Vedge Restaurant, Philadelphia: The World's Greatestby Randi / September 4, 2013
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Lucky Leek, Berlin: Fantastic Fancy Food With A Few Minor Hurdles
To celebrate our engagement, husband and I decided to treat ourselves to a fancypants dinner at Lucky Leek, an upscale all-vegan restaurant in Berlin. The food was stellar, but there were a few issues that prevent me from completely raving about it. However, based on the food alone I would definitely have to recommend Lucky Leek if you are looking for something lavish and delicious.
The restaurant itself was decorated simply and nicely, with lots of fresh plants and clean white and black decor. The menu options sounded delicious and was heavy on the spargel (asparagus), because it was spring and spargel (our new favorite word to say) was everywhere. We decided to each get the Chef’s Menu, which offered about five solid courses and several additional items. We got this for one good reason and one dumb reason (restaurant’s fault): Good reason: It sounded delicious and we were doing what Retta was telling us to do. Dumb reason: Only with the two of us getting the expensive 50 euro Chef’s Menu would we be able to hit the restaurant’s incredibly lame and stupid 100 euro credit card minimum. I mean…what restaurant on earth has a credit card minimum that high? That is super lame.
The only thing dumber? The restaurant would not give us tap water – you had to buy bottled water. I have never encountered this shittiness anywhere in the world. Even in cities where drinking the tap water would kill you, restaurants would still happily give it to you for free. Okay that’s a bad example but still. I am still battling rising blood pressure thinking about how stupid this is. If the food wasn’t so good, I would say let’s picket Lucky Leek with fire hoses until they give us free tap water. I mean, let’s do that anyway because I am starting to super hulk out again, but still, you should eat here because it is so damn good.
The only thing dumber? The restaurant would not give us tap water – you had to buy bottled water. I have never encountered this shittiness anywhere in the world. Even in cities where drinking the tap water would kill you, restaurants would still happily give it to you for free. Okay that’s a bad example but still. I am still battling rising blood pressure thinking about how stupid this is. If the food wasn’t so good, I would say let’s picket Lucky Leek with fire hoses until they give us free tap water. I mean, let’s do that anyway because I am starting to super hulk out again, but still, you should eat here because it is so damn good.
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We began with a really delicious amuse-bouche sent out from the kitchen with “our compliments”, which was nice but I was like “a better compliment would have been free tap water, yo. Or at least tell me I’m pretty.” Anyway, the amuse was a toasted carrot sandwich with a pepper and a pickle on top. It was delicious! I could have had 100 of them!
Our first real course was this fantastic salad that featured a raw zucchini roll-up filled with amazing truffled cheesy cream (I think the phrase cream cheese is disgusting even though I am from Philadelphia (snaps)). The salad was arugula, fancy carrots, and salted almonds in a potato dressing. I don’t really know what that means, but it was delicious. The main focus of the plate aside from the zucchini roll-up was kohlrabi carpaccio which was fantastic. Fanciest salad ever!
* Next up was this ‘spring consomme’, which was a lovely French-oniony soup with like wonton balls in the middle. Delicious wonton balls! It said it came with herbed pancake strips but I don’t remember that being the case, unless those little squares are the strips. The wonton was a cheesy semolina dumpling that was really yummy. * The standout dish was next, the pasta. I wrote in my notes that this ravioli dish was perfect! It had a ridiculously large spear of spargel across the top, and the ravioli was filled with more spargel! (Remember spargel is asparagus. We learn languages on this show!) The ravioli pasta itself was superb with that perfect chewiness and taste. It was in a Hollandaise sauce that was not disgusting; it was in fact delicious. The dish was spotted with beluga lentil samsa (which Google tells me is just a misspelled samosa, which wasn’t the case here) that was the perfect spargel accompaniment. It also was topped with ‘sage panache’ but that just sounds like a dapper old wise man. Like the nicest way to describe a dandy British man. That bloke is full of sage panache. Hahahahah. * THEN THEY GAVE US FRUIT SORBET TO CLEANSE OUR PALATES LIKE WE WERE FREAKING ROYALTY OR SOMETHING. It was melon and rose hip sorbet and it was so lovely! It throws me a little though to have dessert before the main main. (As a vegan, even the blandest lightest sorbet is usually our dessert, so my brain was like, oh man it’s over? And then it was hard to get out of that.) * The main main, or piece de resistance, as the menu actually said, was a “Seitan and Onion Roast Joint“, which I assume is similar to a Spike Lee Joint, but more delicious and filling and less upsetting in most ways. It came with potato and carrot puree, which