wayward cafe is a modest cash-only co-op—a small house that’s been converted into an entirely vegan restaurant, located in a residential area of seattle’s university district. more importantly, it’s where i had the best breakfast of my entire life.

tempeh scramble: fried tempeh wedges, scrambled spicy seasoned tofu and steamed broccoli on a bed of spinach. served with a side of tahini sauce and toast. $7.50

breakfast burrito: scrambled seasoned tofu, tvp chorizo and spinach wrapped inside a grilled flour tortilla. topped with cilantro sour cream. served with a side of salsa fresca and home fries. $6.75

while there are a few things that kind of irritate me about this restaurant, the food is so wonderful it makes them all irrelevant. if i lived in seattle, i would eat at this place several days per week. i’m talking food so good, it rivals pure luck…if wayward cafe had tap beer, i’d surely move to washington.

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Since the early 70s, the Pike Brewery has been serving ales in Seattle, moving to its present location in Pike Place Market during the early 90s. If you can deal with the nightmare that is parking in downtown Seattle (or better still, get a taxi: you probably won’t want to drive after a visit to the Pike!), you are in for a beer TREAT with several vegan options on the menu, including my favorite, Hummus and Pita, which is lovingly prepared, saladated with cucumber, lettuce, and the all important kalamata olives:

Having said all that, I forget my veganism when I show up at The Pike, because the thing that gets me every time is the cask ale, served at just the right temperature from traditional British-made hand pumps. If the stars are aligned, you can get a porter, stout or (if you’re really lucky) the perfectly hopped IPA, which I was lucky enough to find on cask suring my last visit.

The vibe is similar to a large English pub, but with a very Pacific Northwest feel: comfortable pleather couches, large plastic covered menus and the stench of fried food everywhere.

Visiting at peak times usually means a wait unless you’re lucky enough to get a seat at the bar, or you have to line up at the bar and order if you’re sitting in the “pub” — just like in England! If you visit off-peak, though, you can get a comfortable bar seat and chat away to one of the knowledgeable bartenders while enjoying one too many cask beers

The Pike is one of Seattle’s best breweries, arguably the best location, probably the best vegan food offerings and, albeit at certain times, the best atmosphere. If you enjoy good vegan food and great beer in a hassle-free environment the Pike is certainly for you.

Check it out on your next trip Up North.

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there’s nothing like a really great breakfast scramble, and seattle seems to do it best. cafe flora, in particular, offers up some amazing vegetable scrambles that can be veganized by changing out the eggs for tofu. they even come with a delectable piece of vegan coffee cake!

spinach scramble: scrambled tofu with organic baby spinach, leeks and caramelized onions with roasted potatoes and coffee cake $11

grilled asparagus scramble: scrambled tofu with fresh basil pesto and sundried tomatoes with roasted potatoes and coffee cake $11

cafe flora isn’t the typical kind of scrappy vegan-friendly restaurant i gravitate towards. it’s expensive, has a long list of complicated opening hours, and several different menus depending on the time of day. it’s actually only open for breakfast (or “brunch” as they call it) on saturday and sunday.

but when they serve the food you see pictured above, that tastes way better than it looks, it’s no surprise that cafe flora was completely full on sunday morning, within ten minutes of opening its doors.

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If I feel like spending around $70 on dinner for two in a nice restaurant where I can take my time to enjoy good wine and awesome vegan food, the Il Fornaio chain is always a good bet. I’ve been to outlets in San Francisco, Denver, Vegas, NYC, LA and, most recently, Seattle. Each has a slightly different atmosphere, but the same menu, quality and good service. AND, they understand what “vegan” means.

Capellini al Pomodoro: Angel hair pasta, chopped fresh roma tomatoes, marinara sauce and fresh basil. $12.95

While my main dish is always the Capellini al Pomodoro, I usually order a bottle of wine, and pig out on the fresh bread and olive oil they serve upon arrival. In fact, this is the BEST fresh bread and olive oil available in any restaurant I’ve ever been to, especially the outlet in Vegas (its bakery is adjacent).

