Flicking the Vs: October 2011

VeganMoFo: A happy Hallowe'en dinner

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here . It's the last ...

cat and the cream

VeganMoFo: Vegan cupcakes - they just keep getting better and better

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here . Are you sitting down?...

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here.

It was my last night in San Francisco. I wanted to end an excellent holiday with an equally excellent meal. Instead I ended up at this mediocrity hole - Loving Hut.

Loving Hut is a chain of restaurants across the US and beyond - 400 of them globally, according to Loving Hut's website - which, as far as I can tell, sell all different types of food depending on where they're based.

They're all vegan, which is great, and they promote veganism in each branch - also good in my book.

Well, it would be good, had not the video shown on TVs in the restaurant I visited (the branch in Chinatown, San Francisco) been aiming to show how great animals with You've Been Framed-style clips of animals doing tricks. Parrots riding bicycles, dogs shaking hands, you get the idea. Err, are vegans not meant to be against animals being used for that sort of thing?

Onto the meal itself: my first mistake was ordering a drink. Yep, you would have thought there wasn't much to go wrong with a drink, but no. The Coke my other half, Flicking the Vino, ordered tasted oddly of disinfectant. The Thai Iced Tea I chose tasted also of disinfectant - I'm all for unusual tastes and trying new things, but this was a step too far - and bonfires. Not so nice.

The food was just as underwhelming. We ordered vietnamese rice paper rolls to share, and for me, a main of fragrant claypot rice, and for Flicking the Vinos, cashew chickenless bites.

The rice paper rolls were actually not bad, but seemed mainly composed of rice noodles wrapped in rice paper. A bit light on flavour, but pretty enough.

The cashew chickenless bites were cack-handed, some of the vegetables still almost raw, others sporting burnt corners. The soy chicken was decent - I felt kind of sorry for it, forced to keep company with poorly-cooked, underflavoured veggies.

Mediocrity also reigned with the fragrant claypot rice. The soy protein, tofu, shiitake, black fungus, cabbage and vermicelli promise in the claypot rice were heavy on the rice and vermicelli, light on the rest.

And the fragrance in the fragrant clay pot? There was also no fragrance to speak of. There was no flavour to speak of. I could taste a little soy sauce, but that was it. A disappointing way to spend $8.

While the service was fine, I can only take my hat off to the efficiency of the operation - why not get ahead in the closing up process by starting to wash the floors while customers are still eating?

And they don't sell booze. In the case of fellow booze-eschewers Golden Era, you don't mind going without alcohol because the food's good. In the case of Loving Hut, the boozelessness is cruelty itself - the quality of the food is poor enough to drive you to drink.

Loving Hut Chinatown
http://lovinghut.us/sanfrancisco/index.html
1365 Stockton Street
San Francisco, California 94133
(415) 362-2199

cashew

VeganMoFo: Loving Hut review or, how I lost that loving feeling

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here . It was my last nigh...

asian

VeganMoFo: Golden Era restaurant review, or hooray for second helpings

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here . Recently, ...

clafoutis

VeganMoFo: Vegan clafoutis recipe with figs in wine syrup

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here . A while ba...

abc

VeganMoFo: The sweet treats of San Francisco

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here . I've mentioned ...

churros

VeganMoFo: Vegan churros - are there any finer words in the English language?

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here . (Oh alright, in ...

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here.

Here's another vegan-friendly place I stumbled across in my recent holiday in San Francisco - the Little Bird Coffee House.

The Little Bird won my heart for two reasons - it was in stumbling distance of my hotel in SF, and it has some gorgeous breakfast options.

My first foray into Little Bird's brekkie was the vegan breakfast sandwich. For but $5, you get yourself an English muffin with tofu scramble, Daiya cheese and your choice of hummus, vegan pesto or tapenade.

This was the first time I'd made a foray into Daiya too - I was rather excited about my breakfast ahead of me, given the praise I've seen dedicated to this particular cheese substitute in the past.

And then it only went and arrived to shatter my illusions. Sorry, Daiya lovers, it's disgusting. Sure, the texture is more like the meltyness of actual cheese than fake cheeses have managed in the past, but the taste is that same sweaty-sock whiff that all cheese substitutes seem to possess.

Thanks to the Daiya, the breakfast was lost. The tofu scramble-muffin union would have been spot on, only then Daiya only went and fouled up the whole lot, forcing me to drown it in mustard to get my breakfast down my throat.

All the while I was cursing Daiya, Flicking the Vino was tucking into vegan blue corn waffles. So good did they look, I made him go out for breakfast the next day at Little Bird so I could have some too.

As well as being blue, which makes any breakfast awesome straight away (how many blue things does a normal person get to eat in a day?), the waffles were pitched perfectly in terms of sweetness (and came with some maple syrup on the side for those of a more sugary disposition) and were heaped with banana, almonds and ripe strawberries. Heaven.

And for even more vegan-loving, the Little Bird sells other animal-free goodies - Pepples doughnuts and Sugar Plum vegan cupcakes and whoopie pies. And the coffee's pretty good too.

