Eugenius! in London: Silly Good Fun for a Necessary Breakby Randi / October 18, 2018
Apparently Cork is a city; I had to look it up because I was about to call it a little town (it’s a quiet village). But it’s a lovely little place and an easy town (village) (city?) to see when visiting a wider swath of Ireland and especially en route to the countryside (which is the best part of Ireland). I was there for the weekend recently to speak at the Indie Cork Film Festival, an annual autumn event that I recommend going to if you’re in town. Hooray for independent film and lovely Irish people who pronounce it ‘fillum’ (LOVES IT). I was also there three years ago (!) during a visit to the countryside of County Cork and so will be mixing information (food) about both trips herein. Try to guess which info is from which trip! What a fun game!
Gray and rainy along the River Lee
First of all, arriving in Cork from a city like London, especially a city with a giant mall-airport like Heathrow, is adorable. Cork airport is a wee bebbeh, which means the lines at the car rental desks will probably include your entire plane. And if you are going out of the city, you need a car. So just budget time accordingly.
It’s about a 15 minute drive from the airport to the city center, which is situated on the River Lee, which separates into two channels for a lil bit and creates an island in the middle (like the Seine!) and that island is the busier city center. On the way you’ll pass the tallest building in the Republic of Ireland, The Elysian. No pictures because driving (I mean I wasn’t driving (‘ohhh, I don’t druive’)but it’s hard to get a picture of something when you are moving). Apparently it’s an apartment building and it has an Aldi on the ground floor, which is nice for people who don’t like going outside. NB that it’s not the tallest building on the island of Ireland; that’s in Belfast, which is Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, which is in trouuuuuble.
Pretty colors on a rare sunny day
So now you know about the tallest building and the independent film festival and the Ile de la Cite but of Ireland and you’ve seen pictures of the river which is very nice to stroll along and so apart from visiting a few cathedrals if you want to, you’re done with Cork! I wasn’t kidding. Tis a babe! It’s a very nice place but it’s not exactly a tourism hot spot. And yet I’ve been twice! And yes once was for work but you know what, it’s a pleasure to be there – especially as a vegan. The vegan scene is getting very exciting there, and so we’re going to talk food for the rest of this post. Coming from Philly and London, two beyond incredible vegan food cities, I might seem a little silly for raving about wee Cork’s wittle vegan scene, but it was able to tick all my boxes (ice cream, healthy food, avocado toast) and more importantly it shows signs of a strong base to keep it active and growing.
First stop, the Quay Co-op.
Okay this picture might be giving away what trip it’s from
The Quay Co-op is a vegetarian institution in Cork, a workers cooperative that was established in 1982 (older than me!) to serve as an alternative community project, a collective effort for feminists, environmentalists, LGBTQ, and other groups and people. Like vegetarians! Now, it’s a vegetarian restaurant, an organic shoppe next door, an in-house bakery, but still a place for radicals and rad people in general to mingle and mix and be. And eat!
Assorted salads my favorite thing!
It was a cold and rainy day (naturally) when we went to the Co-op, so we shared soup and bread (classics really) and two mains. I ordered the mix of all the assorted salads (I love assorted salads!) with two mounds of gravy-covered…mounds (probably a nut roast kinda thing) while Husbo P ordered the shepherd’s pie.
I REALLY LOVE SOUP. AND BREAD.
you know like food mounds
that cauliflower is looking at me because I don’t want it unless it’s making a cheesy sauce
Everything was pretty good! It’s not life-changing food or anything but it’s solid and inexpensive and the people were friendly (like everyone in this town really). This is really the place you go because it’s an institution and the vibe is uplifting.
yay inclusion and nice people!
Next up is one of my faves that I wish was my little local cafe, 143V (which I am going to assume refers to the old-school way of saying ‘I love you’ because that sounds nice). 143V may be a little outside the city center for some visitors (it was pretty close to our hotel though (see below)) but it’s worth a visit. I adore the menu, and it’s just an adorable little place. Although it wasn’t rainy, it was a little chilly so we did that thing of sharing soup. It was a simple tomato soup and it was really good! Then Husbo had the Southern burger, which is a seitan ‘chickun’ burger and it was great. I had the Oasis bowl, which is usually a falafel salad but they were out of falafel but I was actually glad because I just wanted a big ass salad but not really falafel, so I ended up getting a big ass salad (they added beans). All of it was great! They also have a lot of fun drinks like actual iced tea (not from a bottle) and turmeric lattes and smoothies. It’s somewhat slow paced so it’s not for you if you’re in a hurry but it’s lovely to sit in for a while.
We got the vegan brownie to take away, which in true UK & Euro form was more like chocolate cake (because it was cakey) but it tasted good and was saved by the inclusion of a little pot of chocolate sauce to pour over it! Yum!
