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.

Getting ready for the Restaurant day tomorrow

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.

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.