What Does a Vegan Eat? Baltimore Edition

Disclaimer: I know I promised Halloween-inspired posts this week. I also know this is not Halloween-inspired in the least. I wanted to share this, though, in case you find yourself in Baltimore and in need of a delicious meal!

Say what you will about Baltimore, but vegans and vegetarians have it pretty decent out here. There are several veg-friendly restaurants, and it seems that the number of such restaurants is on the rise. While this is not at all comprehensive or representative of all that Baltimore has to offer (for that, check out VegBaltimore!), here's a look at some of my favorite places to eat!

Sticky Rice, Fells Point - A tiny Pan-Asian restaurant and bar. Sometimes the service is a little slow, and weekend nights are always packed, but the food is yummy! They have plenty of veg and non-veg options, including rice and noodle dishes and sushi.

Tofu Triangles

Mock Chicken Szechuan

Johnny Rad's, Fells Point - A pizza joint with amazing black bean hummus and great pizza!

El Gato, veganized

Mr. Chan, Pikesville - My favorite Chinese place, hands down. It's a bit of a drive from my house, but the food and service are always great! They pretty much know my order when they see me come in...

Warm Protein Salad

Great Sage, Clarksville - I am sad to report that I don't have any pictures to share with you, but don't let this deter you! This all-vegan restaurant/bar is about 30 minutes outside of the city, near Columbia, but the drive is so worth it! The food is amazing, and the staff is always wonderfully friendly and helpful. Where else would the guy working the bar let two seven-year-olds sample three different smoothies before making up their minds?!

Paper Moon Diner, Remington - A funky diner that has amazing food! They are open late at night, too, which I appreciate when I'm three sheets to the wind and need food.

Life on the Pita

Amanda's Vegan Wrap

One World Cafe, Charles Village - A great all veg cafe! Since this place is totally meat free, they have tons of vegan options, too, including brunch! They have several great dinner meals, too.

Vegan Pancakes

Where's your favorite place to dine in Charm City? Any recommendations I should add to my list of places to check out?

One World Cafe

One of my oldest friends is relocating to North Carolina soon, so we got together for brunch this weekend just to catch up on life before she moves. We went to One World Cafe, right across from JHU in Charles Village. I like One World because it's entirely vegetarian, and they always have loads of vegan options, too. I ordered the vegan pancakes with fresh fruit, and it was so yummy!

The drive to and from One World takes me past the Waverly Farmers' Market. I've driven past the sign a bunch of times before, but I'd never gone. In terms of distance, it's not far from my house, but there are no fewer than a million traffic lights, which means the drive can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes and that's annoying to me. Since I was in the area, though, I decided to stop by. And when I did, I realized the 15 minute time variation would probably be worth it in the future. Plus, Lake Montebello is on the way, which would make for a nice morning walk!

There were loads of fresh fruits and veggies, flowers and fresh herbs, homemade jams and spreads, juice vendors, and natural/eco-friendly clothing stands, too. The coolest thing for me was seeing the variety of foods: I saw at least three different types of kale, things which I had only read about before. That was pretty exciting. :) Because I didn't have a list with me or even an inkling of what I'm going to cook this week, I just decided to pick up a few things I know I'll use up.

Located at the corner of 33rd and Barclay, the Waverly Farmers' Market is open on Saturdays from 7AM to noon year round.

Paper Moon Diner

A couple of weekends ago, my best friend was in town visiting and we went to one of our favorite places for lunch: Paper Moon Diner! For me, Paper Moon Diner was love at first sight. Or taste, really, because they have the most amazingly delicious pita bread ever. Ever. And I've been told the omnivorous food is also the bomb.

On this particular trip, though, I got Amanda's Vegan Wrap, the newest vegan addition to their menu. It's marinated tofu wrapped up with a bunch of veggies (including mushrooms, which I always forget about until I bite into one and immediately think "EW"). Other than the mushrooms, this is one of my favorite tofu wraps.

They offer a few other vegan options, all of which I've tried and liked, and they have plenty of vegetarian options, too. The decor is truly unique (a cow in front of the restaurant? Baby dolls suspended from the ceiling?) and the staff is always friendly and attentive. Check it out if you're in the area!

