Vegan Nom Noms Does America: Brooklyn and NYC

Okay okay, everyone and their mother writes about all the vegan food in the NYC area, so sue me. It was still effing delicious. There are a lot of photos and food here, including the Dr. Cow all-vegan cheese shop, so get ready. I am still full.

As soon as I arrived, we took a little trip to my friend Brian from Mission Tomato: An Attempt to Farm in Brooklyn‘s garden plot. It was super exciting to see all these vegetables growing in the middle of the city and I got fed a lot of homemade picked everything.

Tasting a NY bagel with tofu veggie cream cheese is the only thing that makes me briefly consider dropping everything I’m doing in Germany and moving back to the NY area. They are so, so good. This is an Everything Bagel with Tofu Veggie Cream Cheese from Bergen Bagels and it was so fantastic.

My parents came into NYC for the day and thanks to foursquare we happened upon this Vietnamese place with vegan options called Mangez Avec Moi (don’t ask about the French name). This is the Mango Veggie Faux Chicken and it was amazing. It cost $13 which my friends said was cheap, which just made me realize I needed to leave NYC before spending all my money, but I made the most of it while I was there. NYC really is expensive though.

Anyway, back to Brooklyn for more nature. We found a mulberry tree and treated ourselves to some berries. Everyone on the street thought we were crazy I think. Since then I keep noticing mulberry trees in cities while traveling.

Okay, getting to the good stuff. After all the mention on the internet we had to go to Champs Family Bakery (but was more of a diner) in Williamsburg. It lived up to my expectations. Above were the Loaded Champs Fries. Holy crap the cheese sauce was amazing.

Champs Mac-n-Cheese. Okay, to be honest, I’ve had a lot of vegan mac-n-cheese in restaurants that tastes like crap, but this was RIDICULOUSLY DELICIOUS. The broccoli was perfect and there was a mound of crispy melted vegan cheese on top.

My friend Brian got the Chickn n’ Biscuit. I didn’t try it, but it looked really good.

I got the Buffalo Ranch Vegan Chickn Salad. the Ranch was so good, yum yum yum. Maybe it wasn’t actually healthy, but I felt I needed some vegetables in my system before consuming the dessert it was inevitable that I order.

VEGAN BROWNIE SUNDAE! They don’t really do these in Germany, at least I never see them. Maybe it’s for the best, because brownie sundae’s are my weakness. This wasn’t the best brownie sundae of my life, but it was still pretty tasty.

Okay okay. I had to check out Dr. Cow’s Vegan Cheese Shop in Brooklyn. It’s been on my list since I read that it opened online months back. There has been so much hype about Dr. Cow for at least a decade. It was for sure expensive, but good. If I’m honest, when I first bought some of it, I got the Regular Variety and the Sun-dried Tomato Pimento Rosemary, I didn’t really like it and neither did my friend. I didn’t hate it, but it wasn’t as sharp as I was hoping and I felt like it was missing a flavor. Disappointed, I put it in my cooler and traveled to my next location in Massachusetts. Eventually I decided to eat some more and when I tried it again I suddenly LOVED it. I have no idea what happened, but now I’m addicted. The Tomato Pimento one was my favorite.

Next stop, Vegetarian Dim Sum House in Chinatown in NYC. I go to this place every time I go home and I love it. It doesn’t look so spectacular from the outside, but holy crap. They have a checklist of different dim-sum, all vegan and about $3.50 each and you just check what you want. I got four and realized that was an inhuman amount for one person, even for me. The above one is the Taro Treasure Box dim-sum.

This was the Spinach Rice Paper Rolls. They pour a sauce over it when it arrived at your table, mm!

I forgot what this was, I think the Monk Dumpling. Whatever it was, it was yummy.

Another day I headed back into NYC to a place called Hana Sushi on the Lower East Side to meet my friend Tessa. They have a Vegetarian Sushi Forbidden Rolls secret menu you can ask a server for. They use black rice for these, which you can see above. Not all of them are vegan, but half are and the rest can just be made without the mayo, etc. They were expensive at $8 each, but pretty good. The above is my friend Tessa’s sushi because I’m cheap, but I tried them and they were awesome.

The secret vegetarian sushi menu at Hana’s.

I realized we were really close to Lulu’s Sweet Apothecary, which I had also heard a lot about, so we went there next. All vegan ice cream, lots of awesome flavors like Peanut Butter and Jelly Ice Cream. I got another sundae with brownie bits!

A couple friends visited me in Berlin and told me about this event in Brooklyn called the Vegan Shop-Up, an all-vegan pop-up market in Bushwick, an artsy industrial area in Brooklyn. I HAD to go and luckily this monthly event fit in while I was still in the area. It was here I found Sweet Maresa‘s who makes Vegan Macarons! They are actually based in New Paltz, NY upstate, along with Lagusta’s Luscious all-vegan candy shop (who was also there). So I tried my first ever vegan macaron and it was amazing. Totally worth the $2.50 each!

Bunna Cafe was also there an all-vegan Ethiopian place, so I got their mixed plate so I could try everything. I love Ethiopian food, so this was awesome.

Anyway moral of the story is there is a lot of vegan food in Brooklyn and the NYC-area and everyone should go to the Vegan Shop-Up event!

Next stops: Massachusetts, Niagara Falls and Michigan! Now excuse me while I go do a juice cleanse…(okay not really who am I kidding?!).

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