soy and sake is a great little vegetarian restaurant in nyc’s west village that specializes in asian cuisine. we visited the place last year and had a fantastic meal, so we made it a point to return on our recent trip to manhattan. this time we took along one of our favorite sushi buddies, and tore it up with loads of soy and several bottles of sake.

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over the holidays we were invited to an all vegan potluck/surprise party, and i’m happy to say that it was by far one of the most epic eating sessions i attended in all of 2010. if you haven’t thrown a vegan potluck yet, i highly suggest you give it a try. even with a relatively small number of people at the get-together, we wound up with way more food than we could eat…and all of it was fantastic.

check out the amazing food:

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i’ve got some very exciting news! native foods is launching a whole new menu tomorrow, and they’re giving quarrygirl readers a sneak peek at the goods! chef tanya has created some fantastic dishes for the winter season, and i don’t know about you guys, but i’m totally jonesing to try them all. have a look at the 8 new mouthwatering items.

first up, there are 2 new appetizers:

Creamy Artichoke Spinach Dip: Served warm with crispy crostini and dipping veggies. $6.95

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it’s that time again…for a vegan field report! this is the third one to come to us from kris of veganscraps, and she blogs about an entirely vegan bakery called sweet freedom located in the uncharted (by quarrygirl) territory of philadelphia. damn, it looks good! i have added this to my list of places to hit up when i finally make it to philly for an epic weekend of eating and drinking with vegan brew. check it:

Alas, I got to visit a bakery I’ve been wanting to for a while now! Sweet Freedom Bakery is located in the artsy city of Philadelphia and it is the city’s first bakery to bring a vegan healthy take on our favorite goodies! The items they offer are 100% Vegan as well as Gluten, Corn, Wheat, Peanut, and Soy free as well, while never using any Unrefined Sugars. Naturally I had to check it out while in Philly (it was my first stop from the train station!)…

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buy 4 big macros and get one for free? yes, please! same goes for the chopped salad, detox juice, 3 item deli salad combo, and macro meal all month at m cafe.

buy 4 and the 5th is FREE!

just a heads up that to help you out with your new year’s resolution (if in fact your resolution is to spend more time eating out at m cafe), the restaurant has launched a new discount card just for the month of january. here’s how it works…

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i’ve said it before, and i will say it again: ike’s place makes the best sandwiches, vegan or otherwise. the small san francisco shop is nothing short of legendary (i mean come ON, it has almost THREE THOUSAND yelp reviews) and is loved by herbivores and omnivores alike. when we checked them out in fall of 2010, they were having some major dramz with neighbors and were in the midst of being forced to shut down. fortunately for us though, they’ve found a temporary home at lime nightclub just around the corner in the casto district, and are still serving their famous sandwiches for the time being until they move to a more permanent location. (huge thanks to our BFFs at vegansaurus who keep us updated with ike’s info!) we checked out ike’s new digs on our trip to SF over the holidays, and i am happy to say that they officially served me the best sandwich i’ve eaten, ever.

vegan sometimes i'm a vegan: grilled mushrooms, marinated artichoke hearts, soy cheese. $7.97

here’s how it went down…

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in celebration of the upcoming vegan pizza day (which you should all be spreading the word and blogging about), i’m gonna make an effort to post more about pizza on the blog throughout january…which shouldn’t be hard, because we eat a lot of it!

berkeley vegan: marinara sauce, vegan cheese, veggie burger crumbles, zucchini, tomatoes, mushrooms, red onions. (no bell peppers)

there are TONS of vegan-friendly pizza joints in los angeles, and we think zpizza is one of the best. we even added their amazing tuscan pizza to our vegan bucket list, it’s that damn good. another awesome thing about zpizza is, they’re a national chain and every location offers vegan pizza! so even if you aren’t in LA, you may very well have a zpizza near you.

recently we had a little zpizza shindig with us and the team from clara’s cakes, which meant not only was tasty pizza involved, but also mouthwatering desserts…

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so…what happens when you combine an amazing location and vegetarian ethics with healthy/fresh/delicious cuisine? tibits in london, that’s what!

i first got turned on to tibits by rachel, who wrote a field report on them back in june. her review intrigued me because i couldn’t believe there was such an awesome vegetarian (mostly vegan) restaurant located in the west end that we hadn’t tried yet. after all…london is my favorite city on the planet and this is prime, centrally-located real estate we are talking about! of course we had to check it out…

