Currently viewing the tag: "potatoes"
This weird article let me know that the 3 Brothers close to my home was not, in fact, the place to go to get Chef Jay‘s food anymore. The original owners sold the place. I am a bit relieved about this news as the place seemed to be lacking the magic it had a couple of years back (My 4 readers remember my post from 2009). It turns out the place was sold and drama ensued. In fact, their facebook page has morphed into a boycott page, managed by the old owners, with some pretty disturbing stuff on there. All you need to know: the real 3 Brothers was now in Farmingdale… and I had to get there.
So I hit them up for brunch–because vegan breakfast options on Long Island are few and far between, save for bagels.
There new space is bright and welcoming. I got some savory (a tofu omelet with Daiya cheddar and broccoli along with a pile of yummy potatoes) and my GG got some sweet (French Toast with their delectable house-made chocolate hazelnut spread).
Potatoes are irresistible and were my first bite. My tofu omelet was light and fluffy and “eggy.” They tasted like Isa’s Vegan Brunch recipe (beautiful pictures from my try of that recipe are here). So darn good.
Next time I want to try this with their cashew ricotta. And maybe sun-dried tomato.
This vegan nutella was unbelievable. They ought to jar that stuff.
This is the real deal vegan brunch from 3 Brothers Farmingdale. After this meal, the decline in the quality of food at the 3 Brothers in Rockville Center is confirmed. I’m following Jay.
After sleeping in, I was ready for breakfast at Ria’s Bluebird, a bustling all-day breakfast spot in downtown Atlanta’s Grant Park. I meant to get there sooner but my pitch-black hotel room fooled me into sleeping in past 7 a.m… Gasp! [me = early birdy] The place was packed with hip Atlanta folk basking in the Band of Horses.
I was excited to eat their country-fried tempeh, which interweb sources announced was a vegan option, though it sat on a buttermilk biscuit. It was easy enough to say “hold the biscuit.” Luckily the counter man knew better than interweb sources. The dish was smothered in their non-vegan gravy. This, coupled with the biscuit situation and the plea for “No substitutions!”, was when I began to let go my dreams of eating country-fried tempeh.
So I got their Bionic Breakfast, described as a mountain of skillet potatoes with sauteed mushrooms, spinach, red & poblano peppers, topped with spicy tofu sauce. Delicious, yes, but I was hoping for dirty, fried goodness. After a few bites, my body responded to the freshness and flavor. Spinach! I needed the iron. And I needed the heat. Does Ria’s Bluebird know what’s best for me? Apparently yes.
While I’m kind of on the topic, vegan travel reporting is a huge passion of mine. I try to create posts that I would find helpful if I was looking into a try somewhere and wondered about options. I try to take pretty pictures because that’s what I’d like to see. (Sometimes the pictures are not pretty.) But mostly I try to clear up vegan mysteries. I hope I have helped someone in my gluttonous quest. Just sayin’.
Ok, onward and upward. Well, actually I headed west to Dulce Vegan Bakery, a long-standing bookmark in my elaborate state-divided vegan option file system. Dulce stood alone for a very long time, so a visit was very long in the making. Now, on this beautiful spring day, I needed breakfast dessert before a mini-roadtrip to some area roadside attractions. {Am I the only sweet treater who rationalizes dessert for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?}
I got two cupcakes… because really, I have to. As a vegan reporter I need to taste a chocolate and a vanilla! It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it. I sprung for the coconut topped with chocolate (because I love, love, love that combination and hardly ever see it!) and the chocolate with raspberry frosting. Pretty: check!
Delicious: check! The cakes had a real great texture–spring and moist–and a subtle flavor. The frostings were creamy and not overly sweet. This is a sign of an awesome cupcake. Gratuitous sugar is not masking imperfections. They were fresh and lively. I kind of loved them, actually.
Ok, now: rest assured that many, many hours past before I arrived at the kind-of-whole-reason why I came to Atlanta to begin with: Dough Bakery / Gutenfleischers Vegan Meats. They’re all-vegan. They’re a bakery and they’re a vegan meats sandwich shop. I know, right? And they do brunch on the weekend, which I will sadly miss.
