Sarajevo Vegan Scene: Karuzo Vegetarian Restaurant
So, NB: You really need a reservation – not because it’s crowded, but because the one owner/chef/waiter/host needs to know to expect you! We showed up for lunch one day, but O/C/W/H said it would take awhile to get food to us since he wasn’t expecting us and nothing was prepped yet. So instead we came back later for dinner. It was a good move! A varied and extensive menu was available, even with some specials added to the regular long menu.
Boyfriend ordered the chana dal, because he can’t go too long without Indian food. This was also delicious, which was impressive considering we weren’t in an Indian restaurant! The beans were on a bed of really good rice, sprinkled with herbs, scallions, and cashews. Everything was just great.
Well, I thought I knew what great was, but then the dessert came. The man (I really should have gotten his name. Maybe it’s Karuzo? Robinson Karuzo it is) said he had a special ‘strawberry surprise’, a towering take on strawberry shortcake, with plain and chocolate-coated cake rounds, berries, and ridiculous vegan cream.
All in all, we had a great time at Karuzo. We expected it to take a really long time, and while it wasn’t quick, the service was fine. We talked with the owner about veganism and special diets for a while, and looked through his cookbook (which is available for sale). It’s a very cute restaurant, tiny and narrow, with perhaps seven tables lining the inside, and a handful outside. It’s decorated like an old ship, with dark wood, nets, maps, and other knickknacks. Also – it takes credit cards. Very few places in Bosnia do, so this was a huge benefit. Not that it was a huge problem here to come up with cash – for this kind of higher-level dining experience, it cost only 63 marks before tip, about 30 euro.
Karuzo, Sarajevo
- Water speed: We were given a big glass pitcher, which I love. Took a bit to get it refilled, but that’s understandable given the setup.
- Bathrooms: It’s down the stairs, past the small kitchen, and behind a birdcage (with a bird in it). I kind of love it.
- Service: Understandably slow, given that one man is doing literally every job, but not maddeningly so
- Food: Great! Especially dessert. Oh man.
- Bonus: Takes credit cards and has free wifi! Bring your smartphones!
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Vegan Guide to Michelin Restaurants: The Clove Club, London, UK
Recently, Husband and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary! Although the traditional gift is cotton, we decided we’d be okay with food instead. (We decided this last year too, and next year.) We quickly came up with The Clove Club after I was informed that eating tubs of soft serve from Yorica! probably isn’t a smart idea. Located in Shoreditch’s Town Hall, The Clove Club is only a few years old and a favorite of super hip people. To make sure people know how super hip it is and how special you have to be to get in, you don’t make a reservation per se; you buy tickets online to the ‘event’ of your dinner, well in advance. So we had tickets to the show a few weeks ago, on a Tuesday evening at 7ish, and it went past 11pm because it was a tasting menu at a Michelin-rated restaurant (one star) and that’s what they do that’s what they do.
Sicilia (I’m just gonna call her that) immediately asked if we wanted still or sparkling water, so, plus 1 on the water issue getting handled quickly! To that question, I usually respond ‘tap’ because they are always trying to trick you into buying a bottle when they ask that question. Angry face! No one should have to pay for water! Luckily, Husband answered before I had the chance to embarrass us with my answer, because fancy clean water was included in our already-paid bill. Phew! They probably would have asked me to leave. Husband likes sparkling water and I like still, so they brought us bottles of both and kept refilling them at a very impressive pace. Bravo! Finally! Sicilia also confirmed that Husband was doing a wine pairing while I was getting a soft pairing! I had completely forgotten about that! This is the first time I’ve ever heard a restaurant offering beverage pairings with each dish for anything other than alcohol, so this was so exciting. Then she brought us cold towels like you might get on planes if you are a fancy person. I liked that they were chilled because it is summer (sort of), but I wonder if they give warm towels in the winter. That sounds like it would be nice.
We were brought a basket of bread by this point, with olive oil for me. Like other Michelin restaurants who give you bread, the olive oil was the best I’ve had in a long time, probably since the last such place. The bread was good but it was cold. Well not cold but room temperature, I guess. If it was slightly warm it would have been off the chiz.
Next was the standard you would expect when any and every nonveg place caters to a vegan – baked aubergine, or eggplant for you ‘mercans. Unlike the endless conference/wedding meals of crappy baked eggplant topped with bland tomato sauce, this version was wonderful. The tiny eggplants were cooked well and covered with herbs and a thin, tasty green tomato sauce. RG! My soft here I thiiiink was the apple juice, slightly greenified. Yum!
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The second dessert was a lemongrass and berry jelly, which was fine but not worthy of ending the meal. A little too boring, a little too it’s-just-berries-and-jelly. Of course by this point I was seriously full anyway, so whatever.
Water speed: Amazing!! Great job! And it wasn’t tap but it was included dance dance dance! (I’m very cheap.)
Service: Absolutely wonderful. The best waitress in London by far!
Bathrooms: The bathrooms are downstairs, dark and reminiscent of like a brothel in 1800’s New Orleans. You know what I mean? The lighting was dim, the colors were dark reds and browns, and random cosmetics were scattered on display. A very strange mood going on but it was nice and clean, so whatever! Also I liked that the stall was separated from the sink area, despite being a single serve bathroom. People don’t have to wait outside that way, avoiding the awkwardness that comes from that. Oh the toilet seat was hysterically big and weird! That’s enough.
Food: A wonderful meal overall, with only very few missteps. As with all similar fancy but nonveg restaurants, they really could do to up the protein quotient of the vegan menu. They focus on doing vegetables and doing them very well, and I’m not saying add tofu or seitan or something when they don’t use it for the main diners, but add a bean here or there, ya know? And dessert, at least the final one, really could use some work. Other than that, it was splendid.