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seattle is sooooo the land of wonderful vegan food. if only it had better weather and an industry in which i was employable, i’d surely move there. even without those things, it’s so tempting to leave my sunny so-cal atmosphere and job stability for the rainy pacific northwest—with its overabundance of meatless eateries and brew pubs where cask ale flows (that seem to be inevitably taken for granted by locals who’ve grown accustomed to such pleasures).

EXAMPLE: while in seattle, i stumble into a random hotel restaurant for some late-night eats, and the menu happens to brag about it’s vegetarian options. it doesn’t stop there—the friendly server knows all about the difference between vegetarianism and veganism, and assures me that i’ll be taken care of. even in liberal hollywood, i’ve not seen this type of vegan acknowledgement. sure there are some la omnivore establishments that cater specifically to my kind, but other than that, whenever i ask about animal stock in my entree, i’m greeted with a completely clueless dumfounded gaze…to the point at which i don’t even bother eating at places that aren’t specifically vegan-friendly, for the most part.

but in seattle, even in the confines of a hotel bar/restaurant, i still feel completely safe, and possibly even understood. for instance, dragonfish.

tofu veggie roll: tofu, cucumber, kaiware, avocado, cilantro, and yama gobo $8

dragonfish yakisoba: soba noodles tossed with vegetables and your choice of chicken or tofu $13

this food was bloody incredible. i’m talking “11pm, late night snack, hotel bar food”…not “6 pm, i sought this really cool vegan restaurant out, and wanted to try it food.”

yeah, this shit was on-point…and hassle-free for a passing hotel-diner vegan-customer like myself. the food itself tasted good, i trusted it, and it arrived in no time. what else could i possibly ask for when my meal was pushing midnite?

plus, i’d never even tried tofu sushi before. forget that lame, boring avocado & cucumber roll—finally some sushi i can identify with! my only guff with these rolls is that they may have spoiled me; hopefully i can continue to appreciate old school sushi from here on out.

yep, dragonfish totally brings it….especially for so little $$$$ in the late night hours. if you want a post-dinner snack in downtown, or if you are a vegan dining with picky omnivores, this is definitely a spot to add to your list.

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Well, the unavailability of most good vegan food in LA is very sad. What’s sadder is how available it is in Seattle, where I lived for a long time as a lowly vegetarian before I saw the light. The wonderful “eclectic vegan grocery store”, Sidecar for Pig’s Peace, stocks stuff I wish I could get at Erewhon or Whole Foods down here in LA and I’d shop there every day if I lived in Seattle, even with the unbelievably snooty person behind the cash register (lady, don’t shit on your own doorstep and poke fun of out of town vegans and where they live…). Fortunately, right across the street is an entirely vegan pizza joint, the only one I’ve ever been to and one I would (again) shop at every day.

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quarrygirl.com has moved to seattle, at least for the next few posts. we recently took a trip there for mr. meaner’s birthday, and were so absolutely overwhelmed with all the vegan options, we thought the least we could do for us, them and you was to blog all about it. plus, it gave us a really good excuse to eat like 5 meals per day. bam.

first up, the legendary teapot vegetarian house. in the mid-90’s, before i ever met my husband, seattle was his home…and this was his favorite vegetarian restaurant. suffice to say, when he first showed me around the city in late 2005, this was virtually our first stop. our subsequent/most recent trip to seattle was no different. we arrived via virgin america, had a few pints in a lovely brew pub, and made a beeline for the teapot vegetarian house.