Here’s the deal to avoid being a fumbly overwhelmed fool like I was: The bakery is just that, an all-vegan bakery with some pretty fantastic offerings. More later on that. Gutenfleischers Vegan Meats offers their huge selection of house-made vegan meats deli-sliced into a range of sammy options, from Standard (2 slices of bread, meat and toppings) to the Dagwood–named after (the other) Blondie’s husband, Dagwood Bumstead–which has four bread slices, a ton of vegan meat, tempeh bacon and toppings. I had the Double Decker. I chose Black Forest Ham and Pepper Turkey, two of their meats, and said no to the vegan cheese (Tofutti). Oh yeah, you get to pick your meats from the deli case. (And they have a house-made mayo…)
They had a couple of great bakery items, but I unfortunately missed the moon pies. But check out their little pineapple upside down cakes.
I got the sticky bun for the road… because only having a leftover glazed donut in the hotel fridge is a bit unnerving. Oh, Dough you were certainly worth it!
As I digest a little, I leave you with this picture, a small detail of Dough’s physical space but a telling one.
The “Blizzard of 2013″ came and left us with a covering of cotton white.
In moon boots and pajamas, I checked it out.
Vitamix fun: white bean artichoke cilantro pesto
And fool-proof roasted Brussels.
So delicious!
Beets two ways. Veggie-Go’s fruit leather. (Best. 15 calories. Ever.)
Roasted beets. I drooled on my shirt when I rotated them in the pan.
Scalloped potatoes a la mandoline.
Creamy, herbed potatoes will help me face the work week.
House-made seitan.
Bring on Monday!
There’s a lot I won’t miss about Brooklyn. Hipsters. Transplants. Or worse, hipster transplants. But I will miss the food. After a long morning of hauling 8 years of stuff out my apartment, CP and I needed a satisfying lunch. We needed carbohydrates, and plenty of them. We needed Bliss Grand, the over-achieving sister to Bliss on Bedford ave, a Williamsburg vegetarian staple. 
Bliss Grand‘s menu is full of savory selections, surpassing their other location’s reliable earthy plates with more variety and foodie lure. On our table: foreground–my Polenta Florentine, poached Silken Tofu, cashew Hollandaise & homefries, background–BBQ Pulled Jackfruit on a Bun. Yeah. The real deal. Heavenly.
No more words. Let’s just look…
Chocolate cake… Happy Out of Brooklyn! I’ll have to visit again for those Grilled Seitan Taquitos…
Autumn comes and goes fast. In an attempt to slow down the season already pushed into streetlamp snowflakes and Christmas music, let us eat its bounty and keep in mind that the about a Winter Solstice is a month away. Autumn Dins is here. Here is a photo rundown of my intrepid dinner party, dish-by-dish.
Lite Noshes:
What brings out a veggie’s best features than a roast? I roasted a golden beet, a black radish, and a yellow onion and set out as an appetizer, accompaniments to the Grape, Sunflower Seed Arugula Salad. Since some can’t handle potent root vegetables, they sat on the side.
The Asparagus Tart with White Bean Pesto. This delicious starter’s puff pastry was one of the few items not made totally from scratch. Another one was the can of Navy Beans, a special small white bean that used to be a Navy staple. Unfortunately I did not take a shot of it all puffed up and golden brown as that marked the mad dash for dinner preparation. I was doing quite the juggling act.
Homemade Apple Sauce:
I knew I needed a sweet bite on the plate. I whipped up a big bowl of homemade apple sauce from some gorgeous Gala apples. I don’t know that I will ever eat jarred applesauce again. Simple perfection. I kept it chunky however I have been meaning to break in my potato ricer. Maybe next time…
Before and after.
Ah, the time I had during my advance prepping.
Winter Squash with Spiced Butter:
The majority of my dinner’s recipes were veganized versions of Bon Appetit‘s Thanksgiving issue. More advance prep, making the spiced butter from Earth Balance..
Did you ever grind whole nutmeg? What a pretty little pattern inside.
The Winter Squash in Spiced Butter & Pomegranate Seeds.
Cornbread Sausage & Pecan Dressing:
Probably my favorite part of the dinner.
Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Shallots and “Salt Pork”:
Well-loved by an omni-guest. Score!
