Veganizing “Friends”: Joey’s (AND ONLY JOEY’S) Fried Clams

   Before we get into the important food-related stuff, let’s acknowledge how difficult it is for me to leave the title like that. But that’s actually what this new amazing restaurant is named and how it is written: Charlie was a sinner. With the period. I love it! But even more, I love the place. It’s the new all-vegan bar from one of Philly’s favorite young restaurateurs, Nicole Marquis of HipCityVeg fame and general wonderingment. Charlie is a swanky, dimly lit, old-Hollywood inspired bar with a creative, upscale menu both for drinks and for small plates. Even early in the run, almost everything I tried was wonderful. 

   Each time I ate at Charlie, my table began with a toast starter called Our Ricotta, which is a dip made from tofu, agave, black pepper, and olive oil and served with fantastic toasted bread. Internet vegans are seriously divided over this faux-ricotta, because it is kind of just whipped tofu and everyone’s like, oh I can make something more interesting than this. The crazy thing is, when I’ve shared this with dairy-cheese-eating omnivores, they’ve loved it! Omnis love the ricotta more than tofu-loving vegans! Anyway, yes it is extremely subtle and maybe boring for some people, but I like subtle (and sometimes I like things on the blander side) and it was lovely. 

      Another item I can’t help but order every time I’m there is the Maryland-style crab cake sliders, which I think is Charlie’s best item. I suggest you also get at least 2 orders (per person) because they only come with two little magical sliders, and they are usually on the happy hour menu (so, for only $4 or so). So get at least a few because they are indeed magical. The zucchini-based patties have the perfect flavor, definitely evoking a crab cake but not fishy or faux-fishy in the slightest. They’re lightly fried (I assume) but not at all greasy. The little semolina rolls somehow melt in your mouth. They are so soft and buttery but not in the gross usual Wonderbread way. Just outstanding. 

    Various sorts of tacos are also common happy hour staples, with one decent soft taco for $3. I’ve tried both the mushroom and the squash, and even though mushrooms are one of my top 4 foods, the squash taco is much more interesting. 

    In the summer, you couldn’t go wrong with the heirloom tomato salad anywhere, and Charlie’s was delicious. I am not the biggest fan of raw tomatoes, but heirloom tomatoes at the height of their season? Amazing. It was a seasonal special, so I suggest you order whatever is in season when you go. The salad mixed fresh tomatoes with soft peaches, arugula, and some kind of candied crunchy nut. So delicious! 

   I can also recommend the stunning fresh fig salad, which is on the regular menu. It mixes the figs into a watercress salad with a vanilla bean vinaigrette. Who even thinks of basing a salad dressing around vanilla bean? Super impressive. 

     Less impressive but not bad was the pappillote of baby fennel, a beautiful smelling and looking soup of tofu, fregola sarda (my favorite Italian grain), and the common stew vegetables. It arrived wrapped in ballooning plastic that was cut by the server very dramatically, and it was all very exciting and nice, but the taste was lacking. It needed a heavy dose of salt – and I usually am extremely sensitive to salt in my food. I would stick to the more fancy bar-type foods that are easier to eat and save the Italian soups for Italian restaurants. 

     A surprisingly great mocktail on offer is the spicy pineapple, which blends the fruit with agave, lime, and cayenne. Wonderful! I love that they have interesting mocktails on the menu; more places need to do that. 
     I obviously know that if you are visiting Philly, you have too many fantastic vegan options than you know how to handle. But if you are looking for a fancy-looking place with a great vibe, nice service, and wonderful food, try to get to Charlie was a sinner.. (I added an extra period I think that’s right.) 

CHARLIE WAS A SINNER., PHILADELPHIA
Water speed: What’s my favorite thing, people? Glass water bottles on the table. They even had herbs in them! 
Service: Very nice! 
Bathrooms: Two fancily decorated and enormous singles. 
Food: Delicious small plates so you can try a lot, especially during the crazy good happy hour specials. 
Bonus: Great cocktails and mocktails, happy hour specials, chickpea fries. 

Hello friends!! Today we have a guest post! How exciting is that! Did you even know we could HAVE guest blogs on Laughfrodisiac? Because I didn’t! But I like this idea – I do very little work – so if you are interested in writing a guest piece, please email me at the link at the top right corner. I do still get to write the headlines as you can see. The W stands for WIN. Anyway, today’s amazing piece comes from Cara W., a dear friend of mine who is also the best short story writer you’ll probably ever read in your entire life, so I’m a little hesitant to post this because you’ll prob be like ‘damn she is much better she should take over the site.’ And no her real name is not Alice Munro but I can see why you’d think that! 

Cara brings us her own take on a cauliflower soup recipe. Her take means she removes the garlic and tries to make up for it in other ways. I KNOW! We are very different in that regard because as you know I have eaten 5 types of garlic in one dish. But this is nice for all of my vampire readers out there. I can’t believe that I haven’t posted a recipe of my own in over a year (!!) (too busy eating at amazing restaurants?) so thanks to Cara for easing us back into this section of the site! Obviously I do not have the self-restraint to let someone else talk without me interrupting (have you MET me) (could I BE any more interrupty?) so when you see bracketed comments in italics in the body below, that’sa me! Mario! It’ll look like this [it’s me! Mario!​]. ​So thank you Cara and, readers, enjoy! 