My other favorite place in Cork was Earth Cafe, which is a restaurant that looks like a big black box of a shipping container was plopped on the bank of the river. It’s very close to Quay Co-op. While the Co-op has that old school veggie vibe, Earth Cafe is very much the millennial cool vegan vibe, with all the trendy hot drinks (including pumpkin spice lattes), jackfruit, and avocado toast. They offered pretty much my perfect brunch, which is a salad bowl of zucchini noodles and spinach and what nots and then a whole bunch of avo toast crammed in. I like!
Also in this vicinity is THE BEST ICE CREAM IN IRELAND, and that’s both in my opinion and what seems to be official word. Casanova Gelato had a line out the door and down the street even though it was coooold.
And there was a doggo in line with us!
HEHE DOG
They usually have a half dozen or so vegan flavors. While most of them were your standard fruit sorbet flavors (NO!), they did have two non-fruit flavors that were spectacular. Okay one was great but one was BEYOND. One of the best ice creams I’ve ever had. The great one was dark chocolate.
The PHUH NOM one was called Wanna be my Vegan and it was a finalist in an ice cream contest! I don’t know what ice cream contest or where or how I get to be a judge but man alive if this was a finalist the winner must have cheated because I can’t imagine anything better. It was a chocolate hazelnut base with like everything good mixed in, like cookies and chocolate and love and hope. AMAZING.
i wove you ice cweam
The cherry on top of all of this is that they had vegan cones – and an assortment of them at that! I obviously picked the charcoal cone because if you offer me charcoal in my food I will take it for no good reason.
My “favorite” food experience in Cork was when it was super late one night and we had to find a restaurant for dinner but because we’re in the British Isles everything closes pretty early (and it was Saturday!). But HappyCow alerted me to a pizza place called Milano that was open still AND had a separate vegan menu! Vegan pizza that wasn’t just regular pizza with no cheese? We’re in! I was excited to see what kind of indie Italian restaurant in this little baby town had a separate vegan pizza menu. And I did not laugh harder the entire trip than when we rolled up to Milano and we both instantly remembered that Milano is simply the Irish name for the chain Pizza Express. DYING! But you know what, it’s still pretty decent! I got the new Vegan Puttanesca pizza that uses marinated jackfruit in the puttanesca sauce. And yeah I might have a Pizza Express literally 4 minutes from home and then on every single block in the city after that but you know what? I’d eat that again.
I know but how good were the rest of the food pictures in this post? wouldn’t be right if they were all good that’s not what you come for
Our last food adventure came from the Malaysian noodle bar Malay Kitchen, which is entirely vegetarian and mostly vegan. We picked up a few noodle dishes and a container of deep fried tofu to eat at the airport before our late night flight. It took forever for them to make our order, but it was pretty good. If you like supes greasy noodles like your favorite cheap counter service, then you’ll love this.
On our recent trip, we stayed (courtesy of the fillum fest, a-thank you) at the very nice Hotel Metropol, which we found utterly hilarious because that’s the name used in all our Russian classes when you learn about hotel words. Gde otel metropol? We said that a lot. It means where is Hotel Metropol. I still find this hilarious. Anyway it was a very nice hotel with a big indoor pool (!!) and both a dry sauna and a steam room! I didn’t have much time to use them all so I did a fast run through of all of them in less than half an hour. It was very fun. Hotel Metropol also has a giant gym for a hotel, and I enjoyed all of it even though I actually did the thing where I hit my headphone cord when I was on the treadmill and my phone went flying (it’s okay!) and I stopped the treadmill to go get it but I started walking back before the track came to a complete stop so then I went flying and fell kind of simultaneously if that’s possible and I have a big bruise on my calf but I’m okay and my phone was okay and the dozen or so people in the gym with me did the respectable thing of pretending they didn’t see anything.
The hotel had a water jug and green apples for the taking and big fluffy white bathrobes for the wearing, which I did because that’s my favorite thing about hotels.
This apple’s sticker says “I never fall far from the tree” lololol A TALKING APPLE |
|
So that’s my time in Cork! It’s a very nice city with not too much to do but it makes a great stopping point when you are visiting the countryside. And that’s really the thing you do in Ireland; you don’t go for the cities. We will talk about the beauty that you do go for in the next post!
Related Posts
Eating Vegan in Kyiv: Decent Food Around Town as Veganism Grows
Arriving in Kyiv (that’s the proper way to say Kiev, Ukraine; remember?), I was nervous about the food since my travels as a vegan through other parts of Eastern Europe have been less than thrilling. Luckily, that’s all in the past, it seems, because Kyiv’s vegan game was off the chizzy! Okay no it isn’t off the chizzy – wait till we get to Warsaw and Berlin! THOSE are off the chizzy – but Kyiv at least made a convincing argument that it knows the chizzy exists. It is fully aware of and in close proximity to the chizzy! (Chizzy means chain.) We had a good amount of time to explore the vegan options and traverse the whole range from delicious to disappointing and back again.
