Eating Vegan in Moscow: Highs, Lows, and Our New Second Homeby Randi / July 2, 2017
After Moscow, we began the part of our trip touring what Republicans would probably refer to as the ‘real Russia’ even though all parts of a country are real. A short high-speed train to Vladimir began our visit to Russia’s Golden Ring, small towns that used to be hugely important cities shaping Russia’s early history. And I mean early – Vladimir was founded in the elevensies by Prince Vladimir Monochromatic (something like that) of Kiev as a fortress town just because he was like ahh I need a fortress to protect my eastern lands and I’m all one color this is terriburrrr. Oh it was Monomakh. Anyway Vladdy was satisfied with his namebrand town as a fortress but his grandson Andrei could never be satisfied (and he also isn’t heeere how many Broadway references in one sentence can we do) so Andrei stormed Kiev and stole all the master craftsmen away and forced them to Vladimir to make it the new happening place. It became the Russian capital for a bit and had even more people than London at that time. London was so bum. The city’s population boomed as it became a political center and then a religious center, but then its population disappeared by the 1400s. Not like ah they were taken by aliens, just it shrank back to near nothingness because of Moscow being close and having the good opera and ballet and stuff. Today it is an industrial center with actually a completely vegan little cafe that does amazing wraps, a much more stable population, and lots of Medieval sites, mostly cathedrals, as most of the sites in this land are.
We got to Vladimir at about 8:30pm, so we went straight to our hotel to drop our bags and then find food. The hotel was called the Kinolenta, and I should have guessed before, knowing that Kino means movie theatre, that I would like this place a lot – it was indeed movie themed! There were little film reel decals everywhere and they had a big screen tv at one end of the main hallway with a few chairs. Okay that is as far as the theme goes but for this little town that doesn’t even have a movie theatre it was pretty cool. In our room, there was a photo of London, complete with a double decker bus, so that was incredibly comforting and such a fun coincidence. It was technically a hotel and it was a lot nicer than our last hostel (dreck), but it still had a hostel vibe – shared bathroom (at least just with the room next door (which happened to be our cousin’s (so I guess I can’t complain about that))) and SUPER LOUD PEOPLE. After we came back from dinner at 11:30pm, there were about 20 adults having some sort of meeting in the kitchen – which was across from our room – while their children ran around the halls. Ughhh people what is your liiiife be quiettttt. I thought maybe I’d get up early and exercise or something and give the noise right back to them but then they were up meeting again in the kitchen at like 7am! Dammit loud people who don’t need much sleep!
Anyway, aside from those people the hotel was fine and the staff was very nice. The woman who checked us in spoke no English but we had an okay time. Since leaving Moscow, we are really seeing the payoff from studying Russian. Thank god we did. We would be scah rewed out here where we are now. So we dropped our bags and went out on the town of Vladimir, which actually had a lot of town to its name. Lots of restaurants were still open, there was a McDonalds AND a Burger King (the boys of course got soft-serve at McDonalds for the equivalent of like 40 cents and I’ve never been so jealous you know soft-serve is my favorite and I haven’t even been able to have even hard ice cream on this trip) (okay that’s not true I did have ‘ice cream’ in Moscow at Avocado but it was completely freezer burn like they bought it 10 years ago and I was the first dunce to order it). We walked through the main sites – namely the Golden Gate, which we would be visiting the next morning – and took some night time pics on our way to a HappyCow recommended place called Khilinki Dom, which means Tavern House. It doesn’t have anything particularly stand out for vegans, but it is a Georgian restaurant which means easy to find veggie side dishes. Unfortunately the bread wasn’t like my babushka friend’s in St. Petersburg, but it was still bread and I won’t turn it away. I got a dish of rice with chopped peppers and tomatoes, which was pretty good, and a plate of grilled vegetables that I didn’t take a picture of because it would have been ridiculous – it was half a tomato, half a red pepper, half a hunk of eggplant, and half a zucchini, grilled as is. It wasn’t bad.
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After stocking up on water and apples at the biggest supermarket I’ve seen in a while (they had Alpro soy milk too! I had a baby vanilla one for dessert!), we had a lovely night listening to the kitchen meeting. The next morning we saw all the Vladdy sights, including the Golden Gate. Vladimir was once ringed entirely with earthen rampants, a bit of which remains that we climbed up. The whole city was protected by these defensive walls, and the Golden Gate is the part that still remains. We scrambled up the steep side of the rampant to get to the top and once there learned that there’s a pedestrian-friendly path on the other side.
