Love From Philly: My Grandmother Does the Most Amazing Thing With Polentaby Randi / September 24, 2014
Philadelphia gets more and more vegan-friendly by the day, it seems. In the past year, we’ve gotten a second outpost of the consistent & incredible HipCityVeg, a new all-vegan bar with upscale small plates called Charlie was a sinner. (review to come tomorrow, and yes, the period is in the name), a new bar from the Landaus of Vedge fame (to open any day now), and much more just in Center City! It’s sometimes hard to get out of the center because it seems there’s no real need to, with so much delicious vegan food within a few blocks of Rittenhouse. However, South Philly is veganizing as fast as it’s gentrifying, and if you can get someone to drive you (not it!), the vegan scene there is unmissable. My favorite new place there? Vegan Commissary! I think it’s the best brunch in town. It’s only open during lunch hours, but call it brunch so you can also order the cinnabuns.
Look how fun this menu is! You might be thinking, hey, that looks a little pricey! (Well not if you live in London because everything is sick expensive here.) The prices are a little higher (for the entrees anyway; the sides are stupid cheap) than you’d expect for a small little vegan joint, but guess what – they include tax and service, and they pay the wait staff a living wage. UHHHMAZING.
The food at Vegan Commissary is very much brunch-based, with giant pancakes, an extremely impressive Veggs platter, various kinds of scrapple, French toast, burgers, hash, and a dish actually called cream chipped beets. Every dish seems super clever and well thought out. Some items still require some work (I went pretty early in the restaurant’s life) but overall everything is crazy delicious.
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Of course I start here with a green juice, called the Groovy Grub Green. It was yummy and gave me a shot of necessary green veggies before I dove into the gluttony of what was to come. (You can’t help but over-order here because everything sounds so crazy good.) Then, in order to immediately counterbalance whatever good I ingested with the juice, I have the cinnamon buns.
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 Green juice above; cinnabons to the right. The perfect duo |
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The mini cinnamon buns are delicious. Oh man. Warm and gooey and covered in a sweet vanilla just-barely-cream-cheesy frosting (I usually hate cream cheese but this is subtle), they are the perfect little treat to share with your brunchmate or hoard for yourself.
One of the most creative menu items is also the most incredible – the poached avocado & tempeh hash. It’s a platter of diced fried tempeh and potatoes, the ‘hash’, topped with a perfect poached avocado and covered in a decadent hollandaise sauce. Oh my goodness! It’s like all my favorite non-kale foods. This is so good. I would have loved if a non-potato vegetable came with it for balance, but I guess we already took care of that need with the juice. This is ridiculously good.
One of the most creative menu items is also the most incredible – the poached avocado & tempeh hash. It’s a platter of diced fried tempeh and potatoes, the ‘hash’, topped with a perfect poached avocado and covered in a decadent hollandaise sauce. Oh my goodness! It’s like all my favorite non-kale foods. This is so good. I would have loved if a non-potato vegetable came with it for balance, but I guess we already took care of that need with the juice. This is ridiculously good.
Poached avocado & tempeh hash
Another fantastic and insanely creative dish – one that I’ve ordered every time I’ve been to the Commissary, actually! – is the Veggs Damian. I don’t know who Damian is, but thanks dude, because this is the most impressive brunch item I may have ever seen. And it’s delicious.
Veggs Damian
Look at those eggs! They are made from pressed tofu and filled with a yolk made from the Vegg, so perfectly set that you can dip your toast (buttered, of course; you get so much vegan butter!) in it. I just don’t understand how this is even possible. And they are really good! Equally impressive is the ‘side’ (in quotes because it’s quite large) of vegan scrapple that comes with it. Real scrapple may be one of the grossest ideas in food history, but vegan scrapple? Amazing. The Commissary’s version was a little too salty the last time I went, but still good. I love that this dish comes with asparagus – yay a vegetable! – and extra hollandaise.
 Corn scrapple |
Actually, the item I enjoyed most? Even more than the regular vegan scrapple? This corn scrapple! It tasted like a cross between a corn fritter and a polenta pancake. Oh man, SO freaking good!
