Magic is happening every day in London, people! As you know, the vegan scene in general is off the chizzy, and with that has come a storm of vegan afternoon teas. Okay storm is probably the wrong word to use to describe something so damn posh and genteel but man, every decent place worth their salt seems to be advertising their ability to do a vegan menu, like we saw recently with The Ritz Hotel. But nothing beats being able to go for afternoon tea and not waste precious brainpower worrying about their ability to accommodate you, to just relax and trust that they will be able to blow your minds with their vegan food because they are a fully vegan business. Fortunately, you can do just that at La Suite West, London's first entirely vegan hotel, and their on-site restaurant Cafe Forty One.
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Recently, we traveled to Manchester England (England) (you can't not sing it, right?? well I can't not) in order to dine at the famed vegan restaurant The Allotment. We spent the weekend in the city, but dinner here was our primary purpose for the trip. We've heard only amazing reviews about this restaurant, which was named the Best Vegetarian Restaurant in the UK several times over, and the chef is acclaimed for having delivered fancy vegan fare to Manchester (England England). When the restaurant moved from outside the city, in Stockport, to the Manchester city center, we booked in immediately, ready to be blown away, or at least to enjoy a great meal. I hate to say it, but I assuredly was not and did not. 
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I know, I'm going super big and bold with that title but you know what? It is 8 sleeps till Christmas and as 'Love, Actually' told us, "it's Christmas, and at Christmas, you tell the truth" (there's a lot of weird shit in that movie but that's probably the strangest statement passed off as universal knowledge). And that's the truth, babies! Club Mexicana, formerly at the Dalston bar Pamela and now at the Spread Eagle Pub in Hackney, is serving up the best vegan food of any restaurant in the city. That's an incredible feat, considering it's Mexican (or "Mexican-inspired") food, a cuisine London just cannot do well (it's understandable given how far we are from Mexico but still). But for Club Mexicana, every single dish is a stellar achievement. Everything we tried absolutely wowed us, and even though we were so full we wanted to shout for another round of everything. If this new location were closer to me (it's a PITA) I'd be there every week.
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When I last lived in Philadelphia, I lived in the Rittenhouse Square area, right near the big (only?) Barnes and Noble on the corner of 18th and Walnut. Literally the day after I ended my lease, HipCityVeg, a super cool vegan 'healthy but fun food' joint, opened across the street from my old apartment. They had burgers, wraps, fries, shakes, all really fantastic too. (Of course their management is questionable at best but this isn't a post about them.) So of course, of COURSE, I have to tell you that I used to live on Commercial Street, right outside Spitalfields market, right across the street from As Nature Intended, the organic shoppe. And lo, what has opened up right on that block recently? A super cool vegan 'healthy but fun food' joint, what else? Let me know if you're looking to open up a similar place and I'll tell you when I move from my current house, since I guess that's the game the universe has chosen for me. Genesis, this newest addition to London's vegan, organic, swanky, instagram-friendly restaurant scene, is a great addition to the neighborhood, but it's a good thing I don't live as close to it anymore, because it's way too expensive. 
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Most Americans and other non-Brits, when they think of England, think of fancy tea parties, the royal family, and wypipo in big ass hats. Especially when they think of London, ho boy; in their imagination it's some exalted, clean (lol) city with proper and polite people in tailored clothes, fabulous accents, and yes more big ass hats. Since I am an American living in London, I can tell you that all of that is such utter horseshit that I'm laughing at my own words like Jimmy Fallon when he was on SNL. London, although I love it, is like most big cities that usually smell of piss or sewage (the plumbing is likely the original from the 19th century and is in rull need of a refurb) and instead of fancy people in fancy hats, the folks you'll run into most often are lads (white boys from 18-35 who act like they are 17 and under) who are a few sips away from being black-out drunk, and they're vomiting on the sidewalks even during daylight (which is a real feat considering we don't have much of that this time of year (daylight, I mean; we have plenty of drunk ass lads)). And I never see people out in fancy hats in the city. However, one part of the stereotype rang true for me recently: I went to a fancy ass afternoon tea at a fancy ass hotel. And we liked it, and we loved it. In that beautiful dining room, surrounded by dressed up people generally behaving themselves, it felt like the London of ill-informed Americans' dreams. 