The first order of business was to go to Bessarabsky Market. This is a centrally located indoor market full of stalls, farmers stands, and larger restaurant constructions all in a tidy square space (not to be confused with Square Space, the company who has recently acquired this here blogging platform!). There are several vegan options in this market, and so, considering how hangry I was on arrival (remember we were waiting for our room to be ready after getting off another overnight train ughhh) I figured going to this one-stop shop for all things food would be my best bet. It was still early in the morning when we got there and lots of stuff wasn’t open. In fact, we had to wait for the two all-vegan spots in the Bessarabsky Market to get cracking. But it wasn’t a bad wait – because we saw the best sign known to (non-celiac) man:
Georgian bread may be the best on earth, and we are obsessed. So obsessed that just last week we returned from a trip to Georgia, I don’t want to say entirely planned because we wanted that good bread but it kind of was. This stall in the Bessarabsky Market lived up to its dern good name. We watched the bakers ease balls of dough into the giant stone cauldron-like oven, perfect for this witchcraft, and just a few minutes later retrieve gorgeous loaves ready for me to attack.
The handles on these loaves make it easy to hold and fun to pull apart. #breadfacts
So delicious! We ate our amazing bread and explored the just-waking-up market as we waited for the vegan places to open so I could look upon their treasures and see which I wanted. There’s also a natural shoppe in this building, called Eco Chic, which has organic produce and a small selection of supplies. It was closed of course but the vegan options abound here!
Finally the two places I came for opened – Green 13 Vegan Kitchen and Sumasbrod. These two all vegan joints were RIGHT NEXT to each other in the market! It was like the vegan sandwich showdown or something equally awesome. I felt a little awkward going back and forth between the two in order to investigate the menus and make informed decisions, like I would feel bad for whoever’s wares I didn’t purchase first. They don’t care. They’re used to it. I tried Green 13 first but we ended up going back to Bessarabsky several times over our stay so we tried both places several times. Let’s talk about errthang.
As you can see in the picture above, the two vegan places were kind of like buildings within the larger building. You order and get your food inside and then there is general shared seating in the open market space. The seating was actually nice, with cute pillows tossed hither and thither. Save for when we arrived that first day before it opened, the whole place was always crowded with vegan food lovers, which is awesome, and if I wasn’t so socially awkward and/or tired at this point in our trip (not to mention without a word of Ukrainian to my name) maybe I would have talked to some of them. But honestly come on there was eating to do, not talking! We tried a good deal of what Green 13 had to offer, including wraps and burgers – what it primarily does and does well – as well as salads because of my salad obsession.
English menu yassssss
On my first visit, I had to try the grilled tofu wrap. It was AMAZING. Like really amazing. Maybe I just had gone so long without proper delicious vegan food or maybe I had been soyless since China or maybe I was just so magoo from the overnight train and the lack of shower yet that day but man alive this wrap was so good I might cry because I want it now. (I may also just be remembering it in such high esteem because I am hungry.) First of all the wrapping seemed gigantic and poufy so that was fun, and the grilled tofu was nice. Filled with cabbage and parsley and carrot and tomato, the wrap would have checked all my boxes as is, but the sauce on it took it to another level. They call it ‘tartar sauce’ on the menu but that does not do it justice. It was a really delicious white sauce that was like…really good. I might not know what tartar sauce is. Anyway it was fantastic and probably my favorite thing I ate in Kyiv.
We also tried the burger with vegan bacon. If you look at the menu pictured above, you’ll see that the first detail about that burger is ‘loaf with barn’ and I will tell you that nonsense group of words is 80% responsible for why we ordered it. We had to see what loaf with barn meant. We still don’t know what they were going for but the burger was wonderful. Soy cutlet check, soy bacon check, tomato onion cucumber mayo sweet & sour sauce check checkity check check check. Such a great, classic burger! No wonder it has HIT written next to it on the menu. Less impressive was the Green 13 Burger, which obviously I ordered because it says it’s on a green spinach bun and I will never turn down wrongly colored breads. It sounds like it should have been aces with that grilled tofu and tartar sauce that I loved in the wrap but with added pesto and mushrooms and it was good, but not as great as the bacon burger. Not bad but it is third on the list.
As I said, I also tried the tofu ball salad because it’s a salad. It was okay, but I wish the balls were bigger and that there were more of them. Hehe balls. It was fine. I’m fine. Best of all, the staff at Green 13 was uniformly friendly and so helpful, even at my first visit when I was like ‘hey you’re not open but I’m here also what should I order???’ they were still all very nice. And you can see in the picture there’s a little fridge out front that says ‘molochko’ – they make their own nut milks and sell them in glass bottles. I had an almond milk that was pretty good for being unsweetened and not being used in cereal. All around, everything about Green 13 was great and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
You’re probably wondering at this point ‘hey where are all the pictures of the amazing food’. Sorries, but at Green 13 and Sumasbrod the food is packed to go as default (since there’s no seating inside their actual storefront) so everything was ugly with the expected takeaway smush. Even I have limits to what photos I share.