Tamarind Seitan Kabobs: I got this recipe from Vegan YumYum. The Tamarind sauce was so damn good and the seitan, succulent. The Electrician grilled these up on the grill.
Seitan from scratch is the only way to go. That packaged stuff is kind of gummy. Plus you can infused your blob of vital wheat gluten with lots of flavor.
Braising in veggie broth.
Time to make the kabobs.
All ready to go.
Apple Cider Cake: Dessert of course. A big win by VCTOTW.
It was involved but with a big pay off. Here, whole cinnamon, allspice, and cloves simmer in some apple cider.
This mixture combined with an apple butter mixture… so you can imagine how flavorful this cake was.
Scrumptious!
I finally got to sit down and eat with my intimate group of guests and shared a toast. Happy Autumn! I am thankful for delicious food and true friends… and the ability to distinguish the difference. xo, v.v.
How many times can someone have brunch in a week? With so many delicious brunch options to choose from the great city of Los Angeles, breakfast fare, maximized, made up a good portion of my eats. Today, on my last full day, is no exception. This morning we dined at Real Food Daily, a well-known all-vegan hot spot with three locations in the LA area. We headed to West Hollywood to taste this vegan staple.
Satisfying both of my savory and sweet cravings, I ordered The Weekender: scrambled tofu, onions, tomatoes, cashew jalapeno cheese, tempeh bacon with two slices of french toast and hashbrowns.
While every bite I ate made my taste buds high five each other, it was the French toast that had those buds jumping up and down. Vegan French toast can go wrong in so many ways (too soggy, too thin, too thick that you get plain bread in the center, etc) but this was spot-on. And the eggy-like batter, vanilla soy flaxseed, made the toast’s texture awesome.
For our final dinner in town, we hit up Madeleine Bistro, yet another eatery whose website has sat patiently waiting in my bookmarks for this West coast eating frenzy. The posh, gourmet restaurant was only open on weekends and had limited hours. We made a door-buster reservation and decided quickly on the 4-course sampler.
The first course, a spectacular soup, was a good indication of what was to come. It was a sweet corn bisque, creamy and frothy with seasonal, local corn. Though soup makes for an unexciting picture, believe me that the taste was very unbelievable. My salad course, their beautiful red beet tartare was delectable–a tower of tenderized red beet, a crispy-skinned super-creamy tofu cheese crouton, finely sliced cucumber in a balsamic glace. How gorgeous and delicious.
My beet tartare salad in all its glory. Very large and substancial for a salad course, I might add.
Then came the entree, course 3: Lemon-rosemary seitan, delicate haricot and cream crepes with a side of haricots. The house-made seitan was so tender and flavorful. The crepe was oh-so creamy. I just wished there were a bit more of a variety of veggies inside. It was the perfect portion, helping to leave me enough room for dessert. And dessert, course 4, was the best of all!
This capital-A Amazing ice cream treat gave me everything I needed. It is their Bananas Foster Split, the culmination of housemade components that had me speechless and ready to lap the bananas foster sauce off the plate. The vanilla ice cream was creamy, the hot fudge was the perfect flavor and texture (not simply brown and sweet), and the whipped crème real. No packages. Everything made from scratch. This was an amazing dessert. Thank you, Madeleine, for your high standards. They translate to pure, unadulterated deliciousness.
Goodnight L.A.
I have just returned from a tremendous bout of traffic along U.S. Coastal Route 1. If I didn’t think that this was one of the most beautiful highways in the entire country, I’d probably be a bit more frustrated now. But a day of eating fried and hearty fare and I am cemented here dazed, trying to channel enough brain activity to complete this post. I’m going to be brief, as a picture is worth 10,000 words.
Today’s food highlights: Flore in Silver Lake for a spectacular brunch.
I got the Chicken & Waffles. Breaded and seared Gardein chicken cutlet and a thin banana waffle served with real maple syrup and Earth Balance with a side of gravy-smothered homefries.
Behold one fantastic dish. So, so salty, the maple syrup was oh so necessary. I was a member of the clean plate club.
I don’t usually like to eat things like Gardein (super-processed frozen patty type things), but every 3 or 4 years, sure.