is the kind of thing I make a lot (a LOT a lot) but obviously not as perfectly as this was. It also came with pak choy, which as far as I know is bok choy, but in Europe they call it pak choy and I kind of love the discrepancy and kind of hate it. But I love love bok/pak choy! And I will always welcome more greens on my plate! It was the perfect unexpected Asian accompaniment to the meat and potatoes. The joint was also topped with a beet and walnut confit and just wow everything was perfect. * Then came real dessert, a trio of uhhhmazing cake and cream confections. In the center was the raspberry cake, which was good but fruit flavored dessert is not my favorite when it could easily be chocolate instead. Much MUCH better was to the left, the coconut and nougat tartlet. Yes, that’s right, this entire meal was sponsored by the first Jon Lovitz episode of “Friends”. The crust of the tartlet (hehehe) was a bit shortbready, which normally I hate because it feels like my teeth are hurting, but this was fantastic – and cold, which helps. That middle layer of coconut nougat was incredible. Oh man. Just the most perfect layer of cream imaginable. Lastly, probably my favorite component was the mocha banana ice cream with the chocolate praline sticking out of it. I don’t usually like mocha or coffee flavors, but this was mostly banana with just a hint of something deeper and bolder. And I love ice cream so much. I don’t like that the amount of ice cream in this and every single restaurant is just that little ball that is so difficult to eat because you end up smearing most of it around the plate and you’re like, am I allowed to lick the plate? And you are like no, but then they should have just given you a large bowl of it to begin with. Anyway, it was fantastic, and that chocolate praline was like those really thin and crunchy Pepperidge Farm doodads but sooo much better. Everything was delicious and perfect and we were extremely stuffed at the end of it, as it should be.
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Carrot sandwich amuse-bouche 
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All in all, Lucky Leek was an absolutely fantastic meal, and if you are looking for something fancypants in Berlin, I can definitely recommend it. But bring a bottle of water with you — which is the dumbest thing to have to say about a fancypants restaurant, but I do not like being forced to pay for water.
LUCKY LEEK, BERLIN
Water speed: UGH FFS!
Bathrooms: Hilariously, the bathroom is in the back of the restaurant through a freaking beaded curtain, like in 1970s dorm rooms. So out of place and funny. Bathroom was fine.
Service: They were pretty nice, those water selling bastards.
Food: Delicious delicious delicious.
Bonus: Decent location. & maybe by the time you go they will have gotten the memo about the water? Go for the food.
A Burns Night Event in London, When Everyone is Scottish
On Burns Night, on or about January 25, everyone in London seems to pretend they are Scottish. Well, not authentically/believably Scottish so much as the faux pageantry of the movie-friendly version of being Scottish (plaid and Sean Connery accents aaaand that’s all there is to it!). The event, a haggis-focused dinner (eww!), pays tribute to Scottish poet Robert Burns, whose most famous poem is about haggis (so gross). In London, super-overpriced events abound, so everyone who thought the Scots were super dumb for wanting independence can now pretend they are totally pro-Scot and enjoy everything about their fellow countrymen, namely bagpipes, disgusting meats, whiskey, and dancing.
If you can get past the hypocritical undertones of tons of English people reveling in all things Scottish for one night thereby recognizing that Scots have their own unique culture yet still not recognizing that they are deserving of ruling themselves or being an independent nation, then the events in London can be really fun. I mean, they are still haggis-focused, but if you’re lucky you can find one that offers a vegan meal option. Lucky us, we found Burns Baby Burns, a huge, fun event held in the old (really old, dilapidated) St John’s church in Hackney that offered vegan-option tickets on the online site. (You need tickets to these events, so important.) Hundreds of people attended the mass sit-down dinner, which was followed by hilarious and enjoyable (looking) Scottish square dancing and an extremely overpriced whiskey bar. If you’re able, I recommend going to this kind of Burns Night dinner once for the experience, and again if you like spending too much money on food, not drinking, and dancing like a fool like a FOOL.
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As you entered the frightening church of falling pillars, a man playing the bagpipes on the front stoop greeted you. I was very glad to see that the bagpipes were relegated to the outdoor entertainment section and weren’t going to be Rossing us all night long to celebrate good times come on. I’m all for bagpipes, especially on Burns night, but not for more than ten minutes or so. Fiddlers were playing on the stage inside – well, one fiddler, one guitarist, but I prefer to refer to all musicians wearing hats as fiddlers. The jovial music helped create the right happy, social atmosphere.