or do I
Moving on to Sumasbrod, a foot away from Green 13. I’ve mentioned their proximity several times now and I think it’s because my god man, if you are there, there’s no reason not to go to Green 13. I’m sorry Sumasbrod but you were disappointing in most aspects. The food was fine – when they had it. Every time I went to their counter, the (quite rude) staff would tell me that they only had this one wrap or this one soup available that day – even though the wraps are made hot for each order so I’m pretty sure they had most of the ingredients (considering they were all very similar). The salads were even more upsetting. See the above picture, how they have salads in plastic cups? Dude, it is NOT EASY to eat salad out of a plastic cup. First of all, that means the dressing (when it existed) fell on like, one piece of spinach and did not reach any of the other ingredients. And you couldn’t mix anything together. It is not a smart idea. And you’d think that if you were serving salad in a tall cup that maybe you should cut the ingredients up small so it would be easier to eat but instead the ingredients were like, extra larger than normal. One stupid long and thick strip of carrot took up half the cup. Also, the cup display salad situation meant that they only offered what was already made and displayed. When I first ordered a salad on the menu, the girl said they only had what was in the case – one option. It was right at lunchtime too but they didn’t have any plans to make anything more that day. I could see the rest of the staff was laughing and joking and eating back in the tiny kitchen instead of making more food for the big crowds but I guess they don’t care.
So the salad was too hard to eat and impossible to dress properly. As for the wraps, our conversation literally went like this: Can I have the tofu wrap? No we don’t have it. (They had tofu and the same veggies as everything else…so…) Can I have the Fishless wrap? No we don’t have it. What wraps do you have? The seitan sausage wrap. That’s it? Yes. Man aliiiive. Honestly considering that everything has basically the same ingredients, they make the wraps fresh for each order, and there was always staff just chilling and not working, I think it’s just down to lazy workers. Anyway, I had the seitan sausage wrap, and it was neither seitan nor sausage but more like pink ham half moons. It was decent, but small and with tiny amounts of fillings, so if you have the choice (and you do), always always get your food from next door. Green 13’s food is much better and the people are much more accommodating, even though on paper the Sumasbrod menu feels much more my style.
The only thing you should go to Sumasbrod for is the dessert.
In that display pictured above, Sumasbrod has those poorly conceived salad cups, but also chia pudding cups and mousses. The best thing they make is this Chocolate Cake Trifle and it was AMAZING. Truly. True I hadn’t had a proper dessert in many moons but Z agreed that this was fantastic and we got it several times. The chocolate cake was probably dry, as most places’ chocolate cake is (it’s not hard guys!) but it didn’t matter because it was covered and moisturized by chocolate mousse that was pretty damn fantastic. So definitely go next door for everything except dessert, and be sure to grab this. We got one for our train out of Kyiv too, and honestly nothing helps elevate an overnight train experience than a cup of chocolate cake trifle. Well except clean sheets and maybe a non-flooded bathroom but we aren’t talking pipe dreams here!
this will be the one non-food related picture in this post so enjoy
Another mixed bag experience awaited us at Tri, an upscale restaurant definitely catering to the Gwynnie types of Kyiv. This place had rave reviews on HappyCow so I made sure it was at the top of our list. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the HappyCow reviewers just haven’t had good food before so they were like ‘oh I guess this is what good food is because it looks cute and is expensive so I’ll just give it five stars so I don’t look bad.’ No. Or maybe we went on a bad day for them, but it’s still unacceptable. The restaurant is lovely inside and clearly gives off a more fancy vibe than anywhere else in town. Some of the food was generally interesting but the service was horrendous. It literally took hours. A family who came a half hour after we did got their food first. I don’t want to hear that nonsense about ‘but you don’t know how long the kitchen needs for each dish!’ because we were the only patrons there and I ordered a salad. It would take AGES to find someone just to ask what was going on with our food – and like I said, there were only two tables in the giant room. It shouldn’t be that hard to find staff. What is this, the National Theatre?
Tartlets? Tartlets? Tartlets?
We started with the raw tarts with cashew hummus and microgreens. It was pretty good, but it was not hummus so much as a definite cashew cheese., tasting like like any other raw cafe’s dollop of raw cashew cheese. Fine, though, whatevers.
Then an hour went by.
Then my salad came. This was supposed to be a ‘guacamole, kale, and hemp seed’ salad.
Ahem. Does that look like kale to you? It is not. It is merely green curly lettuce. Plus sprouts and tomatoes instead of hemp seeds, which I really don’t understand as a substitution so it has to just be a mistake. There was indeed a lump of ‘guacamole’ in there – a very lemony mush of avocado – but come on, this is not what the menu says. It is a green salad though and it was fine tasting so I wasn’t going to send it back (also it took an hour??) but still, what’s going on in the Tri kitchen??
Then we ordered the polenta with grilled vegetables. This one took an extra hour after the incorrect salad. I wanted to leave and really almost did but we were in so deep and I was trying to be optimistic about my beloved polenta. Polenta is sooo good and I was picturing this lovely pile of it with all kinds of vegetables in like a sauce or something amazing.
