January 19, 2023
Juice Merchant: Main Line Philly's Awesome New Vegan Restaurantby Randi / November 24, 2017
After our terrifying border crossing experience from Kazakhstan, we arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. It was blindingly sunny and dry. Like…really dry. Like Kashgar levels of dryness. I’m literally in a desert on a horse with no name or something I guess not literally but I was all a mess because my eyes are so dry! It may have been the climate (I mean it definitely was) but it also could have been due to the extensive construction projects happening all over town. Seriously was it just the season of construction works in this region? Everywhere we went we were stymied by drilling and jackhammering and dust flying errrwhere. So much dust and rubble! Despite all the dust and rubble, we had a decent time exploring Tashkent’s mosques, museums, markets, and other m words. But my strongest memory will always be of something that starts not with ‘m’ but with an upside down ‘m’, a ‘w’! (For watermelon.)
After our idiot driver from the border dropped us at the Sunshine Caravan Stay guest house, we waited a few more hours till our room was ready (I’m really soo over lodgings that make you wait until 2pm to check in, like, be ready in the morning or don’t be in this business okay) and planned our next few days of sightseeing on the wifi. The guest house had a communal dining/kitchen/breakfast area (I think it might have also been a restaurant) that we sat in while we waited for some much needed showers.
Our guesthouse’s communal dining area
The communal dining room had a water cooler, so +1 to them, but it was off a courtyard patio area that was always full of random Uzbeks smoking, so -1. The room, when we finally saw it, was pretty nice! As was the bathroom. The only real problem with this place, besides the smokiness and the random men everywhere (I’m not sure if they were workers or locals or what, they definitely weren’t fellow guests) was that the heat and the wifi both failed at night. My two favorite things, guys. And yeah, we needed the heat at night! It was getting to be fall!
the courtyard area I couldn’t enjoy because sigarettos exist
i love bed
The shared bathroom at the Caravan Stay featured the OG Uzbek Schuyler Sisters, if I had to guess?
and peggy
Aside from the Uzbek power trio (Elizaaaa), the vibe around the city was kind of hard for me to get a handle on. There was a sense of general nothingness, plus a bank here, a convenience store there, a milk cart on the corner that for some reason (I’m so tired) I thought might have vegan ice cream seriously I was losing my mind. But once we got out of the ‘center’ to see the sights, it felt more like the Uzbekistan I was ready for: full of mosques and dust aaaand space.
Pictured above is what I call Mosque Central, a square with like 8 mosques and madrassahs and more mosques and a few imams, which I thought were people but I guess can also be buildings. Like transformers can be people and cars? Anyway the pretty blue building is the Teleshayakh Mosque, which is home to the Osman Koran, or one of the versions of it. It’s hard to find believable information (#allreligion) but it seems like the Osman Cometh, a 7th century Muslim relic, was the first written Quran! There was no need for a written Quran before because first when Mohammed was around he just had it in his noggin, and anyone who had a question just like gave Mohammed a call. And then I guess he lived for a lot of hundos of years and then he had sons or baby prophets or whatever and they would be the ones you shouted out to if you had questions about the rules. But then baby prophets started to disagree with each other and you know how humans are, no one tells the truth or believes the truth so they were like, we gotta write this shit down! So they did, I guess they got a guy called Harry Osman (Donny?) to write it and thus we have the Osman Quran. Or Qurans, really, because we went to several places in Uzbekistan, heck even in Tashkent alone, that claimed to have the og OQ. I think there were several copies made by the caliphs and whose-nots in 650 a.d. since it was such an important creation. Smort. Noice.
We also saw one – I think the ‘realest’ one – at the Amir Temur Museum, a surprisingly great museum off the main garden-y square area called Amir Temur Khioboni, so pretty and green. It’s where the giant Soviet Hotel Uzbekistan stands. Pretty nice square.
this fucking hat’s back
Wait so Amir Temur – also known as Tamerlane, which you might be more familiar with (nerds) – let’s talk about him because HOO BOY, he’s big here and he’s gonna come up a lot in this country (we have like 5 more stops). Amir Temur was a Mongol warlord/conqueror guy in the 1300s who founded the Timurid empire in Persia and Central Asia and was the first ruler of said empire which like come on he better be, how much would it suck to found something and then NOT get to be the leader. According to wikipedia, “Timur’s background was Iranized and not steppe nomadic” and according to me, if you can explain to me wtf that means (comments below) then I will send you cookies. The Amir Temur museum was quiet (like everything here!) but full of fun information about Temur and Uzbekistan and stuff. The central hall was beautiful but no pictures were allowed because the Osman Quran (#201A?) was on display. So cool!