California Tortilla

My mom and I found ourselves Downtown and hungry around lunch time one day this weekend. Not expecting to eat while we were out, I wasn't sure where we could go that was within walking distance of the Harbor. Can you tell I don't go to the Harbor often? That moment was moment #3943 when I was grateful for having Internet access on my phone. A quick search of vegbaltimore.com revealed that a casual and inexpensive Tex-Mex joint was less than two blocks away from our exact location.

California Tortilla is a neat little place with a super friendly staff. They have a cute outside eating area, but it was too chilly to enjoy it this past weekend. There are several vegetarian/vegan options, as you can substitute beans for meat, and hold the cheese/sour cream. They also have a special vegan burrito called the No-Meato Burrito, as pictured above, which has the standard rice, beans, and sauteed veggies, but also spinach (a nice change from lettuce!) guacamole, and a spicy sauce. A really spicy sauce. I love spice, but this actually made my nose run. Another thing I like about this place is they offer burritos in two sizes, so you don't have to make the choice of throwing away food or enduring a food baby.

This is a super relaxed restaurant with yummy food (by both vegan and non-vegan standards, according to my mom) at reasonable prices. I'm not sure California Tortilla could replace Chipotle as the burrito queen of my heart, but it's up there. If you find yourself Downtown, stop in and grab a bite!

Land of Kush

One day last week, I was suffering from a bout of "I'm-starving-but-nothing-appeals-to-me-and-I-don't-want-to-cook." After over an hour of moping around, wallowing in my misery (and hunger), I decided to get carry-out from a restaurant I hadn't yet been to. I searched vegbaltimore.com, and decided to go with Land of Kush. I'd had some of their food one summer at Artscape, where they were the only vendor to serve vegan food. There were several vegetarian options, but only Land of Kush remembered us vegans!

Land of Kush serves vegan soul food, and their online menu can be found here. I had a hard time deciding what I wanted, but eventually settled on the BBQ chick-un (served over rice and black beans), smoked collard greens, and mac & cheese. It was all so delicious. The mac & cheese has a different flavor, but if you eat it without expecting it to taste like Kraft, it's so yummy. The portions are obviously generous, so  I had plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day.

On top of the great food, the staff was super friendly and warm and welcoming. Greg, who I believe serves a dual purpose as owner and chef, was helpful in answering my questions about their food. When I came in to pick up my food, he was just as cheerful in person as over the phone.

Land of Kush definitely came to my rescue with this meal.

A Birthday Part II

My mom's birthday was yesterday, so naturally, my day was filled with lots of delicious food. For dinner, we went out to one of my favorite places - yes, that's right, one of my favorite places on her birthday, how nice is my mom? - Mr. Chan's, a Chinese restaurant in Reisterstown. Unfortunately, they don't maintain any sort of website, but I promise visiting it in person will worth it! It's kind of a drive from our house, too, but their friendly waitstaff, fresh food, and variety of vegan options make up for it.

 Each meal starts with a cabbage salad and ginger dressing and those fried noodle things (seriously, what are they called?) with duck sauce and hot mustard. The cabbage salad is amazing, and I'm generally not a fan of ginger.

I ordered the veggie wonton soup for an appetizer.

 

My favorite meal here is the warm protein salad served with brown rice. It's made of seitan, yuba, and healmey with mushrooms and toasted pine nuts. Be warned, if you don't ask for it to be made otherwise, your meal will be chock full of mushrooms. I'm not a fan of them, though, so I always order "just a little bit." They're pretty accommodating. The food is always fantastic and fresh, and the servings are so generous, I always have leftovers for lunch the next day. Those leftovers turned out to be the best part of my work day, too, but that's neither here nor there...

 

Then we came home and I made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for dessert. Yes, I just bought a half dozen cupcakes, but Mom prefers my cupcakes to those. Birthday Girl gets what Birthday Girl wants. 

And I can't find a link to the pb frosting, but here's the book's recipe for a basic buttercream frosting. What's a cupcake without frosting? Tip: Make sure everything is room temperature!!

A Birthday and Sticky Rice

My mom's birthday is this week, so my brother came up for the weekend to celebrate. I'm the only vegan in our family, so we're continuously looking to expand our repertoire of good restaurants for vegans and non-vegans alike. We had originally planned to go to an Italian place near Downtown, but upon our arrival, we noticed we were the only patrons in the entire place. When we were given a menu with half the offerings listed on their online menu (apparently they were "out of a lot of stuff"...?), none of which interested the birthday girl, we decided to go elsewhere.