Above the Gate is a Cathedral, I mean I guess it’s all connected but there’s a Cathedral and it’s another one of those Deposition of the Robe ones, because it was really important to Russians to commemorate where their robes went. In there, there’s a small museum that was 100% worth it because there’s a huge diorama along one wall that tells the story of Vladimir with lights and an audio track. We arrived at a good time when we were the only people in that room so they played the English track! And they turned off the lights because no one was looking at the other stuff on the other walls so it was LEGIT. I don’t really remember what it was about but like in the 1200s the Tatars attacked by climbing up the ramparts and being like ahh are we wearing Scottish plaid or do we have bad teeth oh neither there aren’t enough r’s!!! But Vladimir stayed strong and still was important religiously. I don’t know I was so distracted by the cool flashing lights.
What else did we see. Oh we scrambled up the super steep rampart next to the Gate for the view of the town center, which was really the theatre and this big PECO building! Cool that they provide electricity to both Philadelphia and Vladimir.
PECO!
random Vladimir cherry sculpture I like
We also went to the Old Vladimir museum housed in a 19th century water tower, which was cool. It had a little room on each floor up the winding stairs and then had a lovely panorama view at the top. The museum showed off such…interesting, shall we say, dioramas of what life was like in Vlad 100s of years ago. Apparently old-timey men with ridiculous bicycles flirted with Elizabeth Hurley while other women had unfortunate hairdos but gorgeous desks.
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One thing I’ve noticed in every Russian town we’ve visited so far is that they really REALLY hate the Nazis, which I like seeing. I mean of course they do considering how many people they lost in WWII, it’s really insane how many, but it’s nice to see constant reminders of anti-Nazism, especially when my own country is failing to do the same and even demonstrating overt anti-Semitism in things that should be all-inclusive like the NYC Pride Parade. Raging over that. F you Linda Sarsour.
After seeing all the Vladimir sights we wanted to see that day (lots of things are closed on Mondays and/or Tuesdays all over Russia), we went back to the hotel to grab our daypacks (they kindly stored our enormous packs for the next 24 hours) and went to catch the <1 hour minibus to Suzdal, the next of the Golden Ring towns on our agenda.
I think this guy IS Vladimir no just kidding
that isn’t Vladimir that’s Lenin he’s real big here
On the way to the Vladimir Bus Terminal (conveniently right across the street from the train station), we passed this sign on the main street:
 we literally walked into this! vegetarian kitchen!
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do you even veggie, bro? |
I MEAN. Could I BE any more excited? What a freaking fortuitous turn of events! I had read about Veggie Bro on HappyCow (it was literally the only other listing besides Khilinki Dom in the entire region) but it didn’t have an address listed so we had trouble internetting it. But it was RIGHT on the main street, on Bolshoya Moskovaya, I think it was called, and we just chanced upon it! So lucky! Of course we went in and luckily everyone was hungry so we got a lot. The man working the register was very nice and spoke the best English we’d heard in Vladimir, so he helped us order. They have various burgers and salads but really the draw there is the make-your-own wraps, because they are AMAZING. Seriously, after that sad sad Pret a Manger-style wrap I had on my first day in Moscow, this wrap was a g-d delight. You have to grill them, guys, that’s the secret to deliciousness and keeping them from getting soggy ugh that’s the worst. And amazing fillings. Husband got a seitan burger, Cousin got a falafel wrap, and I concocted a lavash wrap with seitan, shredded carrots, cabbage, cucumber, tomato, pickles, lots of fresh herbs (mostly dill, which I think I’m allergic to but that’s not part of this tale), and a secret Veggie Bro sauce. It was like a Greek gyro/god.
all vegan goodies! 
i wuv you wrap! wuv you! |
chef salad! 
pretty painting on the wall at Veggie Bro! |
pretty burger! not as good as wrap but still seitany goodness mmmm
It was SO GOOD. Erma P GERD. I also got the ‘chef salad’ which was just lettuce, beets, and hummus, with a SHITTONNE of paprika tossed around the plate (Jojo don’t look you’ll die!) so that was a little sad looking but I was due for some lettuce and hummus (which 90% of the time is what I eat for dinner when I’m by myself) so it was fine. Man alive I loved this wrap. Husband’s burger was good but the wraps are where it’s at. So obsessed. The lone young man cooking all the food back there is a talent.
Full and happy, we bought our minibus tickets for Suzdal. There are minis between the two towns every half hour or so, so you just rock up to the window when you want to go and you get on the next one. Don’t worry about them selling out, because apparently they don’t have a limit to how many tickets they sell for each bus. We were given seats 15, 16, and 17, but the seats only went up to #16! Then as more and more people got on we realized that it is a standing room only situation. Husband and I took turns standing and it was okay because I was listening to The Great Comet on my headphones (err day err day) even though I don’t think Russians on public transit know about headphones yet. It was packed full of smelly people as usual with that very distinctive Russian man b.o. but I had the voice of Groban in my ear and seitan in my belly so it was okay. No just kidding I was super nauseous the whole time.