steamed dumplings: traditional northern chinese dim-sum made of fresh diced vegetables and spices hand wrapped in an envelope of flour. steamed and comes with a dipping sauce of vinegar and sesame oil. our pride and joy. $6.95

broccoli tofu: a perrenial favorite, fresh crunchy chunks of broccoli florets stir fried with slices of wheat gluten in dark, savory sauce. $13.95

fried wide noodles in dark sauce: we use wide rice noodles, fresh bean sprouts, scallions and add a delicious dark rich syrupy sauce to make this traditional Singapore “roadside” dish. $8.95

i must admit, despite my pleasant encounter with the teapot in ‘05, this time i wasn’t expecting much. 2 and a half years later, i consider myself a much more seasoned vegan-restaurant-connoisseur, and my disdain for the los angeles vegan thai food boom has made me the ultimate skeptic toward any faux-meat asian cuisine. but, as usual when i take a vehement stand against something, i was completely proven wrong. this restaurant was fucking spectacular—inventing each dish as it went along, not borrowing from or copying any other asian vegan restaurants. this place left me genuinely impressed and wanting more.

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OK, anywhere that opens at 11am, remains open until 4am the next day and calls itself “rockin’ Thai food” is begging for the midnight and early morning crowd. Who dines at 3am?

• I have been known to
• Hipsters (usually just out of a recording session [they wish]) do
• Stoners do (duh)
• Vegans do, as this is almost certainly the only place to get vegan food of any quality (other than Burger King fries, and even those are questionable) after about 11pm

On a recent late night visit there, I chowed down on my usual order:

Saigon Spring Rolls (Cold Vietnamese spring rolls with basil), a hearty portion for a hearty price of $9.95.

It’s nice to have a mixture of basil, cilantro and crunchy tofu all wrapped up into one, along with vegetables (outside and in) and a couple of nice sauces to boot. Ask for the hot sauce carousel, and you won’t be sorry. Spice it up!

Followed (quickly, when the service is good) with:

Veggie Pad Thai (Thai noodles with mixed veggies, tofu, bean sprouts with peanuts on the side), $9.95.

You have to ask for it “vegan”, and in addition to skipping the egg (superfluous anyway in a pad Thai), they ensure your sauce is vegan. I’ve had a million pad Thai dishes here, all of them vegan, and they taste amazing.
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On occasion, I spend the night on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. It is the only ‘thing’ in the USA that actually truly evokes Great Britain. Yeah, there are edifices like London Bridge in Lake Havasu and fake English Pubs in every city but Queen Mary is the only thing built in Great Britain, storied with direct history from Great Britain (Winston Churchill, Laurel and Hardy, several monarchs, movie stars etc.), and sold to the oil-rich Long Beach Americans by Britain in 1969. Hell, it’s even had 75 people croak on it since it was launched back in 1933.

In 2003, the ship had actually spent more time crippled and mummified in Long Beach harbor than it did sailing to and fro across the Atlantic for decades before. One of the most special places on the ship is the Observation Bar on the promenade deck, which is surprisingly well preserved from the original 1920s construction, and is one of the very few parts of the ship which retains its original function intact, as well as most of its interior fixtures and fittings.

The Observation Bar, 1934

Sitting at one of the tables, it’s possible to imagine the bar just as it would have been 40, 50 or even 60 years ago with tuxedoed barmen (always men in those days) polishing silver Martini olive spoons (500 gallons of gin were loaded up before each transatlantic sailing), before serving the perfectly shaken and stirred cocktails to the elite of America and Europe as they travelled on this five-day long party.

The Observation Bar, 2008

You can see from the pictures above just how well the physical presentation of the bar has survived through nearly 3/4 of a century, but the clientele have changed somewhat over the last 70 years…. 