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During our stay in Funchal, Madeira, the beautiful Portuguese island, we had a fancy dinner one night at the island's most celebrated restaurant - Il Gallo d'Oro. It has been awarded two Michelin stars and they told me they could arrange for a vegan tasting menu, so we went for it.  Located in The Cliff Bay resort hotel (one of the three PortoBay properties), Il Gallo d'Oro is not only considered the best restaurant on Madeira but it's also awarded that title for all of Portugal sometimes. So while I knew the food would be great, my vegan expectations were still tempered because these fancy restaurants sometimes just don't have the experience or knowledge for creating vegan menus that are at the same level as the regular ones. As usual I was right. The food was super lovely and delicious, and I'll probably be describing each component as 'lovely' because that's really all there was to it. But it was missing that expertise that a veg chef could provide. And while dining here is a nice event for a special occasion, it's way too expensive for what you get.
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​Apparently Cork is a city; I had to look it up because I was about to call it a little town (it's a quiet village). But it's a lovely little place and an easy town (village) (city?) to see when visiting a wider swath of Ireland and especially en route to the countryside (which is the best part of Ireland). I was there for the weekend recently to speak at the Indie Cork Film Festival, an annual autumn event that I recommend going to if you're in town. Hooray for independent film and lovely Irish people who pronounce it 'fillum' (LOVES IT). I was also there three years ago (!) during a visit to the countryside of County Cork and so will be mixing information (food) about both trips herein. Try to guess which info is from which trip! What a fun game! 
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For our recent anniversary (aw thanks), Husbo and I returned to one of our favorite fancy restaurants in London, The Clove Club. We celebrated our anniversary there two years ago, and this year we decided to shake our shoulders like Danny Burstein’s adorable Tevye and make a tradition of it. You might recall that last year, we were on a train to Chengdu for our anniversary, which was prettay prettay disgusting. To make up for that (plus 98% of all our train experiences last year), we splurged on this super extravagant dinner again. The Clove Club is one of the few Michelin-starred restaurants in London that will offer a worthwhile vegan tasting menu, so it always comes to mind first when we are considering super swanky restaurants. 
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On our recent trip to Liverpool, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that it's an incredibly vegan-friendly city. It seemed like every restaurant had a sign in their window advertising 'vegan options!' and I was HERE for it. In addition to our fancy lunch at the Art School restaurant, which you can read about here, we had time for a dinner and a brunch during our short jaunt through the city. We decided on the truly phenomenal Maray restaurant for dinner, and the very pleasant and bright Our Kitchen for brunch. I didn't expect the food here to be so good, but I'd honestly be pretty happy if circumstances brought us back to Livpoooo for a future visit just so I could eat at these places again. 
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​​When we visited Liverpool recently, we enjoyed a capital-L Lunch like the sort my girl Stritch would sing about at the Art School Restaurant, an upmarket place serving fancypants tasting menus. The restaurant famously offers vegan versions of these menus, so we were like hell yes, fire that sucker up and throw it at my face. Headed by chef Paul Askew, the Art School is consistently listed on Best Of UK restaurant lists and is featured in the Michelin guide. It was also on some of PETA’s ‘Best of UK’ lists for fine dining and even though PETA is trash, I decided to pay it a visit. We booked in and thought ‘hey even if it’s not great at least I can blog about it’ and so here we are. Overall, we had a very nice lunch, although the food needs a little bit of work before I’d be comfortable recommending dining here at its current prices. 
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The renowned restaurant Tredwells, in the Seven Dials area of the West End (close to “Matilda”!), has joined the happy trend of mainstream restaurants doing special-night plant-based supper clubs. And yes, they do mean vegan. Calling their one-night-a-month supper club “Vegwells” to be adorable, Tredwells in their attempt this past Monday has lept ahead of the competition. I’d expect nothing less from a restaurant of Marcus Wareing, the celebrity chef with the two-Michelin starred restaurant in Knightsbridge (remind me to look into whether that one is vegan-friendly too, and thus a candidate for the Vegan Michelin series). So I just googled Marcus Wareing and was like ‘hmm why is he sooo familiar looking’ and realized it’s because he was on an episode of Masterchef that Husbo P and I watched during our short but EMBARRASSING hate-fueled obsession with that terrible addictive af show. Anyway, the Tredwells chef, Chantelle Nicholson, has created this ‘plant-based’ supper club to highlight the magic that can unfold when you focus on good, sustainable ingredients. As the author of an apparently vegan (!!) cookbook called Planted, she seemed up to the challenge of impressing me with this meal. Spoiler, she did.