lol this is the dumbest picture but hey minibus fun times but no fun
We arrived in Suzdal at a train station literally in the middle of a field with nothing else as far as the eye could see. If Husband didn’t have his phone I don’t know how we’d be getting around. Seriously how did people travel before smartphones? How did I travel across Europe in college without internet! I can’t even believe that was me. Despite appearances, our guesthouse was only a 20-minute walk away, down dirt roads and little streets with the most adorable houses, most of which had very intricate wood carvings decorating the exterior.
bus station in Suzdal
Cute carving on our guest house
Our guesthouse had a cute little rooster carving on the outside as well as a phone number to call in case the door was locked, which it was. Okay, but most travelers don’t have telephone access! Luckily we did, but guess what, lo and behold that number was out of service! We banged on the door for a good 10 minutes before deciding to go ask the neighbor if she could help. Five or 10 minutes after ringing the doorbell there, Neighbor Babushka comes out and speaks rapid fire Russian maybe apologizing? She was smiling and she had the keys to the guesthouse! She let us in and without stopping to breathe she explained how to use the stove, the samovar, the oven, the microwave, the television, all while speaking incredibly fast countryside Russian and I was like ahhh I have to peeee. Luckily when she showed us our room and starting explaining how to use things we would actually be using like the keys, something clicked in my brain and I ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD. Better than that, I communicated right back to her! We communicated the shit out of that conversation! I’m so proud. She seemed really proud of me too, I think. She didn’t slow down ever, btw, but every time we thanked her she would say no no I thank YOU! At least I think that’s what she said. I was sweating buckets throughout the entire conversation like my whole body was on red alert trying with every fiber to remember what I’d learned. I guess I learned something! I hated Neighbor Babushka when we were waiting outside in that sun and heat (first hot sunny day of course) but then we were BFF.
After that roller coaster of emotion, we hightailed it to the Suzdal Kremlin so we could see that and a museum before everything closed. Yes this is all still one day, the same day we saw all the things in Vladimir and ate that glorious wrap. The Suzdal Kremlin is not like the huge acreage of the Moscow one. This one is a very old fashioned white stone area with mostly cathedrals, including this beautiful blue-starred-onion-domed one that is one of the oldest cathedrals in all of Russia. I wrote on instagram that it was the oldest one but it’s one of the oldest ones okay just chill.
It’s quite cool that the architects had such fun with color and stars such a long time ago. Husband made a pun about this cathedral that I still have stomach pains over, many days later. He kept mentioning the ‘starry’ cathedral, which is funny/punny because it is covered with the gold stars of course but also because the Russian word for hella old is pronounced “starry” so you get it oh my belly oh oh oh the pain of his punning.
Oh outside the Kremlin was a honey-mead (this region is BIG On their mead and honey drinks) shop with MY FRIEND OUTSIDE!
Can you believe it? His famous line in Shrek is pretty much my most quoted thing ever so I was super pumped.
The Kremlin grounds reached on around a beautiful expanse of fields and river and it was really peaceful and lovely.
In some of the cathedrals were little museums full of more/endless religious iconography, including this one that I had a ball with trying to land the center square myself:
scale of 1-10 how bad is this like with religion
Husband and I also did a prom-style pose in the middle there but it’s too embarrassing to share here. I’ll share this guys cape though! Religious figures know how to cape but good:
hey jesus do you like my cape
On our lovely walk to our next site, we saw more lovely sprawling fields full of farmers as well as a tiny shack on the side of the road that had a legit kvass, mead, and other beverage brewing operation going, so of course we refer to it now as the funniest thing you can imagine if you were a fan of “30 Rock”:
The rural brewer
The rural brewer! Hopefully you said it in your head the correct way, which is “the ruhhh bruhhhr” . I crack myself up.
Next up was the Museum of Wooden Architecture, a hilariously cute outdoor museum site that has examples of real cabins and workshops and chapels and lighthouses as were used in regular domestic life of peasants in the area in the 18th and 19th centuries. All the structures were really used, taken from various villages in the region.
my kind of museum!
a peasant’s house
a well-to-do peasant’s house
It was such a great way to do museuming, especially since we lucked out with the weather this day. We saw the inside of a small peasant chapel, a regular peasant’s house, a ‘well-to-do’ peasant’s house, and the world’s biggest hamster wheel:
Guess what, it is indeed like a hamster wheel – but for hooomans! It’s connected to the well, and to lift the bucket up and down the human actually has to power the wheel just like a hamster ahhh I wish they’d let me try.
On the grounds, they had a cute little cafe and shop with lots of mead and honey jars and then something I thought would be for me – the seesaw! But as soon as I was about to sit on one end, I saw the saddest sign:
Children only! Fie! Fie upon your rules! I do love that that sign probably was the result of experience, though.