I got this tiny little tower of terror instead. The polenta rounds were good because it is hard to screw up polenta but yes you’re right, those are discs of eggplant and tomato with it. JFC. I should have known it was going to be grilled eggplant. Even at a vegetarian restaurant I have no other choice! There was nothing else to it, no sauce or anything, just grilled Vegetable of the Summer and two 50p-coins-worths of polenta. Bahhhhh. I wish we could have dined and dashed, I really do for the first time ever, but by the time this came we were alone in that big white fancy room and they would have caught us. Maybe. Actually, maybe we could have slipped away considering how hard it was to find a waiter. Darn. Next time! Just kidding we’re not going back there. I really don’t understand all the glowing reviews, unless everything else is really that much better (doubtful) or maybe I’ve just been lucky enough to have something better to compare it to (literally every restaurant seems more functional).
Next we tried Nebos, the famous raw restaurant. Raw foodists (omg is there a worse word than foodist to describe a person? oh yeah foodie) all over the globe rave about this place, so after our trip to Chernobyl we checked it out. I figured eating a big meal of raw vegetables would undo some of the negative effects of radiation or something? No it’s just right at Independence Square where the tour left us. Anyway, like with Tri, the reviews online were almost embarrassingly effusive. People were going on and on about how this is the best raw restaurant in the world and ‘trust me I’ve tried them all’. Bitch please. I’ve tried them all. This is not the best. But it is fine. Too much of the food had that vibe that is common in raw restaurants of being too…warm and sludgy, like it had been sitting out. Raw restaurants should be better at that but alas. But a lot of the food was really good, so overall Nebos is a positive for me, with caveats on things to avoid.
I started with the Olivier salad. They had a really impressive salad section (I mean every raw restaurant should come on but this is one of the few) and it was hard to pass up things with broccoli and arugula, but Oliviers are so common in this part of the world that it’s required to try them when you have the chance. I had a vegan one before, I think at a Mongolian Loving Hut, I want to say? and it was great so I had to try again. Also, this was the one salad that the Nebos menu had starred as a customer favorite so I trusted the public at large even though you should never really do that about anything really. Luckily it was really good! It was a mix of carrot, cucumber, avocado, peas, peas, zucchini, microgreens, and of course ‘Olivier sauce’ and it was very enjoyable. I also adore how they always come in the same weird shape.
Okay deciding on the Olivier wasn’t as hard as I made it out to be because we also got a Caesar salad! Double salad what a life! I was intrigued by the promise of cashew cheese sticks covered with pitta sauce in the Caesaw. It didn’t sound like a Caesar and it didn’t taste like one, but I really enjoyed it. Those cashew cheese croutony things are legit! They were so plentiful (look at that plate it is positively covered with them) and had a great sharp cheeziness with a z. It could have used more lettuce but it was pretty interesting. And really filling. Cashew cheeze is filling! I just jump back and forth between spelling raw vegan cheese like a normal person and an ass so don’t mind it.
Next was the tasting plate, with flax breaded cutlets (I don’t know either), falafel cutlets, and vegetable balls. I don’t know what the difference between all the different cutlets or balls were – they’re all made of the same nuts and vegetables – but they were all pretty good, and the three sauces they came with added some nice flavors. Approved!
Lastly was the thing I urge you not to order, even though like everything else I chose it is listed on the menu with a little thumbs up to show it’s a customer favorite. Well, the public is wrong so often so I was bound to get screwed listening to other people. Don’t listen to other people. (Well except me of course.)
The Dragon Roll. I’m actually starting to gag just remembering trying to eat this. I was soo excited for some raw vegan sushi – I hadn’t had sushi in ages, and it was even longer since I had good sushi. Well it would be a lot longer, I learned. The Dragon Roll promised epic tales of nori, avocado, cauliflower, cucumber, cheeze, something called ‘false flax seeds’ that I am sure is just lost in translation, sunflower mayo, and more ingredients that sound good but when you stop to really think about it you should think ‘wait how is all of this going to make a sushi roll’? Remember it’s raw, so without the structural integrity afforded by sticky rice, they were going to rely on minced cauliflower to hold all the gloppiness together. It didn’t. Forget Gwynnie’s website (how many times will this post mention her, I wonder), THIS is the real goop. The toppings blended in with the middle and it all mushed into one beige bland blob of oozing warm sludge and I tried to eat one and had that immediate reaction where if you eat any more of the thing you are going to be sick. Shaaaaaame. The consistency was so off-putting and so wrong, like when I try to eat mochi but 100x more. Sushi should not need to be eaten with a spoon! Bleh what a soft slimy mess. Bleh!
The rest of Nebos was decent though. Just never get the sushi.