here’s that fucking hat in front of the Amir Temur museum
But I had to sneak photos of one part of the museum. I just had to break the law. Because the best part of the museum – hell, the best part of maybe all of Uzbekistan, MAYBE the best thing I’ve ever seen in a museum ever anywhere – was the section that listed important historical figures and gave a paragraph of information about their lives and then ended with a short description of how they died. I know what you’re thinking, that that doesn’t sound as amazing as I’m making it out to be. JUST YOU LOOK:
DIED OF ARROW!!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
GUYS I CAN’T!!!! Do you see how Mirzo died? I almost got kicked out, I fell to the floor from laughing so hard. We were CRYING. So inappropriate. I’m so sorry to all the ghosts who were watching.
The museum was definitely a high point, restoring my ability to go to museums. Also it had a toilet, which was actually hard to find out and about in the city. I think it was one of the hardest places for me because there weren’t cafes or more museums I could pee in, it was all mosques that didn’t have bathrooms and madrassahs that I wasn’t allowed in. Darn. Luckily on one stretch of busy road from the Mosque Central Square back down to the regular center of the city, we chanced upon a sort of mall. It was DESERTED, but open and it had a bathroom. But like…it was deserted. We were the only people in there and every storefront was shuttered. Soooo weird.
The deserted mall-like building had weird freaky statues in small fountains, like the above. I was so sure we were in a movie. By far, the best part of it was the below sign I saw that made NO SENSE but of course put “All I Do Is Win” in my head for a good solid week.
“LIKE STRIPPERS’ BOOTIES GO”
(Possibly the best caption ever.)
Chorsu Bazaar
PUNKIN CHUNKIN
Our top experience in Tashkent, besides finding pretzels (they were a little stale but hey I found pretzels!), was our morning at the Chorsu Bazaar, the big central farmers market where all the locals and then some come to buy and sell their goods. I love all the local markets we visit when we travel, especially on this trip, but this bazaar experience was the most memorable yet. See, I really wanted watermelon. The beyond incredible watermelons of western China and Kyrgyzstan spoiled me for some serious quality watermelon and I was jonesing for it but good. I thought we’d definitely find some at the bazaar! As usual, we found an impressive array of spices that we couldn’t buy but wanted to, lots and lots of bread that we ate of course because fresh market bread is the best, and lots of gorgeous vegetables I wanted to bring to restaurants and say ‘cook these for me please!’ And of course there was a tonne of fruit, but no one was selling watermelon to eat immediately, like slices of it, like they sold in China markets, handing you a piece and watching you finish so they could collect the rind. We walked round and round the white buildings with the green domed roof and finally decided that our best bet was to just ask a regular watermelon seller if they could cut it up for us. Fun problem: the seller had no idea what we were asking. I kept making chopping motions with my hand, over and over like I was a nutcracker. The guy was just so confused. Finally his wife made a face like something clicked and she said the word for ‘now’, so we were like ‘da da yes for now! we want to eat it now can you make it so we can?” We didn’t know the word for cut, p.s. So the lady took a watermelon, one we had pointed to because it was the smallest one we could see, and took in onto a stump to cut. Note, the ‘smallest’ watermelon we could see was still the biggest one I’ve ever bought. It was a good 12 pounds, I’d say. So I’m all excited to finally eat some good fresh watermelon and the lady comes back with a bag…full of two giant halves. They looked so proud for doing what we ‘asked’ that we just couldn’t tell them that nooo, cutting it in half doesn’t reeeeally help that much, we wanted it cut into slices! So we smiled and thanked them and walked to a little grassy patch outside where we sat…with our two giant halves of watermelon, six pounds each. This would have been a good time to have one of our pocket knives on us, but of course the one time in our entire trip that we’d need them, they were back in the room. I tried diving headfirst into the cut side and trying to eat some like a wild f-ing animal. That didn’t work and my shirt got messy. So instead we both garnered all of our rage and anger in the world (#trump) and kind of just TORE THE WATERMELON APART with our bare hands, ripping the rind while screaming in order to make it work it doesn’t work if you don’t scream. We were A MESS. There was watermelon juice EVERYWHERE, all over the ground near us, the pavement, ourselves, Everyone was watching us, these two pasty white westerners trying to destroy and devour an entire uncut watermelon with pure brute strength. It was RIDICULOUS. We were clawing into the fruit like we were lions doing whatever it is lions do. Just a mess. We actually managed to finish an entire half. We felt simultaneously proud, strong, sticky, and kind of nauseous. There was no way we could finish another entire half, and this was morning, so we were stuck carrying the sticky other half in the sticky disgusting bag for the entire rest of the day.
