Brilliant Corners, London: Wonderful Japanese Food, Weird Name, Atrocious Service

Seed, the wonderful vegan restaurant in New Orleans, uses a tag line that goes “Garden Based. NOLA Taste.” If you can get past this, you will undoubtedly love any meal here, unless you only get the mac & cheese. 

Honestly, I have to thank the universe again. We ended up at my favorite restaurant in NOLA by pure dumb luck – and what we first considered misfortune. At about 8:30pm (not late in NOLA!) we decided to head out for dinner. Our three choices were 1) crazy hot dogs at Dreamy Weenies, 2) Killer Po’ Boys at the Erin Rose Pub, and 3) the restaurant I’ve heard nothing but raves about, Green Goddess. Well: 1) Dreamy Weenies closes at 9pm, 2) Killer Po’ Boys doesn’t operate at the pub on Tuesdays (the day it was), and 3) worst of all, we went to Green Goddess and saw this awful terrible no good sign:

ARE YOU F-ING KIDDING??? Is food some sort of JOKE to you Green Goddess, if that’s even your real name? We were there on like the 11th. That is a ridiculously long closure for something called a Decadence Festival. My goodness that is the lamest f-ing thing I have ever heard. (Actually I mean of course it sounds like the most amazing thing ever BUT F THAT NOISE NOW.)

Anyong, I am so disappointed that I didn’t get to eat here, but I’m hopeful that I’ll be back. Okay, enough sads. Thanks to the stupidest festival I’ve ever heard of, we got to eat at Seed, a more upscale restaurant that we were hoping to get to at some point during our trip. So yay! It closed at 10pm, so I called to make sure that arriving at 9:15 wouldn’t be too much of a problem, because I didn’t want our waiter to spit in our food. All the staff members were very nice and made us feel welcome. And, the meal was one of my absolute favorites in any city, really!

So, if you are going to New Orleans, I would definitely recommend Seed. While I liked the po’ boy, I wasn’t blown away, and the menu is too stuffed with other great-sounding dishes to try it again. Better mac & cheese can be had elsewhere as well. But, go and go again for the gumbo, the unbelievable tofu nuggets, and the super important and VITAL beignets. 

SEED, NEW ORLEANS
Water speed: I remember it being decent.
Bathrooms: Clean, very big single-serve room. I always wish that the big singles could be turned into two, but luckily there was no wait here (it was late).
Service: So nice! Everyone was very friendly and helpful.
Food: Overall, fantastic. Necessary for the beignets…and the nuggets…and the gumbo.
Bonus: BEIGNETS PEOPLE!  

  In our short time in Madrid, we weren’t able to hit all the vegan spots I put on my list. (I was saving my food-tour kind of living for Austin.) Adding to the struggle was that we found at least two spots closed when they were supposed to be open. (I hate Uncle Siesta!) Luckily, we did get to eat at B13, an all-vegan bar the name of which I assume refers to how they’re even better than vitamin b12. Or that like b12, vegans need them. I doubt it’s that. It’s a cool, chill, punk-ish hole-in-the-wall with an unreliable but fun menu. The food was decent, nothing extraordinary, and at times hilarious, but it was just a treat to have an entirely vegan place, even if that place smelled of spilled beer and felt like it too. 

    We were very hungry after a day of walking and wandering, so we were happy when they brought a complimentary starter of bread and ‘salad’. Or were we? This was one of the most hilarious plates of food. In the middle of two pieces of bread was a mayonnaise-y clump of mayonnaise, as far as I could tell. Or potato salad, but the mayo outweighed the presence of potato and other vegetables. Yes, it was vegan (doesn’t look like it!), but still, there’s not much that’s appetizing about a big puddle of mayo, vegan or not. Not the most auspicious start, although it did taste okay in little bites. It’s hard to tell, but this was a huge portion. We tried to attack it at various points in the meal but it was just too much for our soft Western feet.

    Not having had enough beige, our first food order was calamari. Having fried calamari on the menu was a main reason I wanted to go to B13, because it used to be my faaavorite. And guess what that came with? More bread! 

The calamari was pretty good! It didn’t have a discernible fishy taste, which I think is a good move, and it was maybe more like very chewy onion rings, but it was one of the more enjoyable fried foods I’ve eaten. The hunk of bread we could have done without. Perhaps a salad (not of mayo) would have complemented it better.
   I was also lured to B13 because it actually has vegan Spanish omelette, the staple dish of potato-filled omelette. It’s so good and I really really wanted a vegan version. Guess what. None that day. They also were out of the croquettes, which sounded great. Arghaaanauts.   

    For our mains, we created two combo platters. The combo platter situation was quite something. You can pick one item from three different sections, which we did. So, three separate items, okay. One of ours came out as expected, like a full plate of food. But one was kind of funny in execution. For this unexpectedly funny one, we chose the sausages, the green peppers, and hummus. Like, it was three foods. On a plate. Just chilling. This is kind of weird, right? 

I mean, yes, here we have sausages, hummus, and peppers, which we did order, but they’re just, I don’t know, sitting there! All the components are just sitting there. I don’t know, it’s a weird plate! This also came with a basket of bread. It’s like a deconstructed plate of food or something. Weird. The peppers were really great, grilled until they were super soft. Although I may have just been excited about seeing a non-mayoed vegetable. No they were good. And the hummus was quite enjoyable, as almost all hummus is, despite it being the first food that needed bread but the 3rd dish that came with bread. 
    The other combo platter we made was the breaded seitan steak with salad and onion rings. Hrm. This seitan steak was…weird. It was super soft ‘seitan’, like you could tell it was maybe made with flour and not vital wheat gluten and not made correctly, and it was suuuuper sweet. It actually tasted like a maple syrup-covered pancake. But it was seitan. Husband couldn’t eat it. I tried. I did not fully succeed.  

At least this plate looks more like an actual plate of food, right? And that salad was so good. Well, it was average normal green salad with tomatoes and carrots, but I was so happy to see it after all this beige. The onion rings were decent but unnecessary. If I returned, I would combo platter the burger, which we didn’t try and I bet is really good just because of odds, the salad, and the peppers. 
     This is the point where our story gets very very sad. One of the best parts about B13 is that they have soy milkshakes! And milkshakes are one of the best foods out there! The availability of milkshakes was my #1 reason for wanting to go to B13. You’ve probably already guessed what happened: no milkshakes that day. Sadface. 
   They did have one last piece of cream cake. Or pie. I am not really sure what this was, but it had a wide layer of light thick sweet cream that was just really really good. The wondrous fluffy cream came on top of a spongy vanilla cake layer, and it was all topped with delicious caramel-ly crushed nuts. So yay for that. 

B13, MADRID, SPAIN
Water speed: Hooray for a carafe, though refills were slow. 
Service: Staff is mostly behind the bar, which we were near, so we could talk to them easily. 
Bathrooms: One or two very typical bar bathrooms. 
Food: Disappointing if you want great food (or anything you were jonesing for on the menu), but good if you just need somewhere vegan. 
Bonus: An all-vegan place in the middle of any city is pretty cool!