Restaurant Day on Feb. 4, 2012

Restaurant day on Saturday went well. We served chili, Caribbean lentil soup, Mexican chocolate cake, pumpkin muffins, coffee and tea. All the food was ready when we opened our restaurant, and they tasted good. More customers would have been welcome, we had quite a lot of leftovers. One reason for lack of customers could have been the freezing weather, and some people may not feel comfortable about going to strangers’ homes to eat. Next Restaurant Day will be in May, and maybe then we’ll have an outdoor restaurant again.

Even if we didn’t have many customers, I don’t have a reason to complain. We got enough money to cover the expenses and we got plenty of food for ourselves. We didn’t have to cook for ourselves on the weekend and we still have some soup and chili in the freezer. It was also nice to eat muffins on Sunday while we played Ticket to Ride board game with our friends, and my coworkers were very pleased, because I served the leftover cake on coffee break at work. Couple of them also asked for the recipe, and if you’re interested, check here. It’s delicious and very easy to make.

Once again, we were too busy with cooking and serving and forgot to take photos.

KoKoHouse And Mimosa

Today is Restaurant Day. We didn’t have a restaurant this time, mostly because of my flu.

There were two vegan restaurants in our home town and we visited both of them. First we went to KoKoHouse, which had food for all coconut lovers. They served a combination of Asian dishes, mostly Indian and Thai. Pop-up restaurants are usually very popular, so we went there as soon as it opened to make sure there’s food left for us. Being that early wasn’t necessary, they were still setting the table when we arrived. (Sorry about the crappy pictures, we really need a new camera.)

Apple wedges and hemp seed butter as appetizers.

The buffet style table was filled with all kinds of delicious dishes. Lemon rice, Som Tam salad, coconut chutney, spicy potato wedges, awesome peanut sauce, buckwheat flatbread, pumpkin soup… There were also cakes for dessert. Everything was vegan and many things were also organic and gluten free.

My stomach was full before I had even tried everything, so I skipped most of the desserts. The restaurant was in an apartment, and it was quite full of people, so we left immediately after eating. We didn’t go straight to home but went to check café Mimosa, the other vegan restaurant. It was nearly closing time and they didn’t have many things left. We bought Karelian rice pasties and took them home with us to eat them later tonight.

Soup in Jyväskylä

A month ago me and my three coworkers went to Jyväskylä to the Birthday of Finnish national costume. Of course we had to eat something during the day and we found a soup restaurant called Soppabaari (Soup Bar).

Soppabaari is a small and cosy restaurant. It serves soups, pastas, drinks and some tapas style foods. The soup and pasta menu changes daily.

That day they had 5 dishes to choose from, and four of them contained animals or dairy. I asked if the Mexican Vegetable Soup was vegan, and luckily it was. Later I read from their webpage that they always have a vegan option on the menu, and you can also get gluten free pasta if you call them at least half an hour earlier.

The soup was thick and spicy. It was served with bread and some nachos, fresh basil and sesame seeds.

Usually vegetarian soups in restaurants tend to be pureed carrot, cauliflower or other vegetable soups, which do taste good, but soon you’ll be hungry again. They also often contain cream or cheese. This one had beans in it, no dairy products and it was very filling.

I liked both food and the atmosphere very much. If I go to Jyväskylä again, I’d like eat in Soppabaari.

Our First Pop-up Restaurant

Our sandwich shop last Sunday was a success.We had three kind of sandwiches (lentil patty inside a whole wheat bun, smoked tofu in rye bread and chickpea spread on wheat bread) and also our omnivorous customers liked our vegan sandwiches. Many people had a sandwich and a cup of coffee and after eating it they bought another to take home with them.

Estimating the amount of food was hard.  We don’t live in a very big city and here people easily just stay home instead of going out, especially on Sundays. We had made 45 sandwiches and served also coffee, tea and juice and we had thought that would be enough for maybe 3 hours. But we were wrong, we opened our shop at 15.00 and around 16.15 we were out of sandwiches. We kept our shop open a little longer, and closed when we ran out of coffee.

Thank you for supporting our restaurant! See you on next Restaurant Day, 19.11.2011. We promise we’ll make more food then.

