the first of many pleasant surprises

Vegan chai

hey y all i guess i haven t really been feeling the vegan mofo prompts this year, so i ve been pretty bad about blogging. so i m going rogue! i m blogging about food and i m not paying any attention to what we re supposed to be doing today. sorry if i m being a jerk.
late last week, we got a heads up that a brand new vegetarian (and super vegan-friendly) restaurant was going to be soft open, and they were offering their food for half price(!) for the first couple of days. we ve been waiting very excitedly for this place, so we jumped at the chance and headed over to the beerline cafe for lunch on friday. woo.
the space is really cute, right next to a yoga studio and in a bustling part of the east side. they ve used lots of environmentally-friendly construction and they have a cool wall of herbs above the counter, which is pretty nifty.
because all the food was half-price that day, we decided to try several different things. we started off with drinks erik had an iced tea, and i (of course) had a chai.
for starters, erik tried the house salad, which has spring mix, grape tomatoes, avos, pickled julienne carrots cucumbers, and homemade croutons all topped with a smoky tomato vinaigrette dressing. i had a bite or two, and it was really tasty.
i ordered the avocado hummus, which came with oven-baked tortilla chips, and really packed a garlicky punch. we were a little worried about the number of chips (i.e. there weren t all that many), so we made a point of creating heavy scoops with each chip, which worked out in the end.
then for the main event, we each tried one of their crepes erik went the savory route, and i chose sweet. erik s was called the diner breakfast, and included vegan kielbasa, sauteed veggies, vegan cheese, and avocado (in place of eggs). served with a dollop of fancy dijon mustard on the side, and i m not sure what the drizzle was, to be honest. they forgot to include the avocado on his, which was a bit of a bummer, but i think it was just because at first they accidentally made us a non-vegan version (i.e. it showed up with eggs) and then when they re-made it, they were probably hurrying. no big deal. i had a bite (i avoided the mushrooms, har har) and it was very good.
i was having a rough time deciding on which sweet crepe to order so many of them sounded fantastic! but eventually i settled on the crepe ape, which is peanut butter jelly banana. what. right up my alley. it came with toasted almonds sprinkled on top, and it was absolutely delicious.
we didn t order any sides this time, because of getting two starters and not knowing how big all of the servings would be, but on a return trip i d probably order a side of roasted potatoes with a crepe, just for a little extra. still, we definitely got enough to eat! we were, however, intrigued by their smoothie options, and so we decided to continue taking advantage of the half-price excitement, and we ordered one of each smoothie to go.
on the left is the grapefruit banana smoothie, which is made with rice milk, and on the right is the cayenne chocolate avocado smoothie, which was by far my favorite of the two. i m really not the target audience for the grapefruit banana, because i don t like grapefruit at all (heh) and i m also not a fan of rice milk (i find it too watery). the flavor profile for this one just wasn t for me, but erik liked it, so it wasn t a total loss. the cayenne chocolate avocado was great we both really liked that one and erik said it reminded him of the mexican hot chocolate snickerdoodles from VCIYCJ . he s not wrong; it has that same creamy chocolate flavor, followed by that little punch of cayenne. yum.
all in all, it was a nice first visit and i m looking forward to going back. there are several more crepes i d love to try (both sweet and savory but mostly sweet), and also a panini or two. i d also like to check out their other starters, salads, and sides. i m so excited for a new restaurant with so many vegan options i hope things go well for them.
mishka’s flight was indeed delayed and she got stuck in san francisco for the night, so i had to go ahead to the vegan bazaar without her. it was an easy walk from my hotel, and colleen and i were pretty excited to partake in the exclusive eat-all-the-miyoko-cheese-you-can-eat hour that was only open to VVC attendees. i had never tried any of miyoko’s cheeses. but i am here to tell you: they live up to the hype. there were several tables of cheese wheels and cracker options, and we were allowed to just circulate and grab at will. i tasted at least 7 varieties (from what i can remember: double cream garlic herb, double cream sun-dried tomato garlic, country style herbs de provence, mt. vesuvius black ash, aged english sharp farmhouse, limited edition strawberry cream something something, and i’m certain i’m forgetting at least one more), and there were a few others i didn’t get to, but every single one i tried was delicious.

DELICIOUS I SAY! after we pried ourselves away from the cheese tables, we realized that red rabbit bakery was also set up in the room, and we also learned that we were allowed to roam around in the vendor area before everything opened to the public. so, roam we did.
the vendor area was… bananas. chock full of fantastic vegan businesses and oh, the samples. so many samples. i’m not kidding when i tell you that i ate samples for three hours straight, and then realized that i had doomed myself to Not Being Hungry For Lunch, even though there were four kick-ass food trucks parked outside, just for us. whoops! from what i can remember off the top of my head, i sampled: a capital city bakery brownie *and* a chocolate chip cookie), nada moo vanilla chai ice cream, a taquito, a chili lime carnitas jackfruit taco from upton’s. heidi ho nachos, a tamale, and this was all AFTER the miyoko cheese extravaganza. eep.
(please note: flickr and wordpress appear to be going through some issues in their relationship, and i am having a really hard time linking images with my usual method. bear with me.
eventually colleen and ricky got hungry enough to eat lunch, so i watched them eat. there were four food trucks parked at the venue for us: the vegan nom. arlo’s. cool beans. and sadie b foods. everything looked delicious, but i just didn’t have it in me, so i waited it out and hoped to get hungry before they all left.
somewhere in here, i decided i d better go buy a bunch of stuff: i grabbed a new elephant tank and be kind wallet from herbivore (always such a pleasure to see michelle!), a snazzy VVC armadillo tee from the official merch table, and a vegan is tee from the adorable and wonderful sweethearts at meaningful paws.
we attended one of the talks at the bazaar: how we made austin awesome. featuring a bunch of certified-awesome peeps who were there to share their wisdom. jessica from rabbit food grocery. kristen from capital city bakery. molly from texas vegfest. and chris from the vegan nom told us all about their austin vegan exploits, led by the always delightful stephanie (lazy smurf.
while this talk was unfolding, mishka finally made it to austin from her unexpected overnight stay in san francisco, and by the time we finished at the panel, she had made it to the bazaar. hooray! she grabbed a taco (as one does) and made her rounds in the vendor area so she could try to catch up on all the samples she’d missed out on, and eventually i finally decided i could be hungry enough to try eating a taco. i headed out to the vegan nom.
…where i was confronted with a menu chock-full of amazing-sounding options, and i really didn’t know what to do with myself. i decided to keep it simple, and ordered a breakfast taco with tofu scramble, potatoes, and avocado.
it was really great, and i wish i had been hungry enough to order tacos from them all day. on our next trip back to austin (see you in february, y’all!), this will be a high priority destination.
after finishing stuffing my face, we wandered around a little more, chatting and mingling, until michelle and i decided we should probably go to the conference hotel and get checked in. we were both too full to worry about going out for dinner, so we just made our way south to the UT campus, checked into our sweet little room, and hunkered down for the night. we both pretended we were going to go to bed early and catch up on our sleep, but instead we stayed up for hours talking about kitties who won’t eat and how stressful that is and how very much we love them. it’s so good to be with friends who get it.

end-of-day cumulative austin taco count: 3.

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