hey everyone, today we’ve got a field report by my good friend kevin mudrick all about the newly opened vedge restaurant in philly. the upscale establishment is all vegan and offers the kind of fine dining that makes me wanna take a trip east just to eat there. for more kevin, check out vegan brew.

From the outside – a short block and a half from the walnut-locust subway stop. Didn’t really get any interior shots but the place is beautiful – lots of very nice wood on the walls, etc. The bar is magnificent and fancy-looking.

The menu. Lots of small plates so you get varying tastes. Between the two of us we got 1 from the dirt list (roasted sunchokes with smoked paprika aoil), 3 “plates” (grilled seitan, steak spice seared tofu, and the wood grilled maitake), 2 “for the table” (truffled fingerling fries and crispy cauliflower), and 2 desserts (trio of ice cream & choco taco)

The beer list is much improved over the old Horizons. Nice mix of local & belgian stuff – Rochefort 8 for instance is arguably one of the best belgian strong dark ales in the world! We chose to skip alcohol tonight as the Philly Marathon is this weekend. I didn’t take a picture of the “drinks” because I don’t really care about them.

Complimentary bread & spicy olive oil with a pesto. Good, though I wish the bread was warm.

Below is ruffled fingerling fries on top (good) and roasted cauliflower, kimchee cream, black vinegar on the bottom (phenomenal – one of the best appetizers I have ever had)…

We also got the roasted sunchokes (one of the “dirt list”) which, combined with the smoked paprika aoil, was awesome. The pictures came out too dark though.

Grilled seitan, black lentils and mushrooms, creamy horseradish, kohlrabi. I think I liked the old Horizons version better. The lentils were pretty lifeless & flavorless – I’ve had much better beluga lentils at Horizons before.

Wood grilled maitake, celery root, leek ash, truffle, and trumpet “noodles”. This dish was bursting with flavor – the sauce here was very rich.

Steak spice seared tofu, kuri squash, chanterelles, madeira, walnut picada. The picture doesn’t do this dish justice – it was very juicy with a perfect “crust” on the tofu from the searing.

Dessert Menu! The trio of ice cream involves 3 of 4 choices. Tonight they were: blackberry cheesecake, Toasted Pistachio, Lemon, and Chipotle Coconut.

Chipotle coconut on the left, lemon in the middle, toasted pistachio on the right. The pistachio was my favorite, but the chipotle coconut was intriguing and tasty – the smoky spiciness didn’t kick in right away. I’m now drooling over the prospects of a sriracha accented ice cream – I hope someone gives that a stab (or maybe I have to experiment with my vitamix!)

Choco Taco – the creamy part was very very rich – a very nice mix of flavors with a delightful crunchy brittle-like shell.

During dessert, M. Night Shyamalan and his wife were seated next to us. That’s probably pretty normal out in LA but its a rarity in Philly 🙂

All in all – the bill was pretty reasonable for such an array of flavors and ingredients ($83). I can’t wait to go back and try all of the other dishes

Vedge was wonderful.