For dessert, a lemon-berry cupcake. Adorable and so fine. The cake was light and spongey and the frosting was not cloyingly sweet or all shortening-ish.
The view of today, hazy and hot, from the Griffith Observatory.
Mohawk Bend is a huge restaurant, bar, and venue in Echo Park. They also have some amazing vegan dishes.
My choice, the Avo & Chips, beer-battered deep-fried avocado, side of fries, some horseradish slaw, and smoked paprika aioli. Deep fried avocado. What can be better?
Looking a bit closer.
CandyPenny‘s selection: Bangers & Mash. Amazing pub fare at an awesome space.
I think I need to fast when I get back to New York.
Clearly I am on a quest to find more vegan options around my great city. A satisfying spot for each of the varied tastebuds of my tongue. Some refined and steeped in foodie sensibility, others nostalgic and in need of comforting. Carb-heavy comfort. B.A.D., an all-night eatery with a slew of vegan options, most certainly appeased is the latter.
I first visited B.A.D. last year at their Williamsburg, Brooklyn location. The menu has since grown substantially. I stopped in bright and early one more to start the day right with one of their breakfast options. But first I was taken by selection of v-bombs strewn about the space on Avenue A in the East Village. I had to capture them while I waited for my breakfast. Thankfully the sweet waitress let me wander and shoot pictures.
The bad girl behind Bad Girl Bakery is a vegan herself so they do their own in-house baked goods which are mostly vegan, some of which are gluten-free. Let’s take a looksy:
Cookies–oatmeal cherry pecan and chocolate chip.
Brownies. Mmmmm.
Cupcakes. There’s the vanilla with rose icing.
My greasy, carb-y wonder of a breakfast: the Monte Cristo. This delicious way to start the day is like a grilled cheese made with French toast stuffed with veggie ham. Sweet, salty, savory, and satisfying. The homefries were both white and sweet potato. And boy do I appreciate that.
Let’s look again. This is hearty greasy spoon fare. Not for the faint of heart.
As my heart can handle quite a bit, I chose a dessert from the menu… the Chocolate Banana Chimichanga. This scrumptious end to breakfast had banana and chocolate wrapped in a tortilla and deep-fried. It would probably feed two but hey, that’s how I roll. So darn good.
Chocolate. Banana. Chimichanga. Yes!
Next time you are crawling home on Avenue A.. or up at the crack of dawn because your cat was demanding treats, eat the majority of of your daily intake of calories for breakfast at B.A.D. You’ll have the whole day to utilize it!
Emma, the vegan personal chef of Emma Eats Plants, does an all-vegan pop-up at Brooklyn’s Halyards Bar in Gowanus on Thursdays. (That sounds like some kind of mnemonic.) The weekly menu incorporates her Cuban roots and dedication to fresh, lively veganism. Thanks, Emma.
Halyards is a classy joint, dark and lovely. It was a bit difficult to read the menu, which are placed about the tables. The selection this week: a vegetable lasagna, roasted potato chunks in a creamy red pepper sauce; an almond butter, chocolate and coconut pressed sandwich dusted with cinnamon sugar; and a kale and chickpea corn taco with sunflower seed sauce. What would accompany my Old Fashioned with its potent house-soaked cherries?
The corn taco was scrumptious. Several bites of fresh flavor, very well balanced. It needed a bit of color, however. This I only realized after the flash lit it up. It tasted better than the picture shows.
The red pepper topped potatoes took a bit longer to arrive. Given the restrictions of pop-up dining I understand their being cold. I really enjoyed the red pepper cream on its own but it didn’t mesh well with the potatoes. They pulled my mouth in opposite directions.
I would definitely hit Halyards up again on a Thursday to check out another menu. And maybe I’s stay for the trivia which started up as we were leaving… or bring some records to play as their “juke box” is a record player.
My beloved friends Andrea and Tim tied the knot this past Friday! If that isn’t happiness enough, the bouncingly happy couple brought the quasi-wedding party and both sides of the family to the beloved Candle 79, New York City’s best vegan upscale restaurant. The very un-vegetarian group offered their gift of flexibility and were pleased to find the food delicious.
