Vegans sharing a (great) meal at a "Bedouin camp" in the Negev
I’ve spent the past few months traveling
much more than usual. Therefore, I’ve
been out eating awesome food and not emailing companies about their animal
testing policies. It only makes sense
that I post a blog on vegan food and not my usual shtick. I have six places that I will be covering
split between two posts. This post will
cover vegan food in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Israel, and the next will cover
Paris, London, and Dublin.
Los Angeles
My favorite place in the city is Vegan
Glory, an Asian restaurant in a small strip mall. As I was eating a lot of regulars came in,
which is the mark of a great place. The
prices were great as well. I got a combo
with coconut vegetable soup and seitan stir fry.
Another day I visited Cruzer Pizza with
my travel companions. The pizza wasn’t
bad it just wasn’t great to me. We chose
our own toppings so maybe a store designed pizza would have been better. However, my travel companions absolutely
loved the food and have gone on and on about it.
Seattle
The number one vegan restaurant in the
country, forget just Seattle, for vegan comfort food is the Wayward Vegan
Café. The Club Sandwich tasted
absolutely amazing, was large enough for two meals, and had a tiny price tag. To help keep prices down you bus your own
table, but I’m fine with that. My travel
companions also highly approved of their crunchwrap supreme, quesadilla, and
fried mushrooms.
Across the street from the Wayward Café
is Vegan Haven, a small charity store that sells only vegan, cruelty free products. I picked up these Go Max Go brand candy bars
(which do contain palm oil) and my mom got a beautiful wallet there. They truly sell everything from jewelry to
dog food to tampons to food.
There is also a Loving Hut location in
Seattle which is pretty good. The
building is in a weird location in China town, but their menu offered some
choices that I enjoy in general. My
group ordered spring rolls, hot and sour soup, and Sesame Cha Cha (wheat
gluten).
Israel
I figured I’d eat a lot of falafel in
Israel even though I don’t particularly like falafel. However, the falafel in Israel is
amazing. They fill it up with all kinds
of vegan awesomeness (hummus, tahini, spicy sauce, lettuce, eggplant, cucumber,
tomato, etc.) and french fries! The pita
is the best pita I’ve ever had and has ruined all American pita for me. Don’t get me started on laffa. I miss laffa.
However, Israel is also a country of
many salads. I eat salad. I like salad,
but that is not all I want to eat for a month except for three trips to a
falafel stand. Israelis say it must be
so easy to be vegan in Israel, but they are also the people who think vegans
only eat salad. The only Israeli who
understood my food longings was the vegetarian. He
took me to Village Green, a vegetarian restaurant in Jerusalem with clearly
marked vegan food but no clearly marked prices.
Boff-lote: these babies were amazing,
and yes, that was my best attempt at transliteration. They’re wafers with a chocolate filling. No lie- I went through three packs of these
to even out my salad consumption. Also, Aroma,
the Israeli Starbucks, had a lot of vegan options including this apple strudel.