Between courses, we were treated to traditional Scottish entertainment (pictured above) of fire dancers and men reading poetry while wielding enormous knives. We were told that the Scots party in such ways nightly. The girl with the sticks of fire successfully got the fire scarily close to her hair without setting it on fire, so good on her. That was really cool, and if I talked to her I would have asked her how she keeps from burning her hair at social occasions, a feat I cannot say I have achieved 100%. The scary man was one of the guys running the entertainment, and he read the all-important Address to a Haggis, Burns’s most famous poem. I don’t think the enormous knife was necessary, as the words are scary enough. It’s pretty long, and it’s pretty gory when it gets into the making of haggis (so gross). Not vegan-friendly, this poem, except maybe the first line, which is
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
so if you focus on deciphering this opening, you will be sufficiently distracted for the rest of the crazy ass poem and won’t have to worry about listening to rhymes about murdering animals, because you will never decipher this.
The food was decent. While omnivores started with rye bread covered with lox and some kind of dilly cream, vegetarians got that same rye bread covered with spinach salad and cubes of roast vegetables. Not the most obvious choice for a piece of toast, but whatever, greens are good, bread’s good, root vegetables are okay.
Between courses, we were treated to traditional Scottish entertainment (pictured above) of fire dancers and men reading poetry while wielding enormous knives. We were told that the Scots party in such ways nightly. The girl with the sticks of fire successfully got the fire scarily close to her hair without setting it on fire, so good on her. That was really cool, and if I talked to her I would have asked her how she keeps from burning her hair at social occasions, a feat I cannot say I have achieved 100%. The scary man was one of the guys running the entertainment, and he read the all-important Address to a Haggis, Burns’s most famous poem. I don’t think the enormous knife was necessary, as the words are scary enough. It’s pretty long, and it’s pretty gory when it gets into the making of haggis (so gross). Not vegan-friendly, this poem, except maybe the first line, which is
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
so if you focus on deciphering this opening, you will be sufficiently distracted for the rest of the crazy ass poem and won’t have to worry about listening to rhymes about murdering animals, because you will never decipher this.
The food was decent. While omnivores started with rye bread covered with lox and some kind of dilly cream, vegetarians got that same rye bread covered with spinach salad and cubes of roast vegetables. Not the most obvious choice for a piece of toast, but whatever, greens are good, bread’s good, root vegetables are okay.
Salad on toast okay
Between courses, scary knife man and a young Scottish woman (who later led the dancing) did the traditional Ode to the Laddies/Ode to the Lassies, really weird obviously gendered kind of sexist and super awkward speeches to the opposite sex. The woman at least rhymed about Robbie Burns, which was cool, and mentioned all his wimmins and all his STDs. The man’s was the usual expected kind about how pretty women are and how they are so much better looking than men and yada yada yada. I made some comments about how none of it was very LGBT-friendly but then I got distracted by being upset about haggis.
Thank goodness for vegetarian haggis. So, real haggis, if you don’t know, is like amoebas on fleas on rats. Vegetarian haggis is OODLES better, and not just because it doesn’t involve cruelty. It flat out tastes better, probably because it’s made of ingredients people are okay with talking about out loud. It’s so much better, in fact, that the one actual Scottish person we met at Burns Baby Burns, the woman sitting next to me, ordered the vegetarian haggis even though she wasn’t vegetarian! She said she just likes it more! Now that’s a huge win. She still had some of the regular haggis from the communal bowl, but her main source of food was the veg one. Yay! Summary, vegetarian haggis is great, regular haggis is a Rhimes.
Thank goodness for vegetarian haggis. So, real haggis, if you don’t know, is like amoebas on fleas on rats. Vegetarian haggis is OODLES better, and not just because it doesn’t involve cruelty. It flat out tastes better, probably because it’s made of ingredients people are okay with talking about out loud. It’s so much better, in fact, that the one actual Scottish person we met at Burns Baby Burns, the woman sitting next to me, ordered the vegetarian haggis even though she wasn’t vegetarian! She said she just likes it more! Now that’s a huge win. She still had some of the regular haggis from the communal bowl, but her main source of food was the veg one. Yay! Summary, vegetarian haggis is great, regular haggis is a Rhimes.
Huge hunks of stuff
Non-vegans ate “neeps and tatties” – parsnips* and potatoes – from communal bowls. I imagine they were made with butter because my plate came with an enormous plain baked potato instead. People sitting next to us were like ha ha why did they give you a huge baked potahto and I said I am vegan and they said oh.
