Entries Tagged 'Reviews' ↓

Speaking of vegan pizzas…we ate out with some friends the other night at the Jolly Pumpkin Cafe & Brewery. Word had it that a person could get a pizza with soy cheese. While the word was correct, the word failed to mention that this was the bogus variety of soy cheese that’s made with…well…cheese. Can someone tell me why this product even exists?

Conventional wisdom would suggest that non-vegan soy cheese must be for either (a) people who want a marginally healthier cheese, or (b) folks who are lactose intolerant (non-vegan soy cheese typically has casein and sometimes even rennet, but not lactose). Unconventional wisdom, however, would suggest that non-vegan soy cheese exists to trick vegans. How many fledgling vegans have picked this up thinking–as any rational person would–that soy cheese  = vegan cheese? Or more likely, how many kindly friends and family members have picked this up for their vegans (this, I would argue, is probably the lion’s share of the non-vegan soy cheese market)? How many of us have been enticed and/or fooled by pizza with this crap? Now compare those numbers to the number of people how knowingly bought it.

At the very least, it seems reasonable to ask these companies to rename their soy cheese to something like 2% cheese or mostly not cheese (but just a little) or The Ultimate ‘Fuck You’ to Vegans ™. Why not just make it vegan and greatly increase the number of people who can consume it? Vegan cheese keeps getting better–Daiya melts just as well as the non-vegan varieties of faux cheese, tastes just as good–if not better, certainly won’t aggravate anyone’s lactose intolerance, and is probably healthier (at minimum it contains less cholesterol). The answer is probably that it would be either (a) more difficult, (b) more work, or (c) both.

I suppose it’s unreasonable to expect a company that presumably is enjoying some small profit to quit what they’re doing. The cost of changing their recipe may not be commensurate with what they’d get back. But I’d at least like to entreat restaurants who use this stuff to switch to a vegan variety. The minimal addition in cost greatly increases the number of people who can eat it. Additionally, it’s more honest. If we hadn’t made a point of asking, I’m sure the Jolly Pumpkin would have served us their not-quite-vegan pizza. What really burns me is that they’re clearly thinking of folks’ dietary needs; they even have gluten free crust! Why leave out the vegans?

This is what I e-mailed them:

Hello! My wife and I stopped in to the Ann Arbor restaurant last week–first off, let me say that the beer was excellent. The restaurant looks great too. We did have two small concerns, however. You offer a pizza with soy cheese–but this cheese isn’t vegan. This (a) excludes us vegans (and there are quite a few of us around here) and (b) is potentially misleading. If we hadn’t asked specifically (and a major thanks goes to our server for knowing the answer to this question), we may have eaten the pizza, assuming it was vegan. The great thing about vegan cheese is that it caters to the lactose intolerant, health conscious, and vegan alike. The other (very small) issue was that the soy cheese wasn’t on the menu; we learned about it from friends. Why not highlight this? I’d imagine beer and vegan pizza would be very popular with local vegans.

Daiya (http://www.daiyafoods.com/) currently seems to be the most popular brand of faux cheese (it’s soy-free too). Folks would probably be relatively happy with Follow Your Heart (http://www.followyourheart.com/products.php?id=25) as well, which has the advantage of being available in smaller retail quantities.

Thanks so much for your attention to this issue! Keep up the fine beers!

Thus ends my rant.

I know what you’re thinking–”oh, another recipe for vegan pizza…” Incorrect! I’m talking about College Inn, a local family-owned pizzeria that serves vegan pizza–complete with vegan cheese and pepperoni. Score 1 for Ypsilanti, MI!

We don’t spend a lot of time celebrating restaurants here on IR, but I think it’s worth actually looking at this phenomenon for a moment. This is the kind of service and care you can generally only expect from a local business, not a chain. Think about it; why do all of our (and this will depend on where you live, I’m sure) local coffee shops offer soymilk but a corporate behemoth like McDonald’s ™ doesn’t? (I guess it could also be that most vegans wouldn’t touch McDo with a 10 foot pole.) With the exception of Starbucks ™, most coffee chains don’t offer soymilk. Similarly, you wouldn’t expect Pizza Hut ™ to offer vegan pizzas anytime soon. But what about someone like Papa John’s ™, who have actually expressed a modicum of concern for their potential vegan customers? Are they researching this? Probably not. How many of use would have to email them before they even looked into vegan cheese?

Conversely, how many people had to ask College Inn before they looked? One. One single person–our friend Matt. Matt works at a local screen printing  shop, VGKids, whose staff is probably at least 50% veg*n (score 2 Ypsilanti). So word could spread pretty quickly that a bonafied vegan pizza could be had. College Inn, because they genuinely–and personally–care about their customers, just scored the total devotion of an entire market. If you’re vegan in Ypsi, you wouldn’t think of getting pizza anywhere else. Take note business owners.

