Veg Honeymoon Awesomeness

So Eric decided that for the length of our honeymoon, he would keep vegetarian. I don't think he really looked at it as a sacrifice even though he is an omnivore. After all, the Northwest is very vegetarian-friendly and we ate at some amazing vegetarian/vegan restaurants! So I didn't take photos of them all but here were the highlights of where we ate.

First stop was Portland, Oregon. What a great city! We loved it here. Portland is a compact and really friendly city, a town that attracts all sorts of people from hikers to bikers to dog lovers to vegans! Yes, a vegan-friendly city. Portland is the home of the world's first vegan mini-mall. This mini-mall is home to Food Fight, an all vegan grocery, along with Herbivore, a vegan clothing store, a tattoo artist who only uses vegan inks, and Sweet Pea, a yummy vegan bakery. We visited all of the above (with the exception of the tattoo artist). We shared a yummy cookie at Sweet Pea and bought a couple things at Food Fight. Would have bought most of the store if we didn't need to worry about stuffing it all into already-overstuffed suitcases! I thought their sign was so funny! Can you read what it says on the door?


We had dinner at Blossoming Lotus on our first day in Portland. Though it just looks like a tiny cafe in a yoga center, they actually have amazing food! All vegan and lots of it is raw too. Even vegan soft-serve! We had some amazing raw chilled avocado soup here.


Lunch on day #2 was at Karam, a Lebanese restaurant. We had lunch here with Eric's former coworker who moved out to Portland a couple years ago. This was a good place to eat and veg. friendly.

We had to make reservations to get a table at Andina, a lively Peruvian restaurant. Neither one of us had ever eaten Peruvian before and we were eager to try it. The food was amazing! Plus the restaurant has a separate vegetarian menu with several vegan options.

Another Portland favorite was the Vita Cafe, a mostly vegetarian diner-like restaurant. Here we had some awesome "buffalo wings," and I had a tempeh reuben. I think Eric had the seitan cheesesteak. Oh, and their vegan caesar salad rocked too.

We stopped into Veganopolis for a vegan milkshake. Veganopolis is a vegan cafeteria/restaurant. Unfortunately, we didn't get to try anything else there though.


Next stop: Seattle! Our first night here, we walked 1 mile (uphill!) to Carmelita's , a great vegetarian Mediterranean restaurant. Food here was great and they had a lovely patio which we ate on.

The next day we had dinner at Vegetarian Bistro, an Asian restaurant in Chinatown. We very much enjoyed the food here. The "Mongolian beef" reminded me of pepper steak, an old favorite from my pre-vegetarian days (many, many years ago)! Tofu with mushrooms was tasty and how often can a vegetarian/vegan order the won ton soup at a Chinese restaurant?

Our favorite Seattle restaurant, hands-down, had to be Cafe Flora. According to their website, "Cafe Flora's award winning menu features modern and sophisticated vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free cuisine that is inspired by international culinary traditions and created with local, organic and sustainable ingredients." In fact, we liked it here so much that we ate here twice! Loved the vegan caesar salad and the vegan portobella french dip. The Thai skewers were pretty good too. Eric had some tacos that he really liked here and some tasty coconut tofu with lime sauce.

Before heading North to the Cascades, we had lunch with Betty Tisdale at Tamarind Tree, a Vietnamese restaurant. I haven't eaten a whole lot of Vietnamese food before, but boy, was it tasty!

I'm skipping ahead to Vancouver now because there isn't much to say for anything we ate on the road or in the Cascades region. However, we did stop at a farm stand for some fresh berries. Ever hear of Cascadian Farm? You've probably seen their organic products in the supermarket. We had some fresh blueberries and I had a soy smoothie from their stand.

We loved Vancouver, but I can't say the restaurants we ate at were all that remarkable. We had some good Indian food and enjoyed Hell's Kitchen. The Szechuan green beans were tasty and we liked their thin crust pizzas (mine was without cheese) and beer selection.

Our last stop, Victoria, had a great selection of vegetarian restaurants. We ate at Rebar on our first night here. This was a delicious choice!

After our whale watching excursion the next day, we ate lunch at Green Cuisine's extensive and all-vegan buffet! Wow! Of course, when you are paying by the pound, it comes out to be tres expensive too! But worth it!

We decided to do take-out for dinner after a long, exhausting day! Vegan pizza from The Joint Pizzeria!

Be sure to check Eric's blog for his writeup of wine and beer tasting!