Saturday, June 16, 2007

Vegan paradise, thy name is NYC

I have been bone tired for the past several days. I worry that I'm coming down with something, which would be very inconvenient since I'm on a business trip to California all next week. I most likely won't be able to blog, so here's a brief account of our food adventures in NYC to last until I get back.

Our train food for this leg wasn't nearly as good as for the DC-Montreal one. We'd packed a motley assortment of trail mix, Lara bars, and oatmeal cookies. The train trip ended up lasting about 4 hours longer than it should have, necessitating a trip to the dining car. The good news: Amtrak has a vegan selection! The bad news: Here it is...



Yes, it's a "vegan gardenburger." It would have been OK if there had been any toppings available, and if the whole thing didn't have to be microwaved. But hey, it tasted good and kept me going.

Some vegan-friendly restaurants we visited in NYC:
--Quantum Leap (We ate lunch and brunch there. Highlights were the vegan bento box and fake meat club sandwich shown below, and the green tea waffles.)


--Peanut Butter & Co. (We didn't eat here, but HS bought me a jar of dark chocolate peanut butter that I have only been able to eat one way: with a spoon.)
--Zen Palate (amazing orange seitan)

The most gourmet meal we at was at Blossom, which is an all-vegan restaurant. It's upscale and gourmet. We started with the black eyed pea and potato cake with chipotle aioli


and then moved on to (foreground) savory seitan, herb potatoes, and green beans, and (background) marinated grilled tempeh, yucca fritters, and rainbow chard.



Yes, it was even better than it looked.

However, we agreed that our favorite meal on the whole trip was not vegan. There is just no substitute for real coal-oven New York pizza:



Wait, HS, didn't you order anything?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

haha, i thought that burger in the photo looked familiar! was yours as pale and scary-looking as mine? taste wasn't too scary, but the colour sure freaked me out!

Anonymous said...

I had a rice cake and a diet Shasta earlier, remember?

-hs

eindeloze sfeer said...

Oh Gawd. New Yorkers and their endless schtick. Coal-fired pizza. Have they installed a steam train whistle?
I hope in Ireland there's a peat fired pizza joint.

KIRUTHIVASAN said...

I have been visiting your blog from past 3 months. The style of content flow looks to be marvelous.I would personally recommend our blog visitors to subscribe our posts to obtain useful posts like this periodically.
Particularly post on Vegan paradise, thy name is NYC is awesome. Get in touch with us via our websites vegetarian restaurant | Sweet Shop