The veg-power couple high five, very aware of a slight weight wrapped about their ring fingers. Congratulations T & A!
I couldn’t resist diving into the Seitan Chimichurris on the table, sneaking in bites in between emotional toasts and speeches. Such tender seitan drizzled with horseradish cream and a red pepper coulis. Luckily, the need to photograph the plate was completely understood by the happy couple.
The Seitan Piccata, noted on the menu as the couple’s favorite, was my entree choice. I had had the cutlets of succulent seitan atop creamed spinach, grilled potato cake, oyster mushrooms and flooded before. I had revelled in the scrumptious lemon-caper sauce on a previous visit to the highly awarded all-vegan spot. Heavenly. Although there were several other entree choices on our menus, I couldn’t stray.
For dessert: The Chocolate Peanutbutter Bliss.. a rich chocolate mousse layered with a sweet and salty peanut butter mousse, covered in a chocolate shell and sitting on a dark chocolate base, drizzled in a berry coulis. A perfect ending to a fabulous meal to celebrate the love of my dear friends.
Not really but there is a pretty good vegan option at Denny’s. Never you mind that they’re in the middle of a slovenly celebration of Bacon. Never you mind that separate menu with the bacon ice cream sundae and bacon pancakes. And never you mind that ‘People of Denny’s’ would make an appropriate sister-site to People of Wal-mart. They have got a fully vegan Amy’s veggie burger on their menu, field tested by many veggie reporters and now me.
So there it is, their Veggie Burger, minus the cheese and grilled onion (for fear of what they are grilled near, with, on [and other propositions]). My burger arrived looking dry and not greasy, likely nuked. And, in this case, I am relieved about that. It certainly was not grilled on the hot plate The Electrician‘s bacon cheeseburger was on. I had read that their bun was also vegan with no creepy animal-derived dough conditioners to worry about. However, I have learned now that this bun, their whole wheat bun, does have honey in it unfortunately. The burger was topped with fresh spinach and tomato. The fries were salty and tasty, not greasy or reeking of chicken fingers like I have experienced before in similar eateries’ dirty oil. It was a good, hearty bite that gave me my veggie burger fix. Sure, I won’t likely return but it is good to know that this popular roadside establishment can offer me some sustenance.
Bread. Hot, soft, fresh-baked bread. With a melon-ball of parsley-sprinkled soy spread, it’s a divine start to brunch. Sunday Brunch at Rockville Centre, Long Island’s 3 Brothers… after spying their brunch menu last week I knew I had to go sooner than later. It wasn’t just a option of a tofu scramble; this was vegan bunch with all the Bells and Whistles.
With CandyPenny in tow we were set to bring on the brunch. Here was our spread. The tofu benedict in the foreground, some house-made seitan sausage in the middle, vegan nutella crepes (!) in front of CP and some fruit on the side. Wow: vegan nutella! This is 3 Brothers‘ own version of the chocolate-hazelnut stuff.
There is my tofu benny. A layer of succulent tofu, some pan-fried slices of Canadian “bacon” on top of a whole wheat English-type muffin and drenched in their Hollandaise sauce. Of course there is also the side of potatoes, so dreamy in their simple form. Though the benny was a bit difficult to eat [the knife couldn't defeat the tough bacon], it was sumptuous savory defined. I wished the Hollandaise was less mustardy though. At $14 for the dish, I wanted a more Hollandaise Hollandaise sauce, a difficult vegan feat I know.
Ah, the sweet crepes, stuffed with banana and drenched in the aforementioned vegan nutella… These were true crepes, thin, light and full of holes, unlike the pancakes that often get renamed “crepes”. What an amazing dish–in taste, texture and presentation. If I were to offer a constructive criticism it would be to garnish with fruits in season. Though the strawberries are darn pretty, their lack of taste and their firmness didn’t add much to the crepes.
3 Brothers’ seitan sausage is divine. Tender, flavorful and made from scratch. I have found in my years of vegan eating that a restaurant’s seitan is a strong indicator of its quality overall– the food craft behind its dishes, the respect and care given to ingredients– and, consequently, its proximity to my heart. After posting about 3 Brothers since 2009, I think that I can say definitively that I love 3 Brothers.
Vegan Reporting By Location
