Austin food and drink
With a schedule full of film watching in Austin, I didn’t expect to do a ton of restaurant sampling. Shawn, on the other hand, plotted out the best places to go based on everyone’s recommendations. Thank goodness for a husband that balances out my movie madness, since some of the meals were not to be missed.
Possibly my favorite of the restaurants was Bouldin Creek where I had two of the most delicious breakfasts. The first, a vegan benedict, was so good I insisted we go back another day. I’m not sure exactly how they prepare their tofu, but it is amazing: seasoned and lightly coated in nutritional yeast. Their potato cakes are also worth a mention as they’re far beyond any hash brown I’ve ever had.
I was also a big fan of Veggie Heaven. In particular the tangerine mushrooms were the kind of thing I crave often. It is the sort of dish I see on a menu in many places but never lives up to what I’m imagining in my head. Yet, these saucy & perfectly breaded mushrooms were everything I hoped they would be. The steamed buns were also very good. Let’s not forget the bubble tea, it was the best.
We also happened upon this adorable place that had just opened called Hillside Farmacy. There were only a couple of vegan options on the menu, like the soup of the day, which happened to be carrot cardamom, but the interior is lovely and they have Stumptown coffee and a bar. It’s definitely worth a visit just to check out the beautiful renovation they’ve done of the space, and of course, have some coffee. I wanted to live inside this shop.
Not only does Austin have some lovely vegan friendly restaurants, there are also some very nice bars with mixed drinks I love. The drink menu and atmosphere at the East Side Show Room was by far my favorite. And of course, as I mentioned before, Austin will now be known to me as the first place I ever tried boba and subsequently fell in love with it.
Even though we’d visited Austin before, it was great to go to a completely new set of restaurants and food trucks. Can’t wait to go back and try some more.
off we go
For the next week I’ll be the fabulous Austin, Texas for SXSW.
I am SO EXCITED. It’s our first time going to SXSW and I’ve only heard great things. We’re going to see so many films, which is basically my dream week. Oh also, we’re staying in an airstream, which is pretty much the coolest.
We’ve only been to Austin once before, and we had so much fun. I hope we have time to do some exploring in the city. Sadly the weather forecast looks rainy the whole time, but that’s not getting me down.
Do you have any favorite places in Austin? I haven’t done any planning (oops!) so I’d gladly take suggestions for places to eat or shops I can’t miss.
Vegan Road Trip: Part 4
Austin, Texas
Possibly my favorite stop of our road trip was Austin, Texas. I had wanted to visit for the longest time, and insisted that we go there at some point on the journey. Amazingly we were able to celebrate New Years Eve dancing in the streets of this awesome city. The next day were were able to explore and visit some of the great vegan restaurants. We started 2010 with breakfast at Snackbar. The restaurant is located in the hip SoCo district and has a really great modern yet comfortable vibe. All the waiters and waitresses were wearing handmade aprons. I love it. They have a number of vegan dishes as well as gluten free options all marked on the menu.
As soon as I heard that this restaurant had vegan biscuits and gravy, it became the only place on my list that we absolutely had to go to. It turned out to have some even more impressive items on the menu, including vegan mini waffles and vegan tofu benedict on top of these tasty waffles. The biscuits were pretty decent, with a great tempeh gravy, but they looked ridiculous so it’s best you use your imagination. The waffles were great; fluffy and perfectly moist. The tofu florentine was quite good, lightly flavored and fresh. The place was pretty hectic as people crowded in to eat off their hangovers. I wish we had been able to come at another time because they were obviously under-staffed on the holiday, but I still enjoyed going there very much. Because of the craziness, we were offered a $10 gift card which could be yours! Just head on down to the end of this post.
We spent the day walking around town and exploring. The weather was gorgeous and I pretty much totally fell in love with the place. Everything was just awesome and had a bit more of creativity. Where in Los Angeles we have food trucks, Austin has airstreams. We stopped in The Ginger Man just to peek inside, and ended up staying for some drinks, pretzels and a mean game of balderdash, aka the best game ever. They had a huge selection of beers on tap and a super comfortable sitting area that makes you feel like you’re at home or in your father’s library. We ended up spending a better part of the afternoon hanging here.