Little Bird = a stone-cold breakfast win.

Little Bird Coffee House

835 Geary Street

San Francisco, California 94109-7217

(415) 440-2165

breakfast

VeganMoFo: Little Bird Coffee House review, or live and let Daiya well alone

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here . Here's anoth...

california

VeganMoFo: Where to eat in Monterey, California

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here . For a not i...

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMofo, click here.

I've been in San Francisco recently, eating my way around the city. The absolute highlight for me was this place - Gracias Madre.

Gracias Madre is an all-organic, all-vegan, all-awesome Mexican food place in the Mission district of the city.

After arriving at the heaving venue and taking a gander at the menu, I was massively tempted by a starter of what can only be described as cheesy spuds - or papas al horno if you'd rather: potatoes baked in olive oil and garlic with cashew nacho cheese.

We asked our waitress would we need a starter? We'd been foxed in previous dinners out by portion sizes and over-ordered. The waitress gave it a negative - people don't usually finish both, she said, and have to take the remainder away in a doggy bag.

So, much to my greedy chagrin, we skipped the starter and proceeded directly to mains: nopales for me, tacos for Flicking the Vinos.

I don't often get to eat nopales so I don't have much to compare Gracias Madre's offering against, but I couldn't keep the smile off my face as I waded through the generous rice, refried beans, salsa and prickly pear with cashew cheese sauce. Yep, it was that good.

Bonus points too for the corn tortillas, which put me in mind of my recent Central American wanderings - and which show up flour tortillas for the dull plate-filler they really are.

Flicking the Vinos went for tacos, choosing squash, aubergine and poblano peppers as his taco filling of choice. I only got to try the squash and peppers - he'd inhaled the aubergine before my questing fork could head there. No wonder - if the smokey peppers and crisp, almost batter-like squash were anything to go by, I'd have inhaled the lot too.

We may not have needed starter but did we need pudding? Well, no, no one needs pudding - but we got one anyway.

After wrangling with whether to opt for a vegan flan - a delight I've never yet made the acquaintance of - the Mexican wedding cookies won out.

I've never been to a Mexican wedding before, but after scarfing down the walnutty glories at Gracias Madre, I'm on the hunt for a wedding invite to some Mexican nuptials.

Oh, and the ice cream was wonderful too - imagine a taste of burnt sugar, powerful but licoricely good, doused in creamy goodness, and you're there.

If I had a complaint - there's always one, right? - it would be that $8.50 seems a bit steep for two cookies and one scoop of ice cream, but I loved it so much, I forgave the wallet mugging.

Maybe those wedding cookies are helping the chef to save up for a honeymoon somewhere. Being able to knock up such good food, they're not going to be short of proposals.

Gracias Madre

http://www.gracias-madre.com/web/

211 Mission Street
San Francisco, California, 94110-1811
(415) 683-1346

gracias madre

VeganMoFo: Gracias Madre restaurant review or, where's my wedding invite?

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMofo, click here . I've be...

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about Vegan Mofo, click here.

There are only two things that can help distract you from the grim reality of air travel - being trapped in a metal tube, with a foot of legroom and in uncomfortable proximity to any number of strangers, sleeping, drooling and farting for several hours - and those two things are food and films.

Only if you're a vegan, you've just got films to look forward to. Because if you're a vegan, as far as the airlines are concerned, you must have had your tastebuds disconnected and you might just as well lick your paper antimacassar as attempt to enjoy the plastic-wrapped crap that will turn up in front of you.

Let's examine the four horseman of the vegan airline meal in an attempt to see why it's just so fricking terrible: the salad, the main, the dessert and the roll and butter.

The salad: you can expect undressed leaves. This will seem particularly odd in light of the fact that your co-air-travellers will also be tucking into a salad - a salad that if you take out the cheese, would easily be vegan. There maybe some nuggets of taste winking at you from your neighbour's plate - olives, red onions, herbs - but don't expect the same to be gifted to you. No, dry leaves are for you, my animal-free friend.

Perhaps, if you travel with British Airways, you will receive a pot of salad dressing with your vegan meal. Likely as not, despite being included in a vegan meal, it won't actually be vegan and when you point this out to the airline, they will say you are making it up. You are not. You saw both milk and egg ingredients listed on the packet. Nice one, BA. Give your vegan passengers non-vegan ingredients, then when they inform you of your mistake, insult them.

The main meal: this will be either pasta, cous cous or curry with rice. This won't actually be too bad. It won't have much taste, and will be oddly sweet. You'll be forced to add industrial quantities of salt and pepper to try and make it taste of something. Your doctor won't be pleased.

The dessert: this will be fruit. It will never be anything else. There will definitely be melon and apple, and possibly orange. All of these will be given to you as tiny cubes or slices. You'd rather just have an apple or an orange. You will nonetheless think 'well, this could be worse' as you eat it. Then you will think 'Would it kill them to give me a cookie? The veggies and omnis get cake. Would it be a terrible imposition to source a measly sodding vegan biscuit?' You may, on extremely rare occasions, get that biscuit. You will then wish for fruit instead.

