Menu catch up Feb 25 + introduction to real raw vegan culture

Q: Eric, what's the hardest part about going vegetarian, cold turkey?

A: The food is easy. Keeping up the stupid blog is by far the hardest part.

So here's the last 4 days, or at least the blurry, low-light camera phone shots I managed to get in the last five days.

I've pretty much been eating chocolate and bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. And cheese and vegetables. In that order.

But also:

Some fancy Risotto with feta from Restaurant Josef in Zurich, Switzerland:
(I also had a great green salad and some potato gnocchi at that place. Each plate was a pretty small serving. Other meals on this short trip included pretzel sandwich with cheese and tomato and a green salad with grilled pumpkin and almonds at the airport)

I went to a Korean place in Leicester Square with Jaime at the beginning of the week. Here's some tasty fried egg rice:
And rice noodles with vegetables of some sort. Also super tasty, especially with the chili sauce you can see made friends with both dishes:

Tonight, Jaime and I went to Saf, a critically acclaimed raw vegan restaurant that's right below our apartment. Literally the same building. We figured we should eat there while it's still February and I'm still vegetarian.

I ordered the lasagna, containing raw bolognaise, rustic pesto, marinara, olive relish, herb cheese and mushroom (yes, cheese made from herbs and no animal milk of any kind):
It was decent. But cold. And kind of a chore when compared to real lasanga with noodles and normal cheese. There's a good vegetable lasanga at a deli/cafe by my office. It's not vegan but it's vegetarian and I love it. I'm really not sure why Saf was so against noodles and bread of any normal sort. I make what I think is perfectly vegan pizza dough all the time at home. What's the problem? Anyway, Much (but not all) of this restaurant seemed kind of over the top hipster and masochistic. See more on that in Jaime's dish ----->

Jaime ordered Grilled Seitan, which she thought was funny, first of all because it's pretty much pronounced like "Satan," and also because it was mentioned as the stereotypical lame vegetarian food on the TV show "Parenthood" this week. Mushroom ragout, smoky aubergine salad, roasted curly kale with mushroom gravy. Sounds delicious, right? The smoky aubergine salad was gag-worthy (that lump on the right). I mean really, really bad. I think they might have messed it up. The rest of pretty good, but the completely overwhelming smoke stench and taste unfortunately kind of ruined the rest of the dish:

So, another learning of this month, which I can say with some empathy: I don't mind being vegetarian. It's pretty good when done well. But vegan can be straight-up sad.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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