eric's little black star » What can’t we eat?

eric on Jul 2nd 2009 at 9:42 am Around Seattle,Yummy Vegan Food!

What can’t we eat?

For the past three weeks, people have been visiting both Sarah/me and Ryan/Jaime. First, there was Sarah’s parents and then Jaime’s moms and then Ryan Full and Jason from back east. During this time we ate out a lot. So much.

It really showed us all the great vegan things that Seattle offers. Even though Sarah’s folks aren’t vegan/veg, they were GREAT sports and ate vegan with us most of the time (thanks!). Ryan Full and Jason are veg.

Around these parts, we have found more than enough vegan eateries. From donuts at Mighty Os to pizza at Pizza Pi. We round it out with breakfast at Wayward Cafe and Chinese at Bamboo Gardens or Thai at Araya‘s.

These places are great. You look at the menus and you know that anything listed is not only edible for vegans, but probably really tasty too!

This is in stark contrast to my life back east in Central Pennsylvania. There, I could pretty much only eat Chinese. There would be maybe two tofu dishes on the menu and you’d have to trust the cook to not use a meat-based sauce (most Chinese places use chicken broth in their sauces – enough to make *all* Chinese places a no-go for me). Once in a while I could get Indian food in Harrisburg or Lancaster, but only the Lancaster place had the vegan dishes marked as such.

I got really sick of looking at menus and wondering, “what can I eat here?” The answer was usually “nothing at all.” But in Seattle, at the places we go, there is nothing I can’t eat! There are more choices than I could ever work my way through!

Another important aspect is quality. A lot of the places we go to use organic veggies. The dishes are fresh and look as good as they taste. The Chinese places we’d go to in PA had veggies that looked gray and beaten to death.

Sure, sometimes I miss central PA. It’s where I grew up, it’s where I’m from. But I’ll never miss the nasty excuse for food. Oh my no!

8 responses so far

8 Responses to “What can’t we eat?”

Ryan Beggar says:

July 2, 2009 at 10:02 am

Yeah, the only appropriate, reasonable response to the vegan food in Seattle is:Woooooo!

eric Reply:
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Very woooo!
Seattle is yummy!!
Scott says:

July 2, 2009 at 8:06 pm

Funny, I just watched a blurb on Doc or Current (can’t remember which) on how they even have a Vegan strip joint in Seattle.

I bought the HappyCow veg restaurant guide for my G-Phone. I kidded that if I fire it up where I work, the results would come back “You’re kidding, right?” Oh it must be nice to be in a veggie friendly town.

eric Reply:
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:31 pm
A vegan strip club? Never heard of that, haha. Though there are some unionized clubs.

Living in a veggie friendly town is really really amazing. Come on up!

Scott Reply:
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:05 pm
As soon as my 3 year teaching contract is up, I am going to start weighing my options move wise. I would love to go to a more veggie friendly area. Oddly enough, even here in Houston, there are parts of town that have veggie restaurants but the thing about Houston is sprawl. It is wide enough that you literally can take 1-2 hours to drive from one end of town to another without traffic.

eric Reply:
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Great idea. Houston seems really humid and hot.

Here, we can get downtown in about 10 minutes. But it takes us an hour or so to find parking. :)
Scott says:

July 4, 2009 at 12:02 pm

Oh man, I had never actually parallel parked or even really seen parallel parking until I moved to Austin where I thought parking was hard. Then I lived in New York. Holy shnikey did I learn about hard to find parking. Then I spent a bit of time in Boston. I realize that there was no actual parking in Boston and that allowing people to drive was something that locals did to screw with tourists. Kind of like how Austinites call the big road Loop 360 but it doesn’t actually even come close to approaching a hint of a loop.

eric Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Yep ,the town where I grew up was really small. You just parked wherever you could. Downtown Seattle seems a bit like Boston in that respect. But all the locals here drive. All of them. And they’re always shocked when they can’t find parking downtown. I’ll just take the bus. :)