A recap of my awesome vegan Portland meals, just in case you missed any…

Nutshell * Flavour Spot * Blossoming Lotus * Farm Cafe * Tin Shed * Voodoo Doughnut * Kinta Malaysian * Veganopolis * Vita Cafe

Hopefully this list will grow someday when I get to sample more of what the vegan mecca of PDX has to offer!

I almost missed my chance to eat at the fantastic Vita Cafe. My short visit to Portland was nearly over, with nothing left to do but get me to the airport on time later in the afternoon. My clever friend remembered that Vita Cafe was one of the restaurants on my secondary list (I had a “must eat at” list and a “if I can fit it in” list) and she realized that it was directly on our way to the airport. How perfect. I was going to get to leave this town as full and satisfied as when I came in!

Vita Cafe serves primarily, though not entirely, vegetarian and vegan fare. They’re organic, local, sustainable, blah, blah, blah…. you know the drill, most all of these places in Portland are doing the right things whenever possible, and I think that’s awesome. But seriously, as I’ve told you time and again, I’m really most interested in the eating of it all… so let’s eat!

Vita Cafe is almost synonymous for one of the dishes they are most famous for, their vegan biscuits and gravy. The biscuits are homemade… the most amazingly fluffy, tender, chewy and delectable biscuits I’ve ever had. Not being a Southern girl or anything like that, my primary schooling in what biscuits are supposed to taste like came in the form of the artery-clogging offerings provided by Kentucky Fried Chicken when I was a child. I know, gross, but you’ve got to admit their biscuits were tasty, especially back when you didn’t know any better. Now imagine that tastiness times about a million, now double it in size, subtract the lard and trans-fats, and add in a healthy dose of “made with love by people who care”, and you might just come close to fathoming how delicious these massive biscuits are. And I haven’t even told you about the gravy yet.

The gravy can only be described as heavenly. I have no idea how it’s made, all they tell you on the menu is that it’s made from almonds, yes… almonds! It didn’t really taste all that much of almonds to me, it tasted like thick, sumptuous, nutty, slightly spicy & slightly salty gravy. Not too salty which I can’t hang with, but just right. A more well-spoken reviewer might describe it as “full of flavor” or “well seasoned”. I’ll just tell you that it rocked my world. The gravy comes heartily smothered over the two giant biscuits, turning the whole thing into a moist mountain of lumpy, chewy fulfillment. My words and not-so-great photo are not doing any justice here, this was truly one of the best things I ate on my whole trip and I will be fantasizing about it until I can return to Portland again and indulge once more.

Now, you didn’t expect me to just order biscuits & gravy and head on home, did you? Of course not. The other items that caught my eye as soon as I was handed a menu were the corn cakes. You know how I am with corn, I am powerless against it in it’s many forms. Resistance was futile.

Here we have the Thai Corn Cake: with sliced bananas, ginger, cilantro and coconut syrup. Just when I was thinking that nothing on earth could possibly taste better than those biscuits, this giant plate of love arrived. Basically it’s a huge corn pancake with the bananas, ginger and cilantro cooked right into it. It was perfectly crispy around the edges and soft and warm in the middle, each bite filled with exciting and surprising flavor combinations. The coconut syrup took this not only out of this world but all the way out into the far deep inner reaches of outer space. It was creamy and thick and within a few seconds I had it slathered all over this beautific corn cake.

Vita Cafe was a top-notch establishment with more vegan offerings for breakfast, lunch & dinner than you could shake a stick at. If I was a local, I’d totally be a regular (though I don’t know that I’d make it much farther into the menu than the biscuits).
www.vita-cafe.com

And thus concludes this installment of Foodeater Does Vegan Portland. I had such a great time and ate so many excellent meals… I hope you all have enjoyed tagging along on this fun vegan quest with me. I’m already looking forward to my next Portland visit! For now though it’s back to lovely Los Angeles for a while, and not a minute too soon considering just how many incredible L.A. meals I have yet to tell you about. I’ll just need a moment to digest…

[Update 9/08] Veganopolis has closed up shop and moved to Chicago.
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There’s no way I was going to Portland to miss out on eating at a restaurant with a name like Veganopolis.