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Since I'm a human who lives on this planet, I am in love with the magic combination of chocolate and peanut butter. It is objectively better than any other duo and I will fight any suggestions you may make in the comments. A lot of British people don't understand peanut butter and I think that might be the real reason behind the American Revolution. As an American import, I myself might eat more peanut butter than anyone else in this marmite-eating land. (Marmite and peanut butter are not similar or interchangeable in the least, and the fact that some people still believe this lie causes a good deal of British nose-turning at my fren PB and as a result much of my consternation.) I ran a little bakery market stall on the weekends for a short while and always had peanut butter cookies on offer and people would be like 'ew definitely don't want those' and I would leap from behind the stall and shove the peanut butter cookies down their throats and scream HOW DO YOU LIKE IT NOW MORON? I don't do the stall anymore. ​
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​Dearly beloved, we're gathered here to discuss East London's relatively new fancy joint named Plates. I know, it's getting hard to keep up with all the new vegan dishes, stalls, and restaurants in London, with something exciting seemingly popping up on our radar every day. I'm not that hungry guyzzz can we take it down a notch? My husband thinks I'm weird because I prefer cooking my own food or eating salads (and he thinks I'm extra weird because I'm okay with calling just a bowl of lettuce a 'salad' and he says that's not okay that's just lettuce anyone have an opinion on this nope okay moving on). But then on the other hand, well on my other hand right now I have a cut from where I knifed myself while making some of my aforementioned 'own food' which I guess is a point in the column for 'going out more' but ANYWAY, on the other figurative hand, I do want to try everything because as I recently explained to aforementioned husband about why I was forcing him to watch the worst movie ever written, "Sex & the City 2", you can't complain about things you haven't seen. Applied to the topic at hand: you can't recommend things you haven't eaten. The former argument is more my speed because y'all know how much I loves complaining (LOVES IT) but the latter is nice to do too, and although I have some caveats about my recent dinner at Plates, I do recommend trying it for yourself.
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​My recent trip home to Philly and NYC was jam-packed with new and delicious vegan food options, from the carrot lox at Orchard Grocer to Philly's amazing new joints Wiz Kid and Goldie. Add in all the incredible new finds at Trader Joe's and I was almost overwhelmed with vegan options, especially considering my dearth of options this past summer in Central Asia! With vegan treats coming at me from all sides, you'd think it would be hard to choose a favorite, but that was the easy part. The new (at least in my book, come on I've been gone forever) outpost of Juice Merchant, an all-vegan 100% organic cafe, on Montgomery Avenue in Narberth wins that honor. (There's also one in Manayunk.) The food, while not Landau-levels of otherworldly perfection, is solidly good, sometimes great; the menu is the exact perfect size for offering tons of options but not being overwhelming (us vegans aren't used to having such choice!); the drinks menu is flawless; the staff is insanely nice; and the desserts - guys - the desserts are from Vegan Treats. Finally a place on the Main Line with a constant supply of that peanut butter mousse! 
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During my latest trip home to Philadelphia, PA (how far are theyyyy), I had just enough time to try two of the city's newest and best lunch-time offerings. Rich Landau's most informal restaurant yet, Wiz Kid, specializes in a few stellar sandwiches in the grand old greasy Philly cheesesteak tradition, but veganized (and so much better). Goldie highlights the street food of another big city, Tel Aviv, with an Israeli-style falafel shop selling, well, just a falafel sandwich or salad, fries (with optional shwarma flavoring!), and the greatest single and singular item in the city right now, which we'll talk about. At the end, I'll share my pretty accurate recipe for that magical item so let's get to it. 
