I Must Be At Some Point Right restaurant. I highly recommend a visit!

L’Eau de Vie Organic Brasserie, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Water speed: Our waitress was probably the fastest shot in the West with her pitcher of water. She would refill our glasses before they were even halfway through; it’s like she saw me coming and it was amazing. We were all in awe of her water skill. This sounds poss sarcastic but I’ve never been more serious; you know I need my water.
Service: Really nice and friendly! 
Bathrooms: Big, clean, nice single serves. 
Food: Overall great, some incredible. Would love to return. 
Bonus:  An all-vegan restaurant with quality French dishes? making their own seitan? with juices and smoothies and all kinds of my favorite things??? The best!