I’d heard mixed reviews about the place, some extremely positive, some not so nice. Still, the name was too cool to pass up and I liked how they described themselves on their website:

“Veganopolis Cafeteria is a 100% vegan dining and retail establishment. We serve casual gourmet and offer vegan lunch buffets M-F, 11am-3pm. Saturdays we offer an extensive Vegan Breakfast Buffet from 9am-5pm. We also offer fresh grilled sandwiches, Fresh Salads, a Kid’s menu, Counter service and a relaxed child-friendly environment. Espresso drinks, Vegan desserts including Shakes, Floats and Sundaes. We are a casein free zone and we refrain from serving honey. Baked goods made fresh here are wheat free and all organic.

Sounds good to me! I’d planned to spend part of the day at Powells, the ginormous bookstore downtown, so I stopped for lunch at Veganopolis first as it’s just a few blocks away. I decided to forgo the buffet and order something off the menu… the main reason being one of my all time favorite names in the language of culinary delights: Reuben.

It’s true, I’m a vegan Reuben sandwich addict and I have to try them whenever I’m am lucky enough to come across one in the wild… it’s like spotting a rare bird or one of those special flowers that only blooms for a day. The quest for vegan Reubens is particularly rewarding because no matter where you go, the restaurant will have it’s own unique interpretation of just what constitutes a proper one. Above is Veganopolis’ tasty version: Braised corned vegan ham, soy mozarella, house thousand island and sauerkraut piled on rustic rye.

It’s was pretty good. Not as great as the Follow Your Heart Reuben but it was still good in it’s own right. The veggie ham was tasty and very meat-like. I don’t know that I would have guessed that it was supposed to be corned ham had I not read that on the menu, but it was a perfectly suitable vegetarian stand-in for it’s real life fleshy counterpart. The thousand island dressing was a little too sweet for my taste, but the sauerkraut helped balance it out. The bread was fresh and the whole sandwich was grilled nice and crispy. The fries were roasted potatoes, the flavor was good but not having been fried the texture was a wee bit soft, though nothing a squirt of organic ketchup couldn’t handle.

They’ve got a lot of other tantalizing sandwiches on the menu as well as a salads, vegan shakes and all kinds of other goodies, including their ever changing buffet. Veganopolis made for a very satisfying lunch spot and while it didn’t blow my mind, I don’t always need lunch to rock my world. Sometimes all I’m after is a good sandwich to fortify me for a full day of book shopping. I got my good sandwich, and I ended up with a bunch of great books too… I was a happy camper.

Stayed tuned for ‘Foodeater Does Vegan Portland’, Pt. 9…
The final installment!

Kinta Restaurant serves what they call “New Malaysian Cuisine”. My Portland friends suggested it to me as soon as they learned I was on a mission to try as much of the awesome vegan & vegetarian places in their lovely city as I could. Kinta is not all vegetarian, they will add in chicken or shrimp by request. Most of the menu is totally vegan however, with exception of the egg noodles, though vegan rice noodles are available for any of those dishes instead.

If you’ve never tried Malaysian food before, imagine a well-crafted blending of Thai food, Chinese food and Indian food… well, that’s what it always makes me think of when I eat it. There used to be a great little Malaysian restaurant here in Hollywood years ago (on Wilcox if I’m remembering correctly) where I had developed a major obsession with their cashew curry. Damn that was good! Then one day they were just gone… that was well over a decade ago at this point and I hadn’t had Malaysian food since then, so I was very excited to have it again here and now in Portland.

For starters we had the sweet potato fritters and curry puffs shown above, both delicious. The batter (made of chickpeas) on the sweet potatoes was thick and crunchy and lightly spiced with something unidentifiably great. I don’t know if these are made with an egg wash or not, so be sure to ask if you need to. The curry puffs (pastry shells filled with curried potatoes, shitake mushrooms and crunchy woodear mushrooms) were of an equally high yum factor, tasting a lot like an Indian style samosa. The dipping sauce was just ketchup, which actually worked quite well.

These refreshing drinks are a tart and perky tamarind & lime concoction, two of my all time favorite flavors. Reliable as always, here they did not let me down. I wanted many refills.

Here we have the Tropical Malaysian Curry Soup: Curry in house-mixed Malaysian spices. The way it works here at Kinta is you choose your entree item, be it a noodle soup like what I chose, a noodle stir-fry or a rice dish, and then you choose from an impressive list of fresh and mostly organic vegetables. They’ve got a standard list of items like bean sprouts, broccoli, carrots, eggplant, etc… but they’ve also got stuff that gets added to the menu as it comes into season, including some of the more interesting Asian greens and veggies. The silly thing is that I don’t remember what all items I picked to go in mine, though for sure I got the broccoli, tofu, and beet greens. There was more in there as well that I’m forgetting.