The last of the vegan food I’m going to share might be my favorite in Kyiv. It’s not a restaurant, it’s more like a counter service. And the place is not vegan, or even vegetarian, but it has a few options. Now, what’s my favorite thing? If you follow my instagram (see link at top corner of page!) you probably know I make soup for dinner 90% of the time. Yes it’s because it’s a one-pot thing and that’s best for me but also because soup is amazing! Well, lords and ladies, Kyiv has a soup counter around town called Soup Culture! And best of all, they serve it in a BREAD CUP. Not a bread bowl, not those things that you don’t know really how to attack and you’re like wait so do i eat all the soup and then this bread but I want bread with the soup I’ll just take a little piece and ahhhh now there’s soup spilling everywhere! No, Soup Culture has perfected the bread container method by putting the soup in a much sturdier carbolicious cup, and so you drink the soup (I hate using the word ‘drink’ when discussing soup because it’s FOOD but here you kind of must because it’s a cup and you drink from a cup anyway) and chew the cup as you go down. It’s splendid.
They always have one or two vegan soups on the daily menu. We tried the lentil, which was delicious. And the bread cup is SO fun. Like I said, it’s sturdy so it retains its integrity as you take bites of it. SO FUN! There are a few locations around town so it’s a wonderful little lunch stop as you explore town.
Kyiv has a lot of vegan options – we barely scratched the surface! Even when we weren’t looking, we would chance upon vegan friendly places, like this place in a major underground food court/mall under Independence Square.
Hopefully, this roundup will help you make decisions about what to prioritize (go to Green 13; skip Tri; bring me back a bread cup). I have heard that even in the past few months, even more vegan food has popped up in Kyiv. I think the scene there is going to get better and better and it’s definitely a city to keep your eye on.
Trump Hates It? It Must be Awesome! We Return to Baltimore!
Are you curious about what ‘living in hell’ is like? It’s pretty nice (and vegan-friendly)!
Recently, Cheeto Mussolini talked smack on one of America’s great cities, and it was embarrassing. For him, of course, because he was wrong (he did open his mouth). Since I have the best readers (‘I use the best words’), I know you agree that if the screaming carrot demon hates something, it’s probably awesome, and this is definitely true for Baltimore, Maryland. Sure it has problems – as most big cities do – but unlike the assclown who has the power (all the power in the world) to fix them, we aren’t going to complain about them and not talk about all the great things Baltimore has going on right now.
benches don’t lie mufucka
Balmore, as they say, is a vibrant, dynamic city with so much more to offer than crime and homelessness and a drug problem (helloo did I say every city because that’s every city). The diverse (in both senses of the word) areas of the city are full of young hipsters living in cool neighborhoods, tourists coming to see one of the first colonies, students attending one of the great schools, and established locals who will defend their city to any orange buffoon who dares, dares, disparage it. Recently, we were members of the second group visiting members of the first and third (and, by default, fourth) groups. We found a Baltimore more progressive and even more fun than our last visit 3 years ago. It was a short trip, but we managed to see and do (and eat) enough to recommend a visit to anyone, except assclowns.
Shall we start with food or activities?? Food or activities. I’m going to flip a coin aaaaaand it’s activities.
Great decision making!
DO
We’ll save my favorite new Baltimore/anywhere activity for last because it’s AMAZING and there’s no way silly museums could compete with it if I share that first. You know I complain about museums a lot (we go to so many museums! they take so long!) but I’m mostly just joking since they are a must-see pretty much everywhere. This trip, we returned to The Walters Art Museum, a free (!) museum in the Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood, housing mid-19th century collections amassed by the Walters family. William Thompson Walters began collecting art when he moved to Paris to flee the beginning American Civil War because he was a Confederate sympathizer and I guess he was at least smart enough to know he should get his ass out of there but also fork that guy. His son later refined his jackwagon father’s collection and made the plans for establishing a way to publicly house it; no word on whether he also was an ignorant racist.
It’s a great museum with lots to see and learn, but that’s for you to discover on your own because as usual, my job here is to share the pictures of hilariously weird things, and dogs. Here are all the dogs in the museum.
This is honestly one of my favorite museum activites. Half the pictures on my phone are paintings with dogs in them from museums all over the world. Anyway now we move on to another favorite activity: sharing all the hilarious and weird shit.
Okay that’s probably enough of that. The Walters is definitely worth a visit when you are next in Baltimore and not just for the dog paintings.
The museum is on the very hip very cool N. Charles Street, about a ten minute walk from husbo’s favorite pub, The Brewer’s Art. Last time we were in Baltimore, we could only have their incredible rosemary fries, but when we stopped in this time, we discovered they had Beyond Meat burgers AND sausages on the menu! I mean! What! (This doesn’t count as prematurely talking about food because we didn’t actually eat there.) So definitely check it out after the museum. The museum is also only a five minute walk from husbo’s favorite restaurant in Baltimore, The Helmand, an Afghani restaurant that is excellent, so that’s also an option. Do one before and one after!