Yet another ridiculous, over-the-top, must-order dish is the biscuits and gravy. I think every vegan feels the need to order biscuits and gravy whenever that amazingness is available, but here you must be warned: It’s freaking huge. Huuuuuge. I couldn’t actually finish it. It was really great. The biscuits are a little dense, not very light and fluffy, but they are perfect in this dish, with this delicious gravy smothering it. And it comes with more potatoes! Oh man. And it’s topped with the most glorious fried onions, like huge onion ring-style almost. |
Biscuits & gravy
I also loved the carrot dog, another very inspired dish, this time playing off a hot dog. It’s a lovely seasoned carrot in a bun, just like a hot dog but so much better! Topped with lentils and extra harissa mayo, it’s pretty darn fantastic.
Carrot dog & harissa mayo
I’ve also had the gluten-free chocolate peanut butter pie, which is like a decadent little peanut butter cup. It’s an almond and chocolate crust, filled with whipped peanut butter and chocolate ganache. Sooo decadent!
I definitely recommend that you get your bottom out of center city and over to South Philly for a wonderful meal at Vegan Commissary. Everything is good if not great, and it will only improve with time (as it already has!). Philly is such a freaking vegan mecca nowadays, it’s absolutely mind-blowing! I already miss this place and can’t wait to go there when I visit home.
I definitely recommend that you get your bottom out of center city and over to South Philly for a wonderful meal at Vegan Commissary. Everything is good if not great, and it will only improve with time (as it already has!). Philly is such a freaking vegan mecca nowadays, it’s absolutely mind-blowing! I already miss this place and can’t wait to go there when I visit home.
VEGAN COMMISSARY, PHILADELPHIA
Water speed: Good, because the servers are extremely attentive, but I just wish they used bigger glasses.
Service: Very good and super friendly.
Bathrooms: One single-serve very close to the kitchen. Pretty clean.
Food: Wonderful! Such an interesting variety with inspired ideas.
Bonus: Service and tax are included in the menu prices because they pay decent wages! Dessert, Veggs, pancakes, and scrapple! Can’t go wrong.
Note: Cash only; closes at 4pm.
Related Posts
Cherry Orange Cornmeal Cake, or How To Have Polenta All Day Son
(Don’t call me son.) I know corn is evil because of GMOs and Monsanto and they’re all watching us through our webcams that we assume are turned off but never are &c. But, polenta is amazing and I can’t stop eating it, even if it will make me grow horns. No seriously. We’ve had it for regular meals (obviously), we’ve had it for breakfast, and now we’re having it for dessert in cake form. I’m sure you’ve all had polenta cake or cornmeal cake in your life but this is its first appearance on this section of this site so ya know happy new year.
Cornmeal is the same as dry polenta, so when you go to buy it, either works. Don’t get the prepackaged premade polenta that we would use in our fried breakfast. You want the flour-like grain for this. But don’t buy cornflour; in the UK that’s what they call cornstarch. There’s a lot to keep straight here.
You can use really any fruit you want here; any kind of berry would be great. I used cherries because I had to cut around the pits and stuff and I like to challenge myself. Also they are apparently supposed to be great help for painful lady cramps so ya know, if you make this it’s pretty much like taking medicine.
Did you hear Bill Cosby finally got arrested? Hooray for PA! I can see all of Pennsylvania!
You can use really any fruit you want here; any kind of berry would be great. I used cherries because I had to cut around the pits and stuff and I like to challenge myself. Also they are apparently supposed to be great help for painful lady cramps so ya know, if you make this it’s pretty much like taking medicine.
Did you hear Bill Cosby finally got arrested? Hooray for PA! I can see all of Pennsylvania!
CHERRY ORANGE POLENTA CAKE
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Ingredients:
Directions:
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Angelica… 
Eliza! 
and cherry |
my food photography brings all the boys to the yard |
they’re like it’s better than yours |
It’s turned out really yummy! Especially for something I didn’t test. Yeah, so the whole spontaneous vibe about this section of the blog usually works out (my shit’s delicious), but sometimes I see where testing could improve things. I loved the taste here, but it was super crumbly. It’s not a problem at all if you make a custard or eat it with ice cream, the liquid of which can help to hold it together or at the very least can help you focus on how lucky you are to be eating vegan ice cream instead of thinking about crumbly cake you ungrateful ogre. But when I make it next, I think I would add a few tablespoons of Aquafaba. And I’m going to suggest that you add it to yours too. Holy crap I just told my husband “I think next time I’ll add Aquafaba to see if it helps bind it” and he LITERALLY just said, “What the f*& why would you voluntarily eat something called Aquafaba? It sounds like a poison from ancient civilizations. Or like a witchcraft-generated medicine. A medieval crone would have been like ‘Here, take some Aquafaba to cure you of your black humours!'” He really said this.