Bonus: The restaurant has a great atmosphere and makes you feel so special being there! Be cool like hip Shoreditch people! It was the perfect place to celebrate a special occasion. Oh and the biggest bonus – SOFT PAIRING!!!!
London’s Just V Show: Like a Less Glutinous VegFest With Equally Crazy People
However, this hodgepodge was incredibly enjoyable, confusing as it was. Even though the Vegan Society was there (having helped ensure that the event as a whole would be very vegan-friendly), it was not a VegFest, and so the usual suspects of raucous pushers, overeager crowders, and animalistic sample-raiders were missing in their usual overbearing numbers. Halleloos! It made for a much more manageable event, calmer and less intimidating yet just as fun for the rational-minded not-as-pushy cruelty-freers as any VegFest in London has been.
I’ll review my day in sections, starting with the extremes to get those scary things out of the way first.
I Go to Extremes like Billy: Two Bests and Two Worsts
My Two Faves of all time OF ALL TIME (of all weekend) were WAIT not EVEN of all weekend because I had two bestever HOUSE GUESTS! but definitely faves of this fest and maybe any vegfest kind of thing, actually! were obviously both dessert-oriented, as I am. That was some sentence for your poor brain to follow. So my favorite new company discovered at Just V was Loving Earth Chocolate, a raw organic chocolate company, big in Australia and sure to take over the market here (they are new to the UK). I don’t know how this is raw, because it just tasted like regular non-raw/non-weird hard chocolate. And the texture! Perfection! Nothing like that slimy soft wackadoodleness that lots of raw chocolate resembles. I was so impressed, and that was before we learned from their reps all about how ethical and upstanding this company is. The cocoa is fair trade, and is even on the very reputable, very legit Food Empowerment Project list, which only recommends buying from companies that are fair trade and free from child labor and slavery. Cocoa is a seriously important thing to make sure you buy ethically! Then the Loving Earth reps told us the packaging is even made from vegetable ink to make sure it’s vegan and like, everything they said was just red underlined 100 emoji. So great! All the samples were delicious, thick with the cocoa butter feel and wonderful. My favorite from my home stash has been the caramel, a white-ish bar with the best texture in the entire world (I think it is just pure cocoa butter, possibly. Send more!) Hooray!
So those were my bests, how about my bads? Sadly, they both came from companies I like, but their representatives were so off-putting that they stuck out as the worst parts of the day! I mean, really, this shows how great the day was, because these aren’t like, oh I lost a toe levels of bad, but just really annoying experiences. The runnerup winner/loser is a lady from Ruby Bakery. My fest companion bought a thing, and then we asked if we could take pictures, and did. Brash lady came up close and was like yelling, “You’ll put them on instagram right??” and we were like, uhh, maybe. And she said, equally loudly, “What do you take them for if not for instagram!!!” and we were just like…um…first of all please take a step back, second of all, people took pictures for all kinds of reasons before instagram was invented…right?? Right? Am I misremembering what life was like before phone apps? Cameras existed before last year, right? Anyway here is some proof that pictures aren’t only for instagram.
First-place winner/loser champion was from a company I like even more, Plamil. One of their reps was tolerable at first, talking to us about some new products, but then it got out of control. He started going off about the history of veganism in the UK and how this company began many years ago, all without even noticing that we were trying to walk away. I was even waiting with chocolate in my hand ready to buy! But instead of letting me give them money, he then started railing about how the Vegan Society got soft and lets companies use their symbol that don’t deserve their recognition, and about how NO OTHER PRODUCTS EXCEPT FOR PLAMIL’S can really EVER be considered vegan because of trace contaminants and we were just standing there for WAY TOO LONG like, Hey Mr. Mansplainer trying to tell two intelligent long-time vegans in their 30s about the RIGHT WAY TO BE VEGAN, can we please step away from you and your overbearing demeanor now please? It was seriously like ten minutes of our time wasted, plus a lot of our mental energy expelled trying to stay polite. I waste too much energy trying to be polite when other people aren’t.
& Am Grateful For
The big, basic (and no don’t mean basic like how the kids are using it these days (me too) like with disdain about how someone isn’t cool enough, I mean like the regular definition of a word in our lexicon) point of a VegFest, for me anyway (and for others given how many stalls are devoted to it), is bar stocking. Not that kind of bar stocking. I mean protein bars, energy bars, granola bars. I had a gay ol’ time stocking up on my work snack bars, my travel bars, my leg day extra protein needed bars, &c. Bars bars bars. Trek, Nakd, and Nature’s Path – the standards – were there, thank goodness. The Nature’s Path rep was the nicest lady and gave us a free granola bar each! Trek and Nakd always have incredible deals at these Fests, and for people like me who buy them retail all the time it’s like Chrimble. And their sample setup is brilliant: the boxes of each flavor are set out on big tables with big bowls of that flavor crumbled up in front of it, so if you like that flavor, you grab the bar behind it to buy. It’s really simple and quite astounding that others haven’t figured out how to run this as well.
I ROLL MY EYES AT EVERY VEGFEST OH NO MY EYES
SO. Here we are. I decided to go for three ‘shots’ from the ‘juice’ options listed ‘above’. I went for turmeric, chili and lime, and aloe vera. Yes, these were just pure juiced version of these ingredients. Not mixed with anything else. No fillers, no soothing agents, no mitigating circumstances. The lady who was juicing me was sort-of laughing the entire time at me because I think I was one of the few patrons all day to choose pure turmeric and pure chili pepper juice.
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Here are some action shots, courtesy of Jojo, who I think is still shaking her head at me but who definitely helped keep me from falling when my legs gave out.
AND THE BEST DISPLAY SET-UP
GET IT H IS FOR HAUL I DIDN’T EVEN PLAN THAT!