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in the midst of a los angeles heat wave, and a very inconvenient power outage on my block, i found myself in santa monica trying to pass the time and keep cool. i had dinner plans in the area at 8:30, but had to head out much earlier, because sitting around in a sweltering house just wasn’t cutting it for me. i started drinking at around noon, and at around 3pm, the alcohol and heat started to get the best of me. i knew i needed a light snack to hold me over until dinner, so i grabbed my trusty blackberry and searched for the nearest vegan spot. it lead me to the doorstep of juliano’s raw.

spring rolls: pasta, shredded veggies & thai herbs wrapped in a scrumptious coconut curry wrapper served with a no-peanut thai sauce $8.31

greenomole & chips: best guac ever, groovin’ salsa & flax cracks $6.47

now, i’d read good things about juliano’s raw before…and i gotta say, it really hit the spot. don’t get me wrong, the portions were tiny, the service was slow, and it was overpriced—but on a scorching hot day, it was exactly the light, fresh, tasty food i needed.

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at my job, i am that “weird vegan”. you know the one i mean. i don’t eat anything at company meetings because i’m skeptical that any of the catered food is vegetarian, let alone vegan (vegetables have been known to take baths in butter or chicken stock before making their way to your plate)! i don’t eat birthday cake on co-workers’ birthdays. when benevolent people leave a tray of homemade goodies in the conference room, i don’t indulge. i err on the side of eating nothing that’s given to me, trusting nobody, and finding solace in my grocery store noodle bowls when everyone else is chowing down on company paid for meals. since you have reached the bottom of a paragraph on this vegan blog, maybe you are that “weird vegan” as well, and you can identify.

well, imagine my shock when my meat-eating co-workers insisted that i join them for lunch at a restaurant that was “right up my alley”. a restaurant i’d never tried. a restaurant that was almost entirely vegan. a restaurant that ended up being so good, i’m pretty damn pissed at hadn’t already discovered it myself. a restaurant called m café de chaya.

m café is a macrobiotic restaurant, which means almost all its food is vegan. the only animal product they use is fish, which is marked clearly on the menu in some dishes—everything else is completely meat, egg, and dairy free….even the pastries!

gado gado: organic mixed greens, napa cabbage, crisp vegetables, golden tempeh triangles marinated with ginger, lemongrass & lime, frizzled onions & spicy peanut dressing $11.45

the food was so good in fact, that i emailed my husband from the restaurant and insisted that i bring home m café carry-out that very night. please note, i specified carry-out. the atmosphere in the restaurant left much to be desired (tons of pushy customers, tiny tables, long wait times). so i thought i’d see how the food held up on its own.

and that all begs the question…m café: to go, or not to go?

the m chopped: organic hearts of romaine & mixed greens, avocado, cucumber, chickpeas herb-baked tofu, scallions, ume-pickled radishes, carrots, beets, tamari-roasted almonds, crumbled tempeh “bacon” , tofu-peppercorn ranch. $11.45

the big macro: whole grain brown rice and veggie burger, special sauce, lettuce, tofu cheese, pickles, onion & sprouts on a house-baked whole wheat bun. $11.45

so what was the result? should you order food at mcafé to go and have to warm it up yourself and do your own dishes? or should you suffer the fools and claustrophobia, and eat your food at the restaurant?

keep reading…

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(and a belated happy bday to mr. meaner, whose birthday was yesterday!)

morrissey turns 49 today. best wishes to such a kick ass vegetarian.

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i’ve been frequenting the little ethiopia district on fairfax for years—from rahel’s, to messob, to nyala, i’ve tried plenty. and of all these similar ethiopian restaurants, i like rosalind’s best. sure, maybe i am being a traitor. maybe i should blindly pledge allegiance to rahel’s, because it’s 100% vegan…but something about rosalind’s just keeps me coming back. maybe it’s the super chill atmosphere, or the fact that the same waitress is always on duty and she has my order memorized. i dunno. whatever it is, it’s more than just the amazing food.

vegetarian combo: a combination of collard greens, chick-pea, yellow split-pea, red lentils and cabbage. served with injera. $13.95

sambussa: a pastry shell stuffed wuth green lentils, onion, jalapeno and herbs $2.50

now for the uninitiated, ethiopian food is something quite special. it’s massively tasty, reasonably healthy, and some of the best vegetarian fare in los angeles. i love the fact that the vegetarian dishes are kinda just, well, vegetarian. i don’t worry about chicken stock, fish sauce, lard and other horrors like i do at many restaurants. ethiopian food is pretty much pure herbivore goodness, and if you order it sans the obvious meat, you are almost always safe.

