Lucky Leek, Berlin: Fantastic Fancy Food With A Few Minor Hurdlesby Randi / September 18, 2014
This is the menu lolol
Another fantastic restaurant in Berlin is Viasko, ostensibly a bar or pub depending on what country you live in (I will call them bubs now) but with really interesting and delicious – and all vegan – food. You’d assume such bar food would be fried shit and what nots, but the menu is a tad nicer and more upscale than the usual bar fare of fried shit and what nots (or just plain gross salads for vegans). I’ve heard you have to go for the buffet brunch (buffet brunch is HUGE in Berlin – we’ll look at one this weekend), but I can recommend going for a really fun dinner with the ambiance of a chill bub. We sat in the basement, which was dimly lit with candles among the all wooden plank furniture. It had a very pirate ship vibe, which is totally fitting because today is apparently Talk Like a Pirate day, the celebration of which will probably get you smacked.
I immediately felt fond of Viasko because printed inside the menus is this incredible Martin Luther King, Jr. quote:
what hideous signage!
Seriously how lovely is that. Ugh he was amazing.
Anyway, if I am not mistaken, this was our very first dinner in Berlin, so we ordered way too much food. Not that that’s really a reason. We were just hungry. I freely over-order in most situations. We started with appetizers of the mixed salad with tempeh and the jalapeno cheese sticks, so my favorite kind of dish ever (salad + tempeh) and the most revolting sounding thing ever (cheese sticks). Both were great!
Anyway, if I am not mistaken, this was our very first dinner in Berlin, so we ordered way too much food. Not that that’s really a reason. We were just hungry. I freely over-order in most situations. We started with appetizers of the mixed salad with tempeh and the jalapeno cheese sticks, so my favorite kind of dish ever (salad + tempeh) and the most revolting sounding thing ever (cheese sticks). Both were great!
Fried tempeh bits forever!
I loved this salad! I wish the lettuce and veggies were cut smaller; it helps me look less gross when I eat if stuff isn’t going to get all over my face. The fried tempeh nuggets were outstanding though. Fried tempeh nuggets are pretty hard to mess up; I’m pretty sure they are like falafel in that there is a very very limited quality range (never bad, always good, can’t really break the ceiling) but oh man, these were fantastic! The perfect addition to any salad and much better than croutons.
Cheese sticks & a big pepper
For the jalapeno cheese sticks, I guess we were expecting the cheesy sticks themselves to be spicy, but instead they surrounded a pepper. I’m sure they were intended to be spicy and the pepper was just there as well, but we were like, oh you just put the pepper on the plate separately, okay. They were interesting. I’m sure if you like fried cheese sticks, then you would love these, but they’re not my thing. Husband says they were good, so yeah I’m the worst person to review stuff like this. Try them and see, I guess.
Watch out for that arugula, gnocchi
Of course we ordered the homemade gnocchi with asparagus (spargel!) because of the spargel. It was delicious! Homemade gnocchi is the best. This dish was in a cashew-pumpkinseed-ramson (wild garlic) pesto with white and green spargel, cherry tomatoes, and arugula. The raw arugula should have been dialed back a little in favor of more spargel, but it was still great.
Bread and hummus are on this plate! Best plate ever!
I was told to get the gyro plate (by either a person or the internet) and I’m so glad I did! Look at that stuff! Anything with bread and hummus is a winner in my book already, but this added olives, some kind of decent kraut (Germany), cucumbers and tomatoes, and of course the delicious soy gyro meat. Granted, this should have come with a flatbread of some sort so you could turn all the components into an actual handheld gyro, but whatever, it was really yummy AND fellow diners got to see me try to make this all handheld anyway (all over the face).
So, I can definitely recommend Viasko for a really fun pub dinner. The atmosphere was great, the service was friendly if slow (we were in a basement), and the food was really fun and overall great. Also, it seemed very affordable. I’d love to go back for more fried tempeh cubes and to try its buffet brunch.
VIASKO, BERLIN
Water speed: Slow because we were in the basement.
Bathrooms: These bathrooms were standard bar/pub style (kind of gross) but decent for their ilk. The best part is that they are absolutely COVERED with stickers and graffiti for vegan-friendly bands, blogs, everything! I need stickers for my blog so I can put them all over bub bathrooms!