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​My eating in Moscow started off dire but ended up in strong contention for my favorite food of the trip, thanks (and no thanks) to a wildly uneven list. Due to some HappyCow reviewers whom I no longer trust, I decided my first stop would be at Prime Cafe because they had juices, salads, and wraps. Sure they did, but it ended up being 100% a copy of Pret a Manger. And the old-style Pret, not the newfangled wave of super vegan-friendliness that Pret’s doing in London now. First of all, it was so hard to find because it wasn’t actually called Prime Cafe on HappyCow; it was just listed as its address, which Google maps didn’t want to find. When we finally found the address and saw it was a Prime Cafe, we realized we had seen this chain all over the city and for no good reason had been heading to this not-super-close location. We learned that night that there was one 10 yards from our hostel.
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​Not only have I just written the most honest blog post title yet, but I've also somehow made absolute MAGIC in the kitchen. And because I'm super generous (sui generis?), I'm sharing the recipe with you today. I really can't get over how delicious these cashew butter cups are. Like I said, they have no business being so amazing, and while they also have no business being called 'cashew butter cups', it sounds a lot better and is easier to say that than 'random protein powders and sneaky bean cups' ewww I knowww but stay with me. 
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Hello friends!! Today we have a guest post! How exciting is that! Did you even know we could HAVE guest blogs on Laughfrodisiac? Because I didn't! But I like this idea - I do very little work - so if you are interested in writing a guest piece, please email me at the link at the top right corner. I do still get to write the headlines as you can see. The W stands for WIN. Anyway, today's amazing piece comes from Cara W., a dear friend of mine who is also the best short story writer you'll probably ever read in your entire life, so I'm a little hesitant to post this because you'll prob be like 'damn she is much better she should take over the site.' And no her real name is not Alice Munro but I can see why you'd think that! 
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Happy Valentines Day, everyone! Oh, Valentines Day is over, you say? Counter: Valentines Day is about love and chocolate, therefore every day is VDay. To celebrate (the actual one) (well not the actual day (it was a school night!) but close enough to it that it was undeniably for VDay) relatively recently, Husband took me to out to a fancy dinner in London's main drag of Soho. Now I hear your doubts, because I had them too: What, Soho?! Soho is only good for 1) bros barfing in the streets before it's even 6pm because alcoholism is a huge and underacknowledged problem in the UK  in large part due to the ingrained nature of pub culture and also the lack of sunshine and b) sad sack vegetarian options at chain restaurants (cough *Pret a Manger* cough). Although there is some decent food to be found in Soho, I never heard of a fancy restaurant there that could make a fancy meal for a vegan that was actually impressive or at least better than what I cook at home. Luckily, Husband has read the entire internet and so he discovered the vegan-friendliness of Gauthier, a restaurant that was awarded a Michelin star a few years back. ​
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​In the days leading up to our exciting reservations at Club Mexicana's residency at Pamela bar in Dalston, we were making our fair share of "PaMELah" jokes in the style of Borat, cultural guide in all situations. Oh Pamela we are now married! Agreement not necessary! Little did we know that that was indeed the Pamela that Pamela Bar is talking bout! The walls above our seats at the bar were covered with pictures of Pamela Anderson! I was very surprised, but it was kind of nice because she is vegan and a pretty strong advocate for animals, so it made sense that she would be watching over the current kitchen residents, vegan Mexican wonder Club Mexicana. Pamela's kitchen residents change often, as that is what residencies usually mean. However, the Club Mexicana residency is open-ended! That means I can go again and you have even more time to try to go, and you should, because the food was sooo good. 
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  Going into dinner at Crossroads, my first ever meal in Los Angeles, I was wary. I knew of Tal Ronnen, famous celebrity chef behind Oprah's 21-day vegan challenge and Ellen's wedding, and I was super psyched to finally eat at his fancy well-known restaurant on Melrose (so I could say "We're going to Melrose" in Ambular's voice). But I had heard from several people whose opinions I trust, and none of them agreed on whether the food was disappointing or BRE (best restaurant ever). Either the consistency at Crossroads is just nonexistent or some of my friends have the Sookie-preggers-tastebud-crazytimes, but luckily I guess I went on a good night. No, a great night. A freaking fantastic, fabulous night because this dinner was off the chizzz, people, and despite an absolutely stellar week of eating in L.A. (which will be my next like bajillion posts), Crossroads was the highlight among all highlights.
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