for all y’all who have never eaten ethiopian food, i’ll let wikipedia break it down for you:
“Ethiopian cuisine characteristically consists of spicy vegetable and meat dishes, usually in the form of wot (With a hard ‘t’ noise), a thick stew, served atop injera, a large sourdough flatbread, which is about 50 centimeters (20 inches) in diameter and made out of fermented teff flour. Ethiopians eat with their right hands, using pieces of injera to pick up bites of entrées and side dishes. No utensils are used.”
yum.

now, as i hinted earlier, most of the food that i’ve tried in the little ethiopia district of fairfax is totally comparable—i urge you to sample every last restaurant and make your own mind up. but one thing that really sets rosalind’s apart is the incredible atmosphere. nyla’s decor is too bright, rahel’s isn’t quite cohesive (umbrellas hanging from the ceiling…wtf), and messob is just too small and kinda blah. rosalind’s on the other hand…well, it’s hip, dim, slick and authentic—all rolled into one.

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I have a pet hate about places where the staff prefer to give virtually all their attention to regulars, and rudely ignore casual visitors. Once such establishment is Swingers on Beverly Blvd. Anywhere that has the message: “ass, cash or grass: nobody eats for free” pinned above the door probably has more than its fair share of pretentiousness — and I can confirm beyond doubt that is the case.

After sitting down, I usually have to wait at least five minutes to get attention, and this weekend it took over 20 minutes before our drinks arrived (a diet coke and a David Banner smoothie), all in a restaurant that had only four tables occupied (see this picture for proof, and the back of the place — not shown — was completely empty):

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congrats veggie grill, you have yourself another return customer! i went once before, i was kinda impressed, and now i’m back! despite the rampant blog controversy, i trust you veggie grill, plus i don’t give a crap about the egg content of your wine, because i don’t drink it.

bali bliss: indonesian styled tempeh, sauteed and grilled, lettuce, tomato, red onion, chipotle ranch…with a side of kale (an additional $1.95) $8.45 total

the v-burger: marinated and grilled veggie-steak burger, pickles, lettuce, tomato, onion, chipotle ranch…plus a portobello mushroom (an additional $1.50) $9.75 total

now before you start to think this is merely a fluff piece praising the VG, i want to make it very clear that i definitely have some complaints about the restaurant:

1. it’s expen$ive!
and mostly because of add-on costs, which i completely hate. most restaurants give you a sandwich and a reasonable side for no extra charge. well, not the veggie grill. they give you a sandwich and thimble of coleslaw. if you want fries, salad, or kale you are gonna pay an extra $1.95. that’s like an additional 1/3 of the price! ugh. similarly, if you wanna add some avocado or mushrooms to your stack, it’ll cost ya $1.50. i myself prefer the pure luck model: they give you avocado on almost everything, and then charge you a buck if you want more of it.

2. bell peppers are inevitable.
yep, on every dish they sprinkle an un-announced bell pepper/parsley combo, not to mention the unexpected vomitous “relish” that sporadically appears on a number of dishes—this pukey mixture contains not just bell peppers, but other unmentionables that taste like fruit? pickles? onions? snot? i dunno. it’s the hotdog of condiments, you aren’t quite sure what you are eating. suffice to say, i always specify that i want my meal without any bell peppers or relish, and since these items aren’t even mentioned on the menu, you are on your own to remember!

3. i hate the word veggie.
i always have. it’s way too cute, and i feel embarrassed even saying it. i think “veggie grill” is a stupid name…not just because of that word, but also because it’s too damn literal.

phew. now that i can put all that petty animus behind me, i fully endorse the veggie grill. at the end of the day, the food is pretty damn good.

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