ENJOY!
“Secret” Vegan Supper Club at The Gate, Marylebone
Man alive do you know how much putting “Marylebone” in the headline is stressing me out?! I NEVER spell that forking fancy pants neighborhood (dammit, it’s so fancy it’s gonna require the ‘u’) neighbourhood correctly so I must be feeling BRAVE to put it in the headline. I think the correct mnemonic is remembering it as Mary Le Bone like it’s a person’s unfortunate name but it still looks wrong. Omg was Mary Le Bone a real person? Is it named after her? Was she chic af? OK that’s a ramble for another time. Suffice it to say Mary’s hood is chic af and we recently (like last night) went there to dine at The Gate, London’s classic vegetarian restaurant. The Gate has been serving up quality boutique vegetarian food in London since 1989, and they’ve remained a constant, dependable, classy, delicious mid-upscale choice for us throughout the quiet veg years and now in this remarkable vegan boom.
Once a month, The Gate in Mary’s the bone hosts a “secret” vegan supper club (which is cute to call it that I guess because you can’t actually find info on their website easily but obvs it’s not secret; they let me in). For £49.50, you get a decadent, beautiful 5-course meal PLUS matching wines. Five wines are included in that pretty decent price! That’s amazing if you drink/are British! I do not and am not, but I was taken care of too (more below). I believe the menu changes for every supper club event – or at least it should, because I’m gonna go every single month as often as I can, because it was wonderful. (I’m really enjoying this strikethrough feature today. I’ll never stop I will stop.)
Out of the 5 courses, 1 was just fine, 2 were good and could easily have been great, 1 was great, and 1 was forking phenomenal, so overall I call that a win, especially because if this was all phenomenal I’d have nothing to say except EEEEE! and you all know how much I like to say things. Let’s get to the food!
First up to bat was my absolute favorite of the savory dishes, the crispy shiitake wonton: shiitake duxelle (duxelle is a fancy way of saying you prepared mushrooms with onions and garlic and herbs and then mixed it all up into a paste or an almost-paste or just finely chopped), cilantro, lime sauce, alfalfa, enoki mushrooms, and shiso. At first I was like ‘I love me some sprouts but that’s a huge pile of alfalfa’, but it was actually well balanced in the dish on the whole, because the mushroom duxelle was so rich and SO delicious that you needed to even that intensity out with literally nothing threads. I loved the little herb sauce dollops, the random enoki on top, and all the flavors together. This was the dish that was great.
The second dish was avocado, mango, and shimeji ceviche. Shimeji mushrooms are the little cartoon-looking fuckers pictured. I love all kinds of mushrooms (except magic ones) (don’t do drugs (THERE’S NO HOPE WITH DOPE lol remember that episode of Saved by the Bell omg it was the best with Johnny Dakota???? and then actual NBC president Brandon Tartikoff did the actual PSA at the end? HILARIOUS) (also obvs I’m joking do whatever you want just don’t forking drive and DO NOT make me smell it FFS ALL MY NEIGHBORS)). This was a very refreshing, very fresh ‘ceviche’ of our three awesome stars (avocado, mango, cartoon mushrooms) covered in lime juice, chili dressing, soft cashews, and placed in leaves of chicory. As you can see, there are also some edible flowers sprinkled about which is a surefire way to please me. So fun! This was one of the dishes that was good but not great, and that’s because while the flavors were all fresh and nice, it was super limey without having the right amount of salt to bring it out in a nice and not overly sour way.