Service: Slow.
Food: Great!
Bonus: Great pirate atmosphere.
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Veganz, Berlin: If Heaven Had A Storefront…
Berlin is the home of Europe’s first all-vegan grocery store, Veganz, and it is definitely a must on any vegan’s to-do list. While it is chock full of really fun, and some hard-to-find, products, the stock is not necessarily rare or unique. But, the fact that you don’t have to check labels on anything makes this the fun stop it is. Also, all your favorite junk foods are in the same place!
Look at all of these plane snacks!!
Berliners are fortunate enough to have this vegan mecca, but guess what – there are two of them! There’s one store in Friedrichshain, of course, because that is Germany’s East Village for veganism, and one in Prenzlauer Berg. The stores are roughly the same. We actually went back and forth between the two a few times, especially when one didn’t have the soft-serve delivered yet. (I mean what???) But yes, you read right! Both Veganz stores house a cafe called Goodies, which sells cafe food, including bagel sandwiches, pastries, cookies, and vegan soft-serve ice cream! The soft-serve comes from a powder mix, like all addictive drugs, and sometimes it takes all day for that powder to be delivered, apparently, but it’s definitely worth trying because VEGAN SOFT-SERVE! It wasn’t very delicious by any stretch of the imagination, but come on, you can’t pass up trying vegan soft-serve.
Veganz has the most fantastic array of fun convenience foods, from vegan gummies of all sorts (including coke bottles!) to giant pink bags of Manner (which of course I bought and ate real fast). The store also has the greatest round up of daily essentials in the fridge and freezer, which definitely were hard to pass by as a visitor. If you are considering moving to Berlin, I would say that the opportunity to actually purchase these perishable items should put another check in the pro column. They have the European cheeses! Those are the good kinds, so they say! Look at all of that cruelty-free goodness!
Okay, so here is what I bought. Well, here is what made it home. Not everything I bought made it home. It’s like the perfect stop for all of your plane snacks.
As aforementioned, the giant pink bag of Manner is a must-buy. Manner is the greatest wafer cookie treat in the entire world if you don’t know. They sell it all over America in shitty little convenience stores, but it all contains milk in the USA. Ughhh! It makes no sense when the same product changes formula in different countries. Anyway, this one is obviously vegan, so stock up. Oh my lord Manner is the best.
Continuing from the left: That red/coconut Bonbarr was okay, but those purple/nougat Bonbarrs are REVOLTING. Oh my god, do not buy them. They taste like unsweetened baking chocolate that you left unwrapped in a dusty old pantry for so many years that all the current inhabitants of the house with said pantry don’t remember who you are. Don’t buy it.
That Oskri cashew-coconut-cereal bar was really yummy! I’ve loved all Oskri products that I’ve tried, but watch out when you find them in the wild because I think some have honey.
The Vivani black cherry bar is banging, though nothing can beat those cheap Cella chocolate covered cherries for me. But this was great.
Those biona cool cola bottles are just alright. The flavor is spot-on but the gumminess is lacking. It’s more like a soft candy that you’ll just bite through and be like whaat, where’s the gumminess? They sell them at As Nature Intended in London, FYI.
If you’ve never had Primal Strips, you need to go find them right now because they are a godsend for traveling vegans! My friend beanerschnitzel introduced me to them, and I am so grateful because they are amazing! They are soy, seitan, or mushroom-based (depending on the flavor) protein strips that are softer than traditional jerky and much more delicious (and much less disgusting in theory than dried meat). The Thai Peanut is my absolute favorite flavor; it is one of the seitan ones and has the perfect amount of spice and peanuttiness.
That White Chocolate Dairy-Free bar, whose brand name I can no longer make out, is great for baking and was pretty okay for regular eating, but who eats plain white chocolate anyway?
The Moo-free Caramelized Hazelnut Nibs bar is my favorite thing out of the whole gosh darn stash. This chocolate bar was one of the best I’ve ever had! It was just the perfect chocolate depth and the perfect nibby stuff on top. You can’t beat caramelized hazelnuts, so yeah, get a lot of these.
That Chocolate Donut Pastry near the top? That’s from the selection of refrigerated yummies that Veganz sells and it was REMARKABLE. It was like a hard donut that had a creamy filling and a crunchy cookie-like base inside all of that chocolate coating. I want another one very soon.
