i’m not gonna lie, this is one of the best field reports ever and it’s about my favorite food group: PIZZA. Aj aka QueerVeganRunner sent us this post about authentic nyc-style pizza from cafe viva in new york. if this doesn’t have you drooling, i dunno what will. damn, i wish we had a place like this in los angeles! in one visit, she ate FIVE different kinds of vegan pizza BY THE SLICE. amazing. here ya go:

I love LA. But, in my heart (and in my attitude), I am a New Yorker. And to me, and to any real New Yorker, there’s nothing like a slice. To qualify that slice with an “of pizza” automatically disqualifies you from the “real New Yorker” club. Back in my pre-enlightenment days, I swore up and down for Famous Ray’s Original. But Ray’s has not caught on that non-vegan food has gone the way of hookers and crack in Times Square, so passé. Luckily real New Yorkers and tourists can enjoy Original Café Viva (why the original in every pizzeria’s name?). And lucky for me, they are spitting distance from my parents’ apartment.

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My dear wife, Quarrygirl, says she loves only two things more than me: vegan food and beer. Bearing in mind she writes this blog, her standards for vegan food are stratospheric, and her increasingly sophisticated taste in beer (really brought to the forefront when she co-organized the world’s first Vegan Beer Festival) refines itself almost daily.

So, faced with the self-wrought challenge of choosing a perfect location for us to spend our 5th wedding anniversary, I wanted to find somewhere romantic and out-of-the-way that had awesome vegan beer AND really good vegan food, under the same roof. Close to home, I was considering Pure Luck and Tony’s Darts Away – two locations that firmly check the above boxes. However, there was one thing missing: Ms. Quarrygirl really likes freshly brewed beer and prefers to consume it at the point of manufacture – a brewery if possible.

Let’s examine each subject set closely:

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UPDATE 9/5/11: before dining at the wynn, please check your restaurant’s dress code. i’ve heard some horror stories of nice vegans being turned away for not being fancy enough. boo! just a heads up!

BIG UPDATE: since the writing of this post, we’ve gotten a ton of menus for more places at the wynn. huge thanks to awesome quarrygirl reader matthew who sent us a PDF with vegan menus from FOURTEEN of wynn’s restaurants!!! this should help you plan your trip. click here for the menus.

hey readers! it’s been all up in the news lately that since mogul steve wynn went vegan, EVERY restaurant at his hotel on the las vegas strip has vegan options! awesome, right? YES.

however, the bad news is, the menus for these places aren’t officially posted anywhere online. we went to vegas last month and decided to start collecting vegan wynn menus for your benefit. we were there for a couple hours, and hit up every place we passed that was open…but we still only scratched the surface. i urge you, readers, to take these menus as a starting point to see what’s out there. and if you ever go to the wynn and get your grubby little hands on more menus, SEND THEM TO US. we will post them. the restaurants all appear to act independently, so we’ve seen everything from innovative options to salad sans cheese. here’s what we’ve got:

let’s start with the buffet…

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Just hours before our recent trip to Las Vegas, a vegan friend (and Vegas native) recommended Mint Indian Bistro, a vegan-friendly Indian restaurant a couple of blocks off the strip. After we checked out the menu online, and saw that almost all their vegetarian dishes are “vegan friendly” by default, we made up our mind to visit at the earliest opportunity.

We’d originally planned out our meal from the online menu, but were a little disappointed when we arrived to find that they had taken a reservation for a large party (of 40 people!) and so would be doing a fixed price buffet service rather than a la carte. Of course, it was just our luck that this was the first time ever the restaurant had operated a buffet in the evening and so the regular menu wouldn’t be available.

We asked if the buffet had any vegan items, and were told “there are lots of vegan options, you won’t go hungry!”. Even with that reassurance, we checked out the buffet tables before we settled in, and any hint of disappointment was swiftly dissipated by what we found…

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hey everyone! time for a vegan field report. this one comes to us from all the way across the country in west palm beach, florida. check out chicavegan’s review of darbster!

Last week, I went to South Florida to visit my family there before the Holidays and for my little sister’s 18th birthday. I had already dined at Sublime before, and Miami is a little too far for me, so I decided to go up to West Palm Beach to try “Darbster” for the first time, a dog-friendly restaurant, tucked away from the busy Dixie Hwy. My older brother and younger sister came along; neither of them are vegan, and were quite curious and intrigued.

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the quick bite series continues! this one comes to us from tettes, who recently hit up gracias madre in san francisco. as of recently we are HUGE FANS OF GRACIAS MADRE….so we were super excited to receive tettes’ glowing review. here goes:

I visited San Francisco during the Thanksgiving holiday, and I went to Gracias Madre twice.

Here are a couple of pics of food items that Quarrygirl didn’t order, including a butternut squash tamale smothered in mole sauce, a butternut squash quesadilla and one of the best items I’ve ever eaten: roasted brussel sprouts in a cashew cheese sauce baked with garlic breadcrumbs on top. OMG!!!

This place is beyond amazing. Perhaps the best vegan place I’ve ever visited!

Butternut squash tamale smothered in mole sauce with a side of refried black beans and spicy pickled vegetables.

