v:gourmet

Last year I wrote about my trip to NYC with Andrew and all the places to v:eat out in the big city. You can find all our recommendations in musings #6. We went again this year and were pleasantly surprised to discover a few more haunts that got gold stars for their vegan friendly fare.

Atlas Cafe – 73 2nd Avenue. Total hole in the wall (that it’s above) with an exhaustive menu written on chalkboard paint or plain white paper featuring everything from lasagna to chicken wraps to smoothies. Amazing thing though is that they have a tonne of vegan options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We went every morning for the Mexican Tofu Scramble which was so good I almost licked my plate, but not quite. That would be embarrassing. The guys were great, super nice, and remembered us by name after our first visit. They also pulled off an awesome soy latte.

The Cloisters – Fort Tryon Park in Northern Manhattan. “The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe, was assembled from architectural elements that date from the 12th through the 15th century. The building and its cloistered gardens are treasures.” The whole collection is pretty amazing, treasures indeed, but the highlight for me was the medieval medicinal garden that has inspired me to turn my garden at the farm into a place of healing and contemplation. Loved it! But back to v:eating out. The Cloisters had a tiny little cafe where we assumed we wouldn’t find anything but, much to our surprise, they had a fantabulous apple tofu curry sandwich on whole grain. Which tells me two things: first, NYC is so much further ahead than Toronto on the vegan front; and second, that you just never know where you’ll find somewhere to v:eat out.

Morimoto – 88th 10 Avenue. Next time you are in NYC you have to take a walk along the amazing highline which is an inspired piece of urban planning and design. After a morning of taking in the elevated urban park, you need to head on over to Morimoto for lunch. Run by the renowed Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, this very cool restaurant, has lots to offer the vegan traveler from the veggie bento box to a whole selection of veggie sushi, noodles, and more. And you get to hang out in the uber-chic interior and drink sake to boot.