Restaurant Day

On Restaurant Day anyone can have a pop-up restaurant anywhere, at home, park, street etc.  It was Antti Tuomola’s idea of civil disobedience against endless bureaucracy required when you start a restaurant. The first Restaurant Day was in May and second will be on this Sunday. Now it seems to be more like a food carnival than a statement, but anyway it’ll be a reason to have good food.

Links in English:
http://www.restaurantday.org/
http://www.facebook.com/restaurantday 

And in Finnish:
http://www.ravintolapaiva.com/
http://www.facebook.com/ravintolapaiva?sk=info

The second Restaurant Day will be on 21.8.2011, and Elitefood will have a small sandwich shop. Here’s the link to the Facebook event.

Being A Vegan in Prague

I spent four weeks in Prague as an exchange student and now I’m back in Finland. We had a kitchen in our apartment, so I could make myself vegan dinner every day if I wanted to. Fresh vegetables and fruits were cheap, so I ate lots of salads. This one is made of lettuce, radishes, beans, cucumber and bell pepper.

Of course I had to try veg(eteri)an restaurants of Prague. I have already blogged about Radost FX cafe. They serve brunch on weekends, it’s mostly omelets and pancakes and couple of dish even have fish in them. 4 dishes were listed “vegan”, but one of them had honey in it, so only 3 were really vegan. I had scrambled tofu, which was very good. Potatoes on the right were awesome, sesame dressing was nice and so was the salad. I didn’t like the bread, because it tasted like caraway seeds. Caraway seeds are good in some foods, but I can’t understand why people put them in bread. Portions were big, I don’t think any of us managed to finish their plates.

Our teacher took us to Gopal. It’s lacto-vegetarian and the menu changes daily, so I recommend checking the menu on the website before going there. Only the dessert had dairy in it when we were there, and since I’m not a big fan of desserts, I was completely satisfied with the food. The food is about 6 € and you can ask for more food as many times as you want.

I went to Country Life on a lunch break one day. It’s a buffet style vegan restaurant: first you fill your plate with things you want to eat and then it’s weighted and then you pay. Food was OK, nothing special, but I don’t have a reason to complain either. The salad bar was better than the hot foods. Next to the restaurant is a shop that sells all kinds of vegetarian foods like tofu, soy yogurt etc. that are hard to find from regular super markets. The shop isn’t vegan, they also sell dairy products.

Near the Charles Bridge is Lehka Hlava, which means clear head. The place is small, so reservation will be a good idea. I was alone, so I didn’t have to wait long for the table. Some of the dishes were already vegan and some of them can be made vegan on request. I had bulgur-tempeh-risotto, which was served with small side salad and sundried tomato and peanut pesto. The food was tasty, but small tempeh cubes would have been nice. I strongly recommend eating there. The picture isn’t as good as the food was, it was very hard to take photos because of lack of light.

Last restaurant I ate at was Loving hut. Their website seems to be down, so I’m not linking. It’s an international chain of vegan restaurants, and there’s three of them in Prague. The one I tried is on top floor of Novy Smichov shopping center. Nearly all foods have tofu or fake meat in them, which in my opinion was nice. I had Tofu na kari (tofu and curry) and I started eating before taking pictures. Oops. The tofu was wrapped in seaweed, I think I’ll try that at home too. The food was cheap, filling and it tasted good. I’ll definitely go there if I ever visit Prague again.

Vegan Food in Prague

In the autumn I heard that I could have a change to go to study in Prague for a month, and here I am now. There are 4 other Finnish exchange students that study clothing or interior textiles too. We go to same classes and we’re also living together. Our school is in center of Prague.

Yesterday we went to eat at Radost FX Cafe, which has lacto-ovo menu with several vegan options. Vegan options are marked with eggplant symbol, so you don’t even have to ask if the food has any animal products in it. I had Tofu/Cashew stir fry, which was great, but bit too salty to my taste. The vegetables weren’t too soft, and there was generous amount of cashews. The prices were rather high, about 8€, which would be normal or cheap in Finland. I think we’re going there again in the near future.