When we finally sought out dinner, it was no contest. We headed to The Parlour to devour some vegan pizza. This bar has pizza available with follow your heart cheese and a handful of vegan meats as well as veggie toppings. They even have a vegan french bread pizza which was SO GOOD. Now, I might get myself in some hot water here, I know a lot of you are big fans of Daiya, but I am not. I am saddened every time I find that a restaurant that used to carry something I liked, has switched to daiya. Having this pizza was like a breath of fresh air. I honestly almost cried after eating it, I was that happy. Luckily, I just found a new place to fill this gaping hole in my vegan pizza heart that is quite a bit closer. Possibly my new favorite pizza spot is actually in town.
Ok ok I bet you were wondering when I was going to get to that gift card…right? Well there it is! Since I don’t live in Austin, and who knows when I’ll be back, I’m going to offer this lovely $10 gift card that I received to one of you lucky readers. All you have to do is comment! Oh, and you should actually be in Austin, or nearby. I’ll choose a winner on February 1st. So you have until then…Get to it!
And the winner is….Miranda! Congratulations!
Winner selected using random.org
Vegan Road Trip: Part 3
The East Coast and more
We made it to the East Coast just in time for Christmas Eve with Shawn’s family. We relaxed for awhile, ate some home cooked meals, went to the movies, had a vegan taco night and played lots of Little Big Planet. While there was snow on the ground when we arrived, it rained all of Christmas day, so no snowmen were made as I had hoped. Though we had planned to head in to NYC from the New Jersey suburb where we were staying, we opted to stay home and stay dry.
Luckily this meant we got to try out a (new to us) vegan Chinese restaurant, Veggie Heaven. Oh and it was heaven. I have enjoyed some fabulous vegetarian Chinese restaurants but there was just something about this place that has me dreaming about it. Maybe it was the sushi. Okay, so that’s not Chinese specifically but I’ve never had such amazing vegan sushi. I love sushi. Hey, I’m from Los Angeles, I’ve been eating sushi since I was two. As soon as I saw the fireball roll on the menu, faux spicy tuna with avocado and a signature spicy sauce, I knew it was the one thing I had to have. My goodness, it was divine. But it wasn’t just the sushi, we also had a great wonton soup and some fantastic crispy duck. So good, I can’t wait to go back…
Soon enough we were on the road again, heading to Asheville to pick up our backseat companions. I should mention that this is probably around the point where I was far enough from home and a computer that I forgot about taking photos of much. We went to some really neat restaurants and it just never even occurred to me to take photos. These things happen when you just enjoy your trip and forget about blogging for a bit.
After getting stuck in traffic on the horror that is the I-95, we were ecstatic to find the Blue Nile in Harrisonburg, Virginia with a bar that was open late (we drove through at about 11pm) and yummy vegan sandwiches. Also, I should mention I now have a deep affection for Hampton Inns. After staying in the creepiest Motel 6 ever, and after one of our more stressful driving days, it was so nice to fall asleep in a clean room (and watch Animal Planet). Not to mention, their complimentary breakfast actually has a few vegan options.
Asheville ended up being one of the surprisingly awesome stops on our trip. We spent most of our time exploring the amazing Biltmore House, but also had the opportunity to try a couple restaurants including Green Sage, where the reuben you see above is from, a cafe with a bunch of vegan options clearly listed on their menu. We had an amazing pizza with a super thin crust made from beer mash at Barley’s Taproom. And get this, Mellow Mushroom in Asheville has Cheezly vegan cheese! This isn’t true for all Mellow Mushroom locations either. As far as I know, it’s only Asheville. Did I mention that Asheville has the most craft breweries per capita in the US? Oh I didn’t? Well it does.
I’ll have one more episode of our road trip tour, featuring my favorite stop: Austin, Texas. In the mean time, I recommend you check out Shawn’s beautiful photo sets from our trip here and here. You can see much more of the places we stopped, some of our crazy antics and not just food.