This soup was so delicious. Along with the cuisines of other countries mentioned above, Malaysian food also reminds me of Indonesian food, as it’s got a similar sort of pungency to the flavors that’s always quite striking. I’m gonna say that it’s a sort of flavor that’s got a bit of funky going on… it’s not exactly foul, but there’s a certain dark musky or mustiness to it that while being super delicious also always makes me think of dirty socks or B.O. Now don’t go letting me ruin your appetite or turning you off of Malaysian food… I mean, just look at that incredible soup… of course it was good! I’ve got nothing against funk when it’s done right. And I tell you with funk this good, I think Malaysia should change it’s official name to Funky Town.

OrganicGirl ordered the Macadamia Curry: – Malaysian curry spices infused with Macadamia nuts. Wow, this was out of this world! I think she got it with the onion infused tofu, eggplant, amaranth greens and I’m thinking perhaps those little brown guys in there are shitake mushroom. This dish was particularly rich in the funkified goodness of secret Malaysian curry magick that I described above, and the macadamia nuts gave the entire thing a most wonderful, full-bodied silkiness. Outstanding.

Overall I loved Kinta…. loved the food, the concept, the friendly service and plenitude of vegan options. The simply prepared food was simultaneously beautiful to look at and a pleasure to eat. If you enjoy Asian and especially Southeast Asian food, or even if you’ve never tried it and are open to full and exotic new flavors, move Kinta to the top of your Portland food list for a rewarding foodie experience.
www.kintarestaurant.com

Stayed tuned for ‘Foodeater Does Vegan Portland’, Pt. 8!

The magic is in the hole! Or so they say over at Voodoo Doughnut, the place itself being a teeny-tiny little hole in the wall the size of a large walk-in closet. Voodoo Doughnut is a well established and somewhat legendary donut shop in downtown Portland. They’re open all night and are an obvious choice for grabbing yummy sweet treats after shows or when the bars let out. I’ve been told the scene there late at night is quite fun and exciting, a real taste of Portland. Truth be told however, I wasn’t there to check out the scene, I was there for the vegan donuts I’ve heard so much about.

We stopped by there in the afternoon and there was a line out the door snaking around the side of the building. There was a brewfest going on just a few steps away by the river, so that may have had something to do with the crowds. The line moved quickly though, especially considering there was only one woman both serving the donuts and running the cash register, and soon enough I found myself with a front row view of the display case. The vegan donuts are nicely segregated on a plate in the spinning display case so you can easily see which ones are available.

Maple bars have always been one of my favorites in the non-vegan donut world, so of course that was my first choice to try here (that’s the one on the back right of the plate, the one that’s not chocolate, or a bar for that matter). It was pretty good, the fact that it was vegan made it better. I do like my donuts to be of the lighter and fluffier variety, while this donut was more of a cake donut, very thick and dense. The flavor was great, the maple frosting delicious, but the actual donut itself was too much for me to get through much of, and I was thankful to have a bottle of water with me to wash it down with otherwise it would have stuck in my throat.

I also tried the donut that you see there at the front left of the plate. I don’t know what they call this one, but it had a very sweet white frosting which was coated in toasted coconut. I loved both those flavor toppings, the white stuff was sticky and gooey in a very good way and well, it’s pretty hard to go wrong with toasted coconut. The donut itself was the same as the maple bar, so again it was thicker than I would have preferred and hard to get down without a beverage. I guess it’s true that for some girls, size does matter. And lube always helps.

They were both very tasty donuts, even though I was only able to get through half of each before feeling totally stuffed and over the craving to have donuts again anytime soon. If they had been a lighter type of donut I could have easily made my way through three or four. Maybe I’m just spoiled by the mindblowingly light and airy donuts I had at Madeline Bistro back in May (which I still haven’t gotten around to blogging for you yet but you can get a peek over at VegYogini’s blog), because those donuts were so incredible that there’s no way you’d know they were vegan, nor would it matter. In my mind those are the vegan donuts that all others will be measured against. I can’t say that the Voodoo Donuts came close in comparison, but I can say that they were quite enjoyable for what they were, and any place that will provide me with fresh made vegan donuts be it 12 noon or 12 midnight is alright by me.
www.voodoodoughnut.com

Here’s a cute 10 minute documentary about Voodoo Doughnuts called Gimmie Doughnut (some of which is NSFW)

Stayed tuned for ‘Foodeater Does Vegan Portland’, Pt. 7!