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Resigned to an nine hour journey from Manhattan to Hollywood with nothing but a bag or two of potato chips to eat, I could not believe my luck when I stumbled upon an entire section of Vegan prepared foods at the busy Balducci’s Deli, right outside the United gates at JFK’s insanely busy Terminal 7.

I opted for the two vegan dishes: Vegan Udon Noodles, and Vegan Shanghai Dumpling, with a side of Chick Pea Salad (sic). Right away I was astonished at the sheer weight of this food. There were easily three portions per package, and with two packages and the side salad I lugged at least seven servings of food back to my table!

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hey everyone, we have a new segment on the blog called quick bites! basically if you are ever dining out anywhere and you eat an epic vegan meal (good or bad), snap a pic (with your cell or whateves) and email it to me here…and it may end up on the blog. no promises, but it’s a possibility. if you could send a little description as well, that’ll score points. the first quickbite comes to us from none other than mr. meaner, who is traveling in NYC and hit up one of our favorite spots, franchia, for dinner. here are his quick bites (i am paraphrasing!):

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i’ve only been there once, but i’m head over heels in love with gracias madre. the entirely vegan restaurant in san francisco’s mission district serves up huge portions of organic mexican food that’s just fantastic.

we hit up gracias madre a couple months ago, and were shocked by how good it was. we were first taken aback by the amazing atmosphere. i’m used to vegan restaurants being small and often times dingy…but this was a huge wide open space with a clean and colorful decor.

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i’m a huge fan of cafe fresh in dublin, ireland…an all vegetarian restaurant with light and healthy food, and plenty of vegan options.

the portions at fresh are enormous, and the food is simple yet very high quality. we ate so much when we dined there, and felt surprisingly energetic afterwards. i wish we had places like this in los angeles, where i could eat a massive quantities of food and still feel like a million bucks.

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unless you have been living under a rock, you probably know that the wynn is the vegan capital of las vegas. basically the owner, steve wynn, went vegan and decided that there should be an animal-free option at EVERY restaurant in his casino. score! walk into any wynn eatery, ask for the vegan menu, and you are set.

we hit up wynn over the holiday weekend, and pizza place was our first stop. vegan-friendly salads, appetizers, and pizza covered in teese by chicago soydairy. you just can’t go wrong…

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on a recent trip to san francisco, the place i was most excited about visiting was patxi’s chicago pizza. three words, people: VEGAN DEEP DISH.

there are a few paxti’s scattered around the bay area, and we hit up the hayes street location for our vegan pie. we got a great table by the window, and i was immediately pleased with the comfy atmosphere. dim lighting, warm colors, and an exposed brick wall decorated with pretty paintings.

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time for another field report from i dream of greenie! this one comes to us from across the country…seva vegetarian restaurant way over in michigan. if you are ever in ann arbor in search of some vegan food, hopefully this will come in handy. 🙂

While on a recent trip to Michigan, I dined at Seva, in Ann Arbor on the recommendation of Noelle of An Opera Singer in the Kitchen.

I really liked the rustic décor, complete with plants on the ceiling and wood panels (reminded me a bit of a Napa winery).

After a long flight, we were in dire need of a cocktail so we asked our waitress if any of the wines were vegan. She was initially a little shocked, explaining that we were the first person to ask her that question in the 2 years she’d been working there but would look into it that second. She came back a few minutes later with the sad news that none of the wines are vegan.

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we only spent a day in brussels on our recent european vacation, but it was definitely one of the best days of the trip. we got the train over from london, toured an amazing brewery in the morning, did some sightseeing, and spent much of the afternoon in holed up in delirium cafe, a bar with a 200 page beer list. in between all that, we also managed to grab a lovely meal at den teepot, one of only 3 vegan restaurants in brussels.

fresh off a tour of the cantillon brewery and a few lambics in their taproom (an experience i’d HIGHLY recommend if you ever visit brussels), we hit the streets looking for food. thanks to the happy cow app, we discovered that den teepot was only a short walk away. the small vegan restaurant located on the top floor of a health food store is open for lunch monday through saturday from 12-2pm, and when we arrived at around 12:10, it was already starting to get busy…

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it’s field report time! this one is written by i dream of greenie, who recently took a trip to cinnaholic in berkeley. we blogged about mail order cinnamon rolls from the all vegan bakery last week, and now i am dying to visit the shop even more. be warned, this post contains graphic imagery including cookie dough, dandies, and offensive amounts of frosting. YUM.

cinnamon roll with macadamia nut frosting and cookie dough chunks

I have a full set of sweet teeth so when I heard about Cinnaholic, a bakery in Berkeley that boasted custom ordered vegan cinnamon rolls, I knew I needed to visit this spot next time I was in the Bay Area. After drooling over the photos on their website, it became evident that Cinnaholic was the first place I needed to stop upon getting into town.

En route I began to worry that I was about to suffer from a classic case of the letdowns. There is a major difference between enjoying eating something and getting a full sensory gratification and I was definitely hyping it up to be the latter, which from my experience is a rarity. After having been there multiple times, Cinnaholic is simply THAT GOOD.

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