What’s really impressive, though, is that they haven’t rested on their laurels. They’re always looking for more vegan toppings, better vegan cheeses, and asking us for our feedback. They’ve switched cheeses a number of times–starting with Follow Your Heart ™, moving on to Teese ™, and currently using (we think) Daiya ™. If Daiya ™ is indeed what they’re currently using, then I recommend it whole-heartedly. Follow Your Heart ™ tastes great, but melts poorly. Teese ™ melted kinda weird and tasted terrible (sorry Chicago Soy Dairy!). When they made the switch to Teese ™ and we picked up our pizza, Annette (who is awesome) let us know they’d switched and asked us to call her after we’d eaten to give them feedback, which we did. For a while it seemed that the vegan community was mixed, slightly in favor of Teese ™. We weren’t having it, so the owner, Nick, actually brought out both cheeses and had us conduct a taste-test, concerned that we weren’t happy with his pizza. Just last night Annette asked us about other toppings, and I mentioned vegan sausage. She’s going to call me when it’s in. Who does this?!

A local family business that’s invested in its customers, that’s who. Praise of College Inn aside, I think there are some interesting lessons here:

• Because they’re small, local businesses can better respond to their customers and communities. It’s easy for College Inn to make a a menu or ingredient change, but hard for Pizza Hut.
• Also because they’re small, local businesses can build a personal relationship with their customers. It’s like Cheers; sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name (and they’re always glad you came).
• Sometimes, all you have to do is ask. It’s easy to lament your lack of vegan options, but sometimes just as easy to ask for them. Another of our favorite local establishments, Beezy’s, makes sure to have a vegan soup pretty much every day (and Bee even posts the soups to Facebook). Even if they can’t meet your needs right away, if enough folks ask, a business will realize (a) that it’s profitable to carry vegan stuff and (b) that we vegans can be very devoted if shown some love. If nothing else, it gets the word ‘vegan’ out there. Which is preferable, having to ask about dairy, stock, meat, fish oil, etc, or asking “Is it vegan?”

So buy local and speak up! Thanks College Inn! Thanks Beezy’s!

I’ve been a naughty vegan, and it’s time to mend my ways. Farewell Bogle!

So, this being the Vegan Month of Food and all, what better time than now to talk about drinking vegan? It kind of makes sense–I’m normally obsessed with food, so Vegan MoFo’s focus on food isn’t really a change of pace for me. What is a change of pace is getting in touch with this gigantic community. I feel like I’ve had my head in the sand for years.

And I’ve been resting on my laurels. My vegan sire (you know, that person or those people who helped you become vegan) was pretty hardcore, so I learned a pretty hardline brand of veganism–one that encompassed not just food, but drink. It turns out a few beers and most wines aren’t vegan. Who would’ve thunk it? When this was brought to my attention, I pretty much ditched wine en masse. Over the years, though, I’ve gotten soft like Rocky in Rocky III. And it took Vegan MoFo, like a gentle Mr. T as Clubber Lane, to help me snap out of it.

It worked for Amy and me how it works for a lot of folks, I’d imagine:

We used to bring our own wine to events that demanded–demanded I say!–wine. To folks who don’t understand your choices, this can often seem a bit snooty. So then we would just try to stick to beer. I think it was ultimately the art scene that undid us. Not every gallery is as cool as, say, Three Walls, and serves PBR from a garbage can filled with ice. Most serve wine. Now, the obvious answer here is to not drink. Well, the second most obvious answer, the first clearly being a flask filled with Wild Turkey. I can’t even remember the first time I just said “screw it” and drank wine that I wasn’t certain about. But that’s how it starts–”we don’t know that this wine isn’t vegan”. So much for ethics.

After a while, this becomes “we don’t care if this wine isn’t vegan”. And pretty soon, you find yourself buying wines that you’ve recently enjoyed, without even checking your list. Well, I checked the list a few nights ago for our current favorite, Bogle, which is decidedly NOT vegan. So this isn’t even freegan. Oh, the shame.

That being said, I certainly acknowledge that veganism has a few lines that are a little blurry–questions of second-hand leather, honey, good products from bad companies, etc. But wine often has egg whites, gelatin, or both. Not so blurry.

As part of surfing vegan blogs during the MoFo action, I stumbled upon Barnivore. And I felt shame, dear readers, true shame. In the words of Johnny Cash using the words of Sting, I hung my head, I hung my head.

But.

Now is the time to recommit to drinking vegan. Are you with me? Well…maybe you were already there.

Strangely, I’ve become increasingly committed over the last several years to buying local. So part of this new commitment involves contacting local wineries about their wines and using this info to help keep Barnivore up-to-date. I’ll be compiling a list of vegan Michigan wines (and encourage other folks to do the same for their areas). Additionally, I intend to keep a “wine diary” of sorts, with some thoughts on which vegan wines are good and which should be avoided.

Which is all an awful lot of work for someone who prefers whiskey. Consider this my Vegan MoFo confession. What’s yours?

P.S. Anyone have any recommendations? We’re especially keen on red zinfandel right now.

P.P.S.  I made a printable list of vegan wines from Barnivore–you can print it two-sided and fold it, to have with you at all wine-buying/drinking occasions.