I’m not a huge fan of cemeteries, but your next activity is a quick lil trip to one. Honestly, it doesn’t even really count as a cemetery, just a little tiny garden-looking jawn with some graves. Okay it’s a small cemetery. But it’s a special one!
It’s Edgar Allan Poe’s! Okay it’s not all exclamatey I mean he did die at 40 (in Baltimore, where he spent a good portion of his life). Poe’s grave site is on Fayette Street, at the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, not too far from the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, which makes a lot of sense. If you are a Poefiend you should check all of that out but we were in the game for just a quick stroll by the grave. It’s in a very blink-and-you’ll-walk-right-by-it quiet little secluded corner of green, gated but open to the public.
In true Poe fashion, he was originally buried in an unmarked grave. Eventually a man named George Spence added a sandstone block on the site but still, no name and lots of weeds. Reports of this odd grave for such an important figure circulated and eventually reached Poe’s mother-in-law, who wrote some harsh but polite words (probably) to the cousin in charge of fixing this whole situation. Neilson Poe, the two-last-names cuz, ordered a legit marble headstone, but then in true Poe fashion, a train ran off its tracks and destroyed the headstone. After a few years, various benefactors, friends, and students raised enough money for another headstone. The monument was dedicated in 1875, 26 years after Poe’s death. Cremation is a lot easier, I’m just saying.
There are other people buried here, including members of his family and notable historical figures.
Our next activity is a jaunt to Fort McHenry, which I didn’t actually visit but husbo did (I was busy). He’s here to tell you all about it:
Ha I’m just joking it’s still me. Fort McHenry is an important American, well, fort. Or ‘coastal bastion’ as the wikipeeds says. Located in the Locust Point neighborhood, the fort was important during the War of 1812 (not to be confused with the Great Comet of that same year, wow what a year am I right), when it successfully defended Balmore from those DAMNED BRITISH whose navy was attacking from the Chesapeake Bay. It was also used during both World Wars. During the War of 1812, when the larger garrison flag was flown over the Fort, it signaled that the Americans had won the Battle of Baltimore. The sight of the flag waving here inspired Francis Scott Key to write the song that only 7% of performers at sporting events have sung well.
Husbo really enjoyed his visit to the Fort, save for the true ‘mercans wearing t-shirts that literally said AMERICA FUCK YEAH but you know you’re going to see them at military places. Admission is $15.
Our last activity recommendation this go-round is the best one. Like true gentrifying hipsters, we tried the latest and funniest hipster activity that has country folk saying, um, what?
We went axe throwing! IT WAS AMAZING.
Urban Axes on North Haven Street is the shiiiit. Sure there’s a bar with craft beer and wines, which doesn’t seem like the smaaartest match-up. But the axe-throwing is fun enough to keep people engaged and away from the bar for too long. You generally have to book in advance (they can allow walk-ins if it’s not too busy, but don’t risk it) and you get 6 people per ‘arena’ (two targets) and per coach. We were told that since we had 4 people, 2 strangers (stranger danger!) could potentially be put in our lane, but that didn’t happen. (It was a weeknight.)
So you get a coach, an ‘axepert’, who stays with you the entire hour-long session and teaches you how to throw a g-d axe. Our coach was really great. She was so helpful in figuring out our best stances, whether we should go one-handed or two, and giving little tips to improve. I went in thinking it would be fun but that I would be terrible, but even as a first-timer I got a few bullseyes! We all did! IT WAS AWESOME!
It’s literally just a giant warehouse sort of room with plywood targets up. We said to each other, omg we should open one of these in London – the costs are SO low! You just need a bunch of axes and some boards! And then we took a beat and realized how much the liability insurance would be.
You can wear whatever you want, you just have to wear closed-toed shoes. It seems a little scary in theory, but we were reassured that people rarely get injured if they are following the rules. The most common injury people get is splinters from putting one hand against the board while they pull the axe out with the other. Silly people, don’t do that!
Man alive this was so much fun. Urban Axes has locations all over, including in Philly and Austin, so definitely check them out! It’s $38 per participant so it’s a little steep, but for a special occasion it’s pretty great.
EAT
Baltimore’s vegan scene, like that of so many big cities, is popping. We found such great finds over a few days. I mentioned The Helmand and The Brewer’s Art above and you should definitely have them on your list. Newbies this go round included Red Emma’s, Stall 11 at the very hip very popular R House market, and my new fave restaurant L’eau de Vie, which I wrote about already.
Before we get to those, let’s talk about a more famous Baltimore tourist destination in case you end up there. One night, the omnivores I was with wanted crabs, which, if you know your musical theatre, Baltimore is famous for (remember Velma Von Tussle was Miss Baltimore Crabs in her youth) (I just realized I haven’t been singing “Good Morning Baltimore” this entire time; am I okay?). We paid a visit to the harborside crab institution Bo Brooks, and if you likewise end up there as a vegan, there are a few options for you!