​So, I am not as amazing as our fearless vegan leader and blogger, Ms. Laughfrodisiac herself, [correct she is more amazing and is also the first person to spell the site name correctly wow​] and I’ve actually never been adamantly vegan or even casually vegetarian in my life. Instead, I do the far too common thing of over-analyzing calories and obsessing over sugars versus carbs versus proteins. I fall into diet fads and once even tried to straight green juice it for a month–CLEANSE ME YOU MAGICAL GREENERY!! (This is actually a really great story that ended pretty dramatically with emergency gallbladder removal, but I digress.) [holy crap, you need to tell us this story. Next guest post?! THE DANGERS OF DETOX BULLSHIT.] The point is, I admire our blogger’s fearless dedication to do no harm and to love all around her and am often quite jealous of her food voyages and the seriously wide variety of foods she gets to experiment with. Now that she lives across the proverbial pond, I guess I sort of felt like I should try to fill Southeastern Pennsylvania’s Veganess Void by attempting to prepare the following amazing recipe for Cauliflower Soup.

I know it sounds gross. Cauliflower seems to be a divisive vegetable; my sisters despise it while my mother and I devour it. So when this recipe popped up on my Pinterest home page (or whatever you kids call it, is it a dashboard?), I just had to try it.

​I am not historically well-known for my cooking skills. In fact, until a few years ago, I despised cooking. Everything about it grossed me out and made me nervous. You mean *I* have to literally saute the onions and decide how much salt and pepper to add for spice?!?!? What happens when the onions turn black? I remember those mini-panic-attacks with fondness now. Starting in late April of 2014, after battling a nearly month long craving for buttercream frosting, I decided I’d research recipes for frosting and made some kick-tushy double chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting for a friend’s work gathering. They were the hit of the party and I basically started an obsession with cooking and baking from that moment on. 

​Cauliflower Soup really does a good service for the saying “Less is More” and also for the idea that you don’t actually need cream for a soup to taste bisque-y [lolol this is a treat for my PPKers out there. the filter will never die​]. It is FULL of flavor and also very comforting warmth for these 7 degree winter days. [WHY IS IT STILL SO COLD I AM SHIVERING CARA MAKE ME SOUP.]

Some Cara Thoughts on Carrots:
I despise carrots. I have no idea why, but starting maybe 5 years ago, I started to think that carrots taste like people. [ . . . ] I realize this makes little to no sense, and I’ve been laughed out of a number of cocktail party conversations by bringing this bizarre personal, uh, quirk to light, but hey, I swear to you: If people were a thing that people ate, I like, am 99.8907% certain the dish would be a little carrot-y tasting. I know it’s weird, but I tend to avoid carrots in all forms, and am particularly frightened of them in their cooked form, so uh, it’s weird that I decided to make this recipe, as there are cooked carrots. BONUS: you really can’t taste them.
​

​Some Cara Thoughts on Garlic:
Call me Edward Cullen, but I actually hate garlic, too. I know, I know, you’re probably thinking, “Cara, how could you study abroad in Italy and hate garlic?” or the more common, “Cara, how can you possibly enjoy good food if you hate garlic?” but here’s my stock response: whatever you love about garlic, I guarantee I can create with a nice mix of sweet onions, shallots, and fresh spring onions. (Seriously guys, garlic is icky. It tastes like burnt. And it makes me breathe fire. Can’t we just move on from this? Call it a fad (of the past million centuries)? Bring on some more varieties of onions? Eh?) [BUT I LOVE FIREBREATHING​.]
​

​When I wanted to make this recipe, I asked my mom to grab some of the ingredients from the store. She didn’t. I found out why: my mom had read the recipe all the way through, and it requires a food processor. We do not have one of those new fangled machines, so Sheila, in all her wisdom, just didn’t buy any of the ingredients for the soup and also didn’t explain to me why. [LOL Sheila this is amazing.​] [Also I don’t have a food processor either! I make do with the good blender and with the little crappy 1/2 cup processor bowl that comes with the immersion blender.​]
​

While at the store, I learned that coconut oil is very expensive [Indian grocery stores for the win!], and also that my locally owned grocery store (with a checkered past, one of its founders was murdered several years ago and the crime remains UNSOLVED, it’s like all we have for intrigue around these parts) sees it as reasonable to put coconut milk in like 102398098 different locations throughout the establishment. Which I guess is good for disorganized shoppers (like me) but also confusing for others, especially those who want to price compare because MAN is there a disparity between Goya’s coconut milk and the Thai label coconut milk. Sheesh. Marketing.

Inspired by ​http://shrinkingkitchen.com/creamy-cauliflower-soup/ 

Ingredients:

• ​1 large head of cauliflower
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 large carrots, diced
• 1 tbsp of jarred SHALLOTS
• 1 bunch of diced spring onions
• 3 cups water
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup coconut milk (unsweetened)

Instructions: 

1. Wash and core the cauliflower. Although Cara did not core her cauliflower, because she had no idea what that meant. It did not affect the turnout.
2. Heat a large pot over medium-high heat and add the oil, then add the onions, carrots, and onion-y deliciousness that is standing in for garlic. Cook and stir with a wooden spoon about five minutes, until they’re soft and golden. I did not use a wooden spoon, and, still, the soup came out delicious. 
3. Add the cauliflower and cook until it starts to brown. Please note, seriously the cauliflower isn’t going to BROWN really, it’s cauliflower. Just don’t burn it. I trust you will know when it’s time to add the water. You’re not dumb. 
4. Add the water and bring to a boil. Then reduce to a simmer, and cover, and cook until the vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes.
5. Add in coconut milk, sea salt, and pepper.
6. Puree soup in a high speed blender or with an immersion blender. 

Despite the hilarious thirty minute attempt my sister and I had at reassembling an old food processor, neither she nor I could actually make it happen. We did try though. So instead I just poured the mixture into the blender, hit puree, and the rest is history. Everyone in my family adored this soup and right now I am craving more. No, seriously. I’m going to hit “send” and then heat up my leftover bowl. OMG THIS SOUP.
 
Yay Vegans. Yay soup. YAY! [yay!​]