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vegans, mark your calendars because vegan pizza day is less than a month away!

mark your calendars! vegan pizza day 1/29!

what is vegan pizza day, you ask? it’s a national celebration sponsored by chicago soydairy and quarrygirl.com of the greatest food on the planet: vegan pizza. we are trying to get vegan pizza parties going down all over the country on saturday, january 29th…so get involved. we’ve already got a list going of places to get vegan pizza…it’s easy to update, so get in there and fill out any missing information for your area. also, help us spread the word for the chance to win THREE POUNDS of teese from chicago soydairy. here’s what you gotta do…

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i bet you guys didn’t know that i grew up in awesometown. that’s right, valencia has officially declared itself the town of awesomeness. see for yourself:

fuck yeah, awesometown!

i don’t know if you have ever been to valencia, but when i think of the city covered in tract housing where everything closes by 10pm, “awesome” isn’t the first word that comes to mind. however it may be worthy of the awesometown name thanks entirely to tomato joe’s, a small takeaway pizzeria with insane vegan pies that are…well…more awesome than most pizza available in los angeles.

sally's secret garden (veganized): extra virgin olive oil, follow your heart mozzarella, fresh basil, white mushrooms, red onion, green pepper, roasted garlic, fresh tomatoes

my parents still live very close to awesometown, so whenever i visit them, a trip to tomato joe’s is a must. we stopped by their house over the holidays and came bearing gifts of vegan pizza.

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i really do love follow your heart. the all vegetarian cafe and market has been around since 1970 and offers some of the best food and hardest to find groceries in los angeles. my biggest complaint about follow your heart is that it’s located too far away from my house, so i don’t get to go there enough!

the cafe can be uncomfortably busy on weekends (i understand why, it’s because the food is so good!), but on weekdays it’s much more pleasant. i checked it out recently on a monday morning at around 11am with my mom, and we had almost the entire place to ourselves…

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oh gee, i’m just so chuffed about this! the 2010 discount on the best vegan reuben in town was so popular, that locali has decided to offer another deal to quarrygirl readers throughout this week (or until supplies run out)! this time it’s on their brand new mouthwatering vegan sausage special!

discount vegan sausage special at locali when you mention quarrygirl! (beret-wearing hotdog cartoon taken from the amazing nataliedee.com)

here’s the info…

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field report time! kris from veganscraps sent us another guest post, and this time she checked out chef brooke’s natural cafe in fort myer’s, florida. brittany has  covered chef brooke’s on this blog in the past, and this review is definitely making me wanna go there even more. from what i hear, florida’s vegan options aren’t as numerous as they are here in los angeles…so it’s great to know when good quality food is available.

Tempeh Reuben: Fresh Marinated Tempeh Served on Health Bread with a Reuben Sauce, Tomatoes, Lettuce, Sprouts, and Cucumbers. Served with Potato Salad and Coleslaw. $8.99

Normally when someone mentions Florida you begin to think of palm trees, the beach and the warm weather (which are all accurate descriptions)… but when I think of going to FL (specifically Fort Myers), one thing comes to mind “Chef Brooke’s Natural Cafe“. This Cafe is my favorite healthy cafe on the planet! The owner and chef, Brooke is extremely talented at cooking food as well as presenting it beautifully! Chef Brooke’s Natural Cafe offers a HUGE menu (not 100% vegan, but most items are or can be made vegan) with smoothies, baked goods, daily specials, raw and gluten free food, burritos, veggie burgers, hummus platters, soups, and a small grocery area to pick up little extras!

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… and I mean “SHIT”, rather than “THE SHIT”, which has a positive connotation.

My recollection from the first time I visited Cha-Ya Vegetarian, was of bland food in small portions, rude service, high prices and extremely bright fluorescent lighting. I have to admit, though, that I was a little (a lot) inebriated after spending a few hours beforehand in Monk’s Kettle, one of Mission’s best bars. I’ve heard the odd good review of Cha-Ya, so was determined to go back again one day while sober and see how things panned out.

Well, after a late afternoon flight to San Francisco on Christmas Day, I was delighted to discover that Cha-Ya was open at 5pm so after a quick hop and skip from the BART we were walking up to the restaurant within an hour of touching down…. and stone cold sober I might add!

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zenergy powerballs! come on, with a name like that, they’ve gotta be awesome. and they are.

zenergy powerballs are completely raw, vegan, organic snacks that are packed with superfood for nutrition. when the company that makes them offered me some to sample, of course i said yes.

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