Next is another of the (very) good dishes that could so easily have been great. I really enjoyed this, but admit that a few tiny tweaks could probably make it incredible. Here we have zucchini rolls (I WILL NEVER SAY COURGETTE) (no I already do), filled with WONDROUS fava bean mousse and topped with sumac. These rolls were super delicious; I would buy tubs of that mousse and eat it instead of my regular hummus rotation for several weeks if I could. It was so mild and pleasant and delicious, and the sumac was an interesting and nice touch. However, the smooth mousse was a little geriatric/soft-food-diet, and one of my dining companions said it needed something in the roll-up that was a little more substantial so he didn’t think ‘nursing home safety.’
As you can see, it’s on a bed of couscous, with mint, pistachios, and pomegranate, which was fine, basic. And then there’s a blob of green garlic yogurt on the side. The yogurt did not do it for me; I left most of it where I found it. I don’t think it was necessary and it was too strong, overpowering the mousse flavor, to be worth it. I think if they adiosed that (maybe replacing with something proteiny since, as usual with vegan tasting menus, that was lacking) plus maybe added a few whole fava beans or crushed nuts or something solid-food to the mousse filling this dish would have been great.
The last of the savory dishes was the one I think was just fine. Don’t get me wrong, it tasted great, as everything did (except that yogurt glob), but it was just so ya basic, the dish vegans have been served since before people knew what vegetarian meant so now just feels uninspired and lackluster: the Mediterranean aubergine. This was a big old (nicely) grilled eggplant with Romanesco cauliflower, pieces of butternut squash, semi-dried tomato pesto (I guess because it’s not sunny enough in the UK to fully dry your maters), radishes, and a very welcome piece of baby artichoke, and some green herby sauces all over. All the components were good, especially the pesto and that artichoke (artichokes rock), but despite everything tasting good, (to paraphrase Husbo’s best restaurant review:) you’re still just an asshole eating yet another roasted pile of root veg.
BUT IT’S OK THEY MADE UP FOR IT WITH DESSERT!
The dessert was the PHUH FORKING NOMENAL dish. I mean. Wow. Guys, I think this has been added to my top five restaurant desserts of all time. OF ALL TIME! This chocolate tulip featured a lovely chocolate shell cup housing the most incredible chocolate mousse like EVER. You can see the mousse cup looks red, so I was concerned that they were trying some funny business of trying to ‘improve’ upon classic chocolate by making it chocolate-raspberry or some bullshit that we don’t need because classic chocolate is perfection, but that’s just a dusting of I’m guessing dried raspberry powder to match the lovely little bits of dried raspberry crunch on top and the real raspberries around the plate. IT WAS SO AMAZING. And even though this was amazing in its own right, that right there in green is a dollop of the MOST INCREDIBLE pistachio Chantilly cream you ever did see. I mean I’m just so grateful. This was THE BEST. You need to try this.
While my three omnivorous (they really enjoyed this!) dining companions enjoyed all the wine, I got to choose whatever soft drinks I wanted to accompany my dishes, for no added charge. I was a bit dismayed at first that the ‘soft pairing option’ they confirmed they had in the email wasn’t pre-planned, but it was nice to be able to choose my own drinks off their regular menu. I got a carrot, ginger, beet, and celery juice first, and then a ginger spritz (ginger, lemon, soda) mocktail next. They made it clear I could order more, but they brought me full-size versions so I was so full from liquid so fast, especially considering I’d gone through 3 liter carafes of water before long! And we had 5 courses to go through!
This supper club was a truly lovely experience and I was glad to be reminded of how great The Gate’s food is. Their next one is August 22, so book in now.
The Gate, “Secret” Vegan Supper Club, Marylebone, London, UK
Water speed: They brought carafes of water pretty regularly! It was good! I was so full of liquid!
Service: Very good. As usual with these sorts of events, with everyone in the room finishing at the same time, it’s a little difficult and stressful to pay at the end since everyone is trying to, and it was frustrating that the servers seemed to be cleaning up instead of seeing that we wanted to pay, but that’s my small quibble. Overall good!
Bathrooms: Three stalls in the women’s room with internal sinks, which always make me mad because when there’s a line you’re like ‘why don’t they just put the sinks outside the stalls so the line moves faster’ but this wasn’t the theatre, there was no line. So it was fine. And clean.
Food: Delicious! Overall it was really nice, and even the things that weren’t interesting were still well made and tasted great.
Bonus: I love a good supper club! I felt this was a great value for money, especially with all those drinks included. AND THAT DESSERT!