For dinner that evening, we went to a relatively famous (for this one-horse town (actually, sadly, they did have horse-drawn carriages all over so it was really a 10-horse town but really more like a 1-horse town you get it)) restaurant on the main street recommended by our guide book and (we think) by Neighbor Babushka, called Kharchevnaya. The menu had English translations under every dish, although they weren’t the most helpful. They were pretty freaking entertaining though:
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The Omelet is Natural! Cheerful honey moderately drunk! Meat motley crew!
The only vegetarian-looking things were that Omelet is Natural and some mushroom dishes. I asked about the mushrooms but she said they were cooked in cream. I asked if they could cook me mushrooms without cream, and she said they could give me potatoes. Like okay I know I’m being a nuisance by asking for changes but that’s just a whole different thing lady. Anyway it was okay, the potatoes were really good and I haven’t gotten sick of them just yet. I also got a salad-y pickle-y plate which I am accustomed to now, having had it at most meals it seems! But I like it! It’s good to have fresh vegetables and pickled stuff for probiotics. Pickled stuff has probiotics right? I’m counting on that to prevent illness. Haha just kidding we’re traveling through Central Asia for more than 3 months I’m gonna get sick.
The only vegetarian-looking things were that Omelet is Natural and some mushroom dishes. I asked about the mushrooms but she said they were cooked in cream. I asked if they could cook me mushrooms without cream, and she said they could give me potatoes. Like okay I know I’m being a nuisance by asking for changes but that’s just a whole different thing lady. Anyway it was okay, the potatoes were really good and I haven’t gotten sick of them just yet. I also got a salad-y pickle-y plate which I am accustomed to now, having had it at most meals it seems! But I like it! It’s good to have fresh vegetables and pickled stuff for probiotics. Pickled stuff has probiotics right? I’m counting on that to prevent illness. Haha just kidding we’re traveling through Central Asia for more than 3 months I’m gonna get sick.
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We said goodbye to Cousin after dinner, as his part of our journey ended and now it’s just the two of us. The next morning we interlaced our destinies and went to the big Monastery in Suzdal, The grounds were very nice, if the museums inside all the cathedrals and buildings seemed a little endless. But it was all worth it because the hunchback they have ringing the bells every hour is FIRE. Oh my god he did this incredible bell concerto for like 15 minutes I got only a 5 second video but it was awesome. I’ve never seen a noon-time bell ringing garner applause before. I’ve never seen any bell ringing garner applause before.
Aside from pretty but getting-standard cathedrals and museums of religious iconography (they had some naaaames back then), the Monastery also had a cafe with SOUP! I love soup. I asked about the shchi, one of my faves, but it had meat in it! It’s not supposed to! Maybe it’s supposed to. But lady was nice and said the mushroom soup had no meat. Yay! I asked for it without smetana – sour cream, which Russians put on EVERY SINGLE THING. I wouldn’t be surprised if people put it in their beer. I think they use the same spoon for everything because my soup had little flecks of sour cream in it but I did my best to fish them out and anyway I can’t even fathom how much accidental dairy and egg I’ve probably already had this trip so I didn’t go nuts over getting all the miniscule flecks out. I’m okay. It was really good soup! I mean it was fine but all soup is generally really good yay soup.
The monastery was surrounded by ramparts that we could walk through, and we were delighted to find that inside these walls were like little movie museums! Apparently Russian filmmakers have used the monastery very often in their films and so many movies were shot there. They had posters to a lot of them lining the walls, as well as a projector and screen set up. It would be cool to see a movie in there!
movie set
After we saw all the Suzdal sites on our list, we headed back for another minibus adventure back to Vladimir. This time, we both had to stand the whole time and ugh it was hot. Luckily, our reward for that journey was another meal at Veggie Bro! This time, I got a seitan AND falafel wrap (genius) with various veggies and sauces and it was sooo good. Husband got a smoked seitan and tofu wrap with BBQ sauce that was also really good. And I got the chef salad again, expecting that sad lettuce and hummus plate, but out came a gorgeous cabbage and red pepper slaw!!
I think chef salad just means whatever the chef feels like cooking up that day! In for it! I loved this salad so much and this wrap. And this place! I wish Veggie Bro had a location in London because I really want to go to them again but I don’t know if Vladimir really necessitates a second visit. We had a great few days in these Golden Ring villages of Vladimir and Suzdal, called such because they are ancient towns preserving the memory of the important times of early Russian history. They are very charming. But of course they are tiny little towns and we saw the things we had to see, so, I guess, that’s all she wrote. That night, we got on our first long overnight train, from Vladimir to Yekaaterinburg, a 24-hour journey. Next post will be my nervous breakdown on that train, before I knew what a nervous breakdown really was (cough wrote most of this post on a three-day train cough). Till next time!
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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!)