The roll and spread: you will be aware that you're eating this only because the nerves in your mouth tell you there is matter there. You won't know because of the taste, because there isn't any. Also, you have a 50-50 chance of having vegan spread if you're flying BA or Virgin - you're just as likely to have a milk-containing spread put on your plate. Would the airlines consider putting steak on the plate of a vegetarian? Of course not. But you, dear vegan, won't be granted the same consideration.

Sure, airline food is shit. Everyone knows it's shit - it's the standard of crap stand-up comics across the western world. Don't think I'm asking for gourmet food - it's just that vegan food on airlines is shitter than the normal shit, we don't even get the same quality of shit as everyone else, we get shitter shit.

The annoying thing is that I always feel pathetically grateful for what turns up - because half the time, no vegan meal turns up at all, and with a shrug of an air stewardess' shoulders, I'm consigned to 11 hours of a grumbling stomach.

I've been mithering the airlines about their vegan options - specifically about whether they'll be improving them and actually making them 100 per cent vegan, 100 per cent of the time - feel free to join in.

In the meantime, if you want decent scran on your plane journey, just bring it yourself.

airline

VeganMoFo: The wonders of mile-high vegan eating

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about Vegan Mofo, click here . ...

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about Vegan Mofo, click here.

If you've ever longed for the taste of vegan pub grub, Herbivore's your place.

The San Franciscan institution has three branches, one in Berkley and two in the city itself.

My other half discovered the downtown branch ambling through the city, and brought me there. I was primed to love it - a whole vegan restaurant to choose from, all the dishes animal-free. What more could I ask for?

Well, a bit of flavour would have been nice.

We shared some soft flour tacos for a starter. Bonus points for the vegan sour cream and the sadly-underrepresented-in-the-UK pinto beans and salsa verde, nul points for the lack of any discernable spicing and generic meat replacement that brought as much to the table as a general studies A level. The overall effect was that of an adequate, if unexciting starter.

For a main, I went for a soup and a sandwich combo, while my partner went for lasagne.

Having mentioned my first tentative steps in the realms of tempeh on this blog earlier, I was lured by the prospect of more tempeh goodness with a tempeh sandwich with all the fixings, along with a small bowl of coconut noodle soup.

The former wasn't bad at all - the tempeh held up its end of the bargain (not a patch on Saf's tempeh sandwich, mind) and came with all the fixings you'd expect. I love American sandwiches for that reason - the sheer big-as-your-head-ness and 20 separate elements all clinging onto bread like sailors to a liferaft.

The soup, though - gah. It tasted of watery sod-all. A few noodles, some tomato and coconut milk all combined to leave no impression on the tastebuds at all, apart from a vague sensation of wondering if Herbivore's washing up water tasted similar to its soup. For good measure, in case there was any hope of anyone liking the soup, there were a few chunks of tinned pineapple. Why, god, have you forsaken us?

For a finale, the waitress had flicked a slick of the soup onto the plate it shared with the sandwich, making sure it couldn't take refuge from its mediocrity even while I ate the otherwise redeeming tempeh.

The lasagne however gets a big thumbs-up, reminding me as it did of vegan pub grub. You know, before you were vegan and you'd go down your local boozer, you'd have a plate of something pasta based with chips, or maybe a burger - something so carby it would send the GI brigade into meltdown. And joyous that pub-based carb overload would be too. Herbivore's lasagne was that kind of a dinner - big, solid, unimaginative, but warming and welcome nonetheless.

It got a few extra points from me for sporting an additional green salad, nicely dressed. Only it seemed a bit of a shame, then, to have left some of those self same leaves fermenting in that dressing til they became that sort of slug-like lettucey green sludge after you've had the salad bag open for way too long.

The lasagne itself was something of deconstructed offering - a few sheets of passta piled up helter skelter with some veggies and tofu ricotta between them and some garlic bread on the side. The tomato sauce was a little on the sweet side, but was a nod to the Wetherspoons style of dining that I have something of an affection for.

Feeling masochistic, we ordered dessert - blueberry pie and ice cream. What it lacked in quality, the pie made up for in quantity - we were presented with a wedge so large it could kill a man if thrown correctly.

The ice cream was lovely, but the pie had an oddly solid, jammy filling that bore little resemblance to the fruit allegedly contained within and its pastry had so much cinnamon any blueberry taste was obscured behind an enormous spice curtain.

As I said, I was primed to love Herbivore. It was like going on a first date after seeing the profile picture of someone you like on an online dating site and swapping a bit of banter with them. You keep your fingers crossed that there could be something worth pursuing in this, only when you finally do clap eyes on them, you find they smell like damp and they keep licking their fingers.

In Herbivore's favour, the wine was grand and the service was warm and friendly. It's just the food that needs work.

Herbivore

http://www.herbivorerestaurant.com

San Francisco/Valencia
983 Valencia
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.826.5657

San Francisco/Divisadero (the one I went to)

531 Divisadero
San Francisco, CA 94117
415.885.7133

Berkeley
2451 Shattuck
Berkeley, CA 94704
510.665.1675

herbivore