Earlier in the week, a couple of friends introduced me to Sticky Rice, a new sushi restaurant and bar in Fells Point. I really liked the place, so my mom and I added it to our list of places to try out. So, for the second time in a week, I found myself at Sticky Rice, but I wasn't complaining - I love Chinese food.

Fells Point in general is always insanely busy on the weekends, and Sticky Rice was no different. The hostess originally estimated our wait time to be about 40 minutes. At this point, we were all hungry and kind of annoyed and not in the mood to wait around for over half an hour, so I asked Mom if she wanted to go elsewhere. We decided to stay, and the wonderful hostess sat us in about 15 minutes.

I'm not generally one for appetizers and a real meal, but whenever I go someplace new, I like to sample a few things to get an idea of what their food is like. For starters, I ordered the tofu bites, pictured above. They're fried tofu triangles served with a teriyaki sauce. They were really good, which says a lot because I'm kind of touch-and-go with tofu. I ordered the mock chicken szechuan, and I loved it. It has a bunch of veggies (broccoli, carrots, onions, peppers) served with your choice of noodles and mock chicken with a spicy sauce. So good. The upside to ordering an appetizer is that I was able to bring home lots of leftovers for lunch today, too.

Both times I've been to Sticky Rice, I've been impressed with their service. Everyone is friendly, the waitstaff is always attentive and accommodating. I especially appreciated the hostess quickly seating us yesterday despite not having a reservation. Their menu features a good selection of vegan and vegetarian options, and they're willing to make substitutions per your request.

If you want to try Sticky Rice, I'd suggest going during the week when it's a little less busy, or just be sure to make a reservation for a weekend night!

Amiccis

Excuse the poor quality of this picture. I forgot my camera, and my phone doesn't have a flash. Womp womp.

One night last week, I was starving but had no motivation to really do anything about it. Nothing really appealed me to, and I didn't feel like cooking anything. My mom came to my rescue by taking me out to Amiccis, a cute little restaurant in Little Italy.

It was our first time there, and it was an okay time. They served (cold) Italian bread prior to the meal, and though I've never encountered a loaf of non-vegan Italian bread, the waitress said they used eggs in their bread. Okay. I ordered the penne primavera (zucchini, artichokes, olives, tomatoes, onions) for my entree, though, and it was so yummy save for the olives. Olives are on my "Will Not Eat" list.

I didn't really get the cold and not warmed up bread with eggs thing, and our waitress was a little odd, but the food was terrific. And now my mom and I have another restaurant we can both go to and enjoy, and it's only about 10 minutes from home!

Chopstix Gourmet

There are few people I still talk to from high school, and one of them is my friend Julie. She was one of my best friends in high school, and although she went away to college and now grad school, we still keep in touch. She was home for the holidays, and we decided to go out to lunch to catch up.

We attempted to go to an Indian restaurant in the 'burbs because Indian food is also on my "ohmygod I love this" list. Is anyone really surprised? To my dismay, they were closed, so we ended up at Chopstix Gourmet, a Chinese sushi bar.

Venturing out to unfamiliar omni restaurants can sometimes be a pain. Prior to meeting up with Julie, I perused their online menu, and although they had some vegetarian options listed, it was hard to determine if anything was truly vegan. I called the restaurant in an attempt to answer my million dollar question, but the person who answered was mostly unhelpful.

So, without really knowing if I'd be eating anything more than brown rice, we went in. As was the case with their online menu, the menu wasn't particularly helpful in identifying vegetarian/vegan items. Julie seemed to have no problems, but I couldn't understand the waitress. Eventually I asked to speak to the manager, who was able to help me find a vegan meal. I probably asked her ten times, "No egg? No fish?"

I ended up ordering a steamed vegetable meal with brown rice and a soy sauce-based sauce. The food was yummy, and I loved the wooden/bamboo contraption that held the vegetables. Despite having to play 20 questions with the waitress prior to ordering, I enjoyed the place. The ambiance is neat, the food was tasty, and the company was fabulous.

As this will be my last post of 2010, I want to wish everyone Happy New Year! Be safe tonight, and may the new year bring you everything you wish for!