It’s nothing special, but sometimes all I want is a regular green salad and a regular bowl of bean soup, and Bo Brooks had both for me. In fact, there’s a whole ‘plant-based’ section, and while I hate the phrase, I loved the contents. My soup was a ‘Tuscan white bean’ soup and it was fine! Then I had Nelly’s Salad which was actually quite big and had avocado and avocado dressing. That’s all I really ask for! Bo Brooks also has the Beyond Burger so you should definitely get one of those if you aren’t looking to recreate your own little Olive Garden sitch (saltines were my breadsticks).
Okay, next up is one of our favorite places in Baltimore – Red Emma’s. Yes, it sounds a bit Commie, and yes, it’s for a reason. It’s a radical infoshop, bookstore, and vegan cafe run by a worker-owner collective and yes of course it’s named after anarchist Emma Goldman (which of course should make you think of not one but TWO MUSICALS! EG was important in both Assassins and Ragtime). Given the state of the world right now, we should all be a little (lot) more socialist! You’re not surprised, right, with all the time we spent in the former USSR? You had to expect it to rub off a little. (Or you know by being aware in this society.)
In addition to being like so woke, Red Emma’s has wonderful food. It was one of the hardest menus to order from because everything sounded incredible (and was vegan, as far as I could tell). We decided on the banh mi and the Reuben, with a side kale salad, totally on brand for us.
The Reuben might not look like much, but it was one of the best we’ve ever had. Husbo, an omnivore, sang its praises to such an extent that he actually said it was better than the Reuben at Rudy’s Dirty Vegan Diner in London, which is a huge thing since that one gets so much acclaim (but part of that is because it’s the only legit vegan Reuben in London (except the ones I make at home, obvs the best)). The banh mi was on the wrong bread (too big and too hard!) and needed more of a mayo-y sauce but it was still pretty good. The rest of the menu sounded so amazing, Red Emma’s will definitely be on our to-do list next time.
We also ventured downstairs to the bookshop, which is where we bought Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race. Highly recommended!! (And definitely try to buy it from a shop that is not Amazon! Fuck Bezos! Billionaires are inherently immoral!)
Up next is my faaaavorite place and another that’s definitely on my list for a return visit. Man I really need to make a return visit. That’s Stall 11 in the food-vendor market space called R House, which bills itself as an “industrial chic food hall”. Directly south of the Johns Hopkins campus, R House is SO trendy and cool, and Stall 11’s existence in there proves the point. Carving out its own adorable space in the market hall, Stall 11 looks like what By Chloe wanted to be. And the food achieves the same goal. It’s incredible (and better).
We had the loaded mac and cheese OF COURSE, which was fantastic, with a house-made vegan cheeze sauce, nut parm, and crispy cauliflower which was AMAZING.
We also tried the avocado BLT which was great, if completely falling apart on that too-small bread! And it came with great sweet potato fries.
Of course we also tried a salad, the Harvest salad with added tempeh. Everything was so delicious! Here’s a better picture of the salad so you can see all the goodies inside, like chickpeas and quinoa and sweet potatoes.
I love Stall 11 food so much. It’s like my perfect menu – huge loaded salads, great sandwiches, mac and cheeze. All my faves! To top it off, R House had self-serve water stations. I could cry! That’s all I ask for!
Well there’s one more thing I always ask for: ice cream. R House also has an outpost of Little Baby’s ice cream, which I know from Philly. The best thing about Little Baby’s, besides reliably having several vegan flavors, is that they sell ‘Baby’ scoops, one step below regular single scoops, for when you want to have just a little but are really full, like we were!
STAY
You’ll notice we don’t have hotel recommendations this time around because they’re all rat-infested we stayed with friends who are LIVING IN HELL no they absolutely love it. We were in the Canton neighborhood which is quite lovely and close enough to all the attractions by bus (we downloaded the CharmPass bus app, on which you buy tickets and then show your code to the driver, so easy!). The buses were fairly straightforward, although sometimes there was a really long wait. Tourists might want to stay in the thick of things by Harbor East or in Fells Point, which is the most happening for night life. We walked through Fells Point one busy Saturday night and felt very cool and then we kept on walking towards home where we played Settlers of Catan (I’m like a very cool person).
So it was a quick trip to Baltimore, but even with a few days we could see that it is far from the hellscape that assclown would tell you it is. Yeah we walked through some sketchy neighborhoods and you should be careful where you walk at night, and yes there are issues that need to be addressed. But that’s the same for Philly, for London, for really anywhere. Writing off an entire city because it has problems, instead of talking about how to address them, is some ignorant bullshirt. Visiting such a city and contributing to its economy may be a helpful move for us regular people, who don’t have the power to fix everything and yet fix nothing, to make. If you have the chance to visit Baltimore, you really should. And please tell me all the delicious (vegan) things you eat! And sing all the musical theatre songs that relate to your visit! (More about that on my instagram stories! Link at the top of the page.)
Don’t forget to read about L’Eau de Vie!
Want more Balmore? Read about our 2016 visit! (enjoy even worse pictures!)
