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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i absolutely love little health food stores with vegan-friendly restaurants attached to them, and i think mother’s market may be the best one yet. the grocery mart has an impressive 6 locations in the orange county area, each one with an adjoining cafe that boasts a large almost entirely vegetarian menu (they serve real tuna for some strange reason).

gingered greens with tempeh: strips of sauteed tempeh with spinach and swiss chard in a light ginger-cilantro sauce. served over organic brown rice or udon noodles. $8.50

we hit up the huntington beach location recently, and i must say we were quite impressed with the quality and value of the food…

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222 veggie vegan is a 100% vegan restaurant in west kensington, a rather nice area of london. they offer a daily lunchtime all-you-can-eat buffet for just £7.50, and an a la carte dinner menu every evening. i’ve never been to the lunch buffet, but have been in the past a couple of times for dinner and have overall been pretty pleased with the place. our last visit, however, left a lot to be desired.

we hit up 222 veggie vegan on a monday evening at around 6pm, and although the place wasn’t that busy, it took us forever to be noticed by the waitress. the entire place was being taken care of by just one server, and she seemed pretty flustered and miserable. when we finally got her attention, we ordered everything at once. an appetizer, two main dishes, and one side dish.

bean and tofu pancake: black eye bean and tofu pate wrapped in a wholemeal pancake, topped with tomato chunks and vegan cream sauce.

the appetizer arrived almost immediately and was definitely the highlight of the meal. the bean and tofu pancake didn’t taste like a pancake at all, more like rolled up and fried tofu scramble with a delicious sauce and a vegan sour-cream-type condiment. it was really beautifully presented and tasted great; we thought we were in for an awesome meal.

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