Also on the tables were communal pitchers of gravy. I mean. We’ve all seen gravy boats and that’s cool. Have you ever seen a freaking drinks pitcher used for gravy? I thought it was wine. It was hilarious. Anyway the plain baked potato was kind of awful to eat plain so I asked a server if there was vegan gravy and she said the communal gravy was! Huzzah! It was also not delicious. I hope she was right.
Something I actually know the servers were wrong about was the existence of vegan dessert. Considering I paid the same price as the omnivores, I figured that there would be a vegan dessert option. Cranachan, a traditional Scottish dessert of oats, cream, whiskey, and honey, filled display tables at the back, and I asked the server guarding the table if there was a vegan dessert option. She said no! I was so mad! On principle! We paid the same price ffs! I asked another server if there was a vegan dessert. She said there was only what was out. Boo. Turns out, she wasn’t wrong, she just had no idea what was out. The next day, the people behind Burns Baby Burns responded kindly to an angry dessert-less tweet I sent out, and assured me that one of the tables of cranachan was all vegan. That’s super wonderful, it’s just that none of the people they had working for them knew apparently. I’m really glad the problem was misinformed servers and not unfair lack of vegan dessert. I mean that doesn’t put the weird ass oats and cream mixture in my stomach 5 days ago but it’s still something!
Also on the tables were communal pitchers of gravy. I mean. We’ve all seen gravy boats and that’s cool. Have you ever seen a freaking drinks pitcher used for gravy? I thought it was wine. It was hilarious. Anyway the plain baked potato was kind of awful to eat plain so I asked a server if there was vegan gravy and she said the communal gravy was! Huzzah! It was also not delicious. I hope she was right.
Something I actually know the servers were wrong about was the existence of vegan dessert. Considering I paid the same price as the omnivores, I figured that there would be a vegan dessert option. Cranachan, a traditional Scottish dessert of oats, cream, whiskey, and honey, filled display tables at the back, and I asked the server guarding the table if there was a vegan dessert option. She said no! I was so mad! On principle! We paid the same price ffs! I asked another server if there was a vegan dessert. She said there was only what was out. Boo. Turns out, she wasn’t wrong, she just had no idea what was out. The next day, the people behind Burns Baby Burns responded kindly to an angry dessert-less tweet I sent out, and assured me that one of the tables of cranachan was all vegan. That’s super wonderful, it’s just that none of the people they had working for them knew apparently. I’m really glad the problem was misinformed servers and not unfair lack of vegan dessert. I mean that doesn’t put the weird ass oats and cream mixture in my stomach 5 days ago but it’s still something!
After dining came dancing. This is the view from the pews upstairs, where the ‘secret’ (secretly overpriced like whoa) whiskey bar and the face painting (awesome) corner were. I was certain that the top section of the run-down church was going to come crashing down but luckily it didn’t yet. The dancing looked like fun, if you enjoy making a fool of yourself in front of strangers, which normally I’m all for but for some reason I just didn’t feel up for it that night. My bad. It looked like everyone partaking had fun though, none more than this old white-haired man in a tight white tee shirt who danced with literally everybody at some point.
All in all, it was pretty fun and something I recommend doing if you are in the UK, just so you experience Burns Night at some point. The food was fine, the entertainment fun. A main problem for me was the lack of bathrooms. Outdoor portapotties are fiiine, I guess, if you get non-disgusting ones. I was there very early and I imagine I was the first person to actually check out the bathrooms. They were already disgusting, even an hour before the event was called for. That’s not cool. Another problem was that for how expensive the event was – 45 GDP – there was not one drink included. And the bar was insane expensive. Not even a soda included? Not cool. And of course we have the miscommunication between the people running things. Hopefully, these things can be sorted out for next year and it will be even better. And hooray for Robbie Burns, who actually wrote “Auld Lang Syne” but no one knows that because he also wrote about haggis.
All in all, it was pretty fun and something I recommend doing if you are in the UK, just so you experience Burns Night at some point. The food was fine, the entertainment fun. A main problem for me was the lack of bathrooms. Outdoor portapotties are fiiine, I guess, if you get non-disgusting ones. I was there very early and I imagine I was the first person to actually check out the bathrooms. They were already disgusting, even an hour before the event was called for. That’s not cool. Another problem was that for how expensive the event was – 45 GDP – there was not one drink included. And the bar was insane expensive. Not even a soda included? Not cool. And of course we have the miscommunication between the people running things. Hopefully, these things can be sorted out for next year and it will be even better. And hooray for Robbie Burns, who actually wrote “Auld Lang Syne” but no one knows that because he also wrote about haggis.
*Correction: Neeps are apparently turnips. I don’t know because a) they all taste exactly the same and b) they didn’t give me any.