Baby food pouches are always welcome buys for me, and this apple banana one was yummy. I do prefer my travel baby food with a mix of veggies and fruit, but Veganz only had fruit.
Okay, the Stroopwaffels. These carmelly syruppy waffle cookies are ridiculously good! Oh my goodness I don’t know how to describe them. They are soft but not crumbly, more like softly glued together or something fantastic. And the sweetness isn’t just sugary, it’s like deep and caramelly and beautiful. These are amazing. Except the picture on the wrapper is misleading, because it looks like there are 10 or so cookies inside but there are only 6, so you are going along eating all these amazing cookies and thinking you have so many more before you will have eaten half the package, but then the whole thing is gone.
Amore Mio’s Chocolate Hazelnut treat thing was okay, a little unsubstantial and airy but good.
Fruit leather – no surprises there.
The Giant Gallon Bag of German Fruit Gummies was another of my favorites! Again, the lack of gelatin makes for a very interesting chewiness, in that your bite goes right through a little too easily. But, these tasted great and they are still vegan gummies so yay buy a gallon, why not!
The Nirwana Noir chocolate bar was very interesting. It’s a semisweet chocolate with a nut truffle filling, and as amazing as that sounds, I was surprised that I wanted it to be a little sweeter. Still, definitely worth trying.
That Naturata Stracciatella Kirsch white chocolate bar has the greatest concept and name, definitely, but like all white chocolate bases it was a little lacking in depth. The chocolate cherry bits were really yummy!
So that is Veganz! I hope this helps you decide what to buy. When it doubt, buy it all.
Veganizing “Friends”: Monica’s Kiwi Lime Pie
Ooh we’re finally making the famous kiwi lime pie! I know you kids are excited. As you will recall, in “The One With The Baby On The Bus”, Monica whipped up a lovely pie, and shared it with Chandler, Joey, and Ross. But after a few bites, Ross’s tongue started to swell up and he realized the delicious pie was trying to kill him:
Ross: Unnhh, unnnh, unnnnnhh.
Joey: You okay, Ross?
Ross: I don’t know. Unhhhh. What’s in this pie?
Monica: Oh, I don’t know, butter and eggs and flour and lime and kiwi…Ross: Kiwi? Kiwi?? You said it was a key lime pie.
Monica: No I didn’t, I said kiwi lime. That’s what makes it so special.
Ross: That’s what’s going to kill me.
Poor Ross! (Though his mangled final words are pretty damn hilarious.) So, we’re going to make kiwi lime pie! We’re going to use kiwi and lime and flour but of course not butter or eggs. Actually…we may not even use flour. It’s going to be as delicious as Monica’s but hopefully not as poisonous for any of you. Deal?
I’m going to start with a basic key lime pie, and then I’ll mix chopped fresh kiwi into the batter. Remember: If you are allergic to kiwi, leave it out. Don’t eat it. Relax. Don’t do it.
I’m going to start with a basic key lime pie, and then I’ll mix chopped fresh kiwi into the batter. Remember: If you are allergic to kiwi, leave it out. Don’t eat it. Relax. Don’t do it.
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SPECULOOS COOKIE CRUST
I mean, of course I’m using speculoos cookies, but you can use any graham crackers for the crust. INGREDIENTS:
DIRECTIONS:
KIWI LIME PIE
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 All our ingredients  “It’s hard to believe that just a little while ago this was nothing but ingredients” DIRECTIONS:
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Told you it made a lot! Overflow! (Almost)
This came out very nicely! It’s pretty delicious, and would be even better with whipped cream on top. Sadly, I don’t have any, but one day…one day. Enjoy!
Pac-Man Pie!!!! An homage to Chandler’s Ms. Pac-Man machine, perhaps?
Giveaway Trivia!!
- How does Ross get through the allergy shot?
- In this episode’s main story, Chandler & Joey leave Ben on the bus (!!) and have to pick him up at Human Services. The two idiots have to decide between two similar-looking babies, wearing onesies featuring what designs?
- In Phoebe’s storyline, she protests outside Central Perk for what reason?
- When Phoebe is playing outside, a stranger drops a condom in her guitar case. Who does that stranger turn out to be?