Luckily that wasn’t the only food I could eat in Tashkent. It was a decent city with a few options on HappyCow. We of course went to a Georgian restaurant, always a favorite and always great for vegans, although this place didn’t have the best service. My next HappyCow choice was the restaurant Jumanji, because the movie terrifies me and I had this theory that if I had a decent meal at the restaurant of the same name, I would conquer the movie’s terror. Or something.
Just in case you had gotten to Tashkent without noticing the vibrant copyright infringement trade in all of Asia, they made it very clear here that they were talking bout the Robin Williams’ movie by using the exact font from the film. (See the very end of this post for my favorite Tashkent copyright infringement.) Things are so weird. Luckily, the food was good and guess what, they had tofu. I missed tofu so much after always being able to get it in China! And vegetables ! And juice with vegetables in it!
TOFUUUUUS
BIG OLE PLATE OF BROCCOLI
BIG OLE PLATE OF CUCUMBER
It might look pretty basic but it was a great big satisfying meal. I even enjoyed the huge cucumber plate (that crap all over it was RG). Jumanji kind of represented what Tashkent was like in general – kind of boring but pretty satisfying, and while I’m not itching to go there again, I had a decent experience. I felt that Tashkent was such a mixed bag. It had areas that were really built up and somewhat modern, and then parts that were bare and dust and so old-fashioned it was like stepping back in time. Little did I know that it would be the most modern part of Uzbekistan, and our next stop would teach me what stepping back in time really looked like.
These looked like flowers we had at our wedding! I don’t know what they’re called but they were all over the country
yup this is a Hogwarts themed children’s center or daycare prob. I mean. ILLEGAL.
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Eating Vegan in Kyiv: Decent Food Around Town as Veganism Grows
Arriving in Kyiv (that’s the proper way to say Kiev, Ukraine; remember?), I was nervous about the food since my travels as a vegan through other parts of Eastern Europe have been less than thrilling. Luckily, that’s all in the past, it seems, because Kyiv’s vegan game was off the chizzy! Okay no it isn’t off the chizzy – wait till we get to Warsaw and Berlin! THOSE are off the chizzy – but Kyiv at least made a convincing argument that it knows the chizzy exists. It is fully aware of and in close proximity to the chizzy! (Chizzy means chain.) We had a good amount of time to explore the vegan options and traverse the whole range from delicious to disappointing and back again.
The first order of business was to go to Bessarabsky Market. This is a centrally located indoor market full of stalls, farmers stands, and larger restaurant constructions all in a tidy square space (not to be confused with Square Space, the company who has recently acquired this here blogging platform!). There are several vegan options in this market, and so, considering how hangry I was on arrival (remember we were waiting for our room to be ready after getting off another overnight train ughhh) I figured going to this one-stop shop for all things food would be my best bet. It was still early in the morning when we got there and lots of stuff wasn’t open. In fact, we had to wait for the two all-vegan spots in the Bessarabsky Market to get cracking. But it wasn’t a bad wait – because we saw the best sign known to (non-celiac) man:
Georgian bread may be the best on earth, and we are obsessed. So obsessed that just last week we returned from a trip to Georgia, I don’t want to say entirely planned because we wanted that good bread but it kind of was. This stall in the Bessarabsky Market lived up to its dern good name. We watched the bakers ease balls of dough into the giant stone cauldron-like oven, perfect for this witchcraft, and just a few minutes later retrieve gorgeous loaves ready for me to attack.
The handles on these loaves make it easy to hold and fun to pull apart. #breadfacts
So delicious! We ate our amazing bread and explored the just-waking-up market as we waited for the vegan places to open so I could look upon their treasures and see which I wanted. There’s also a natural shoppe in this building, called Eco Chic, which has organic produce and a small selection of supplies. It was closed of course but the vegan options abound here!
Finally the two places I came for opened – Green 13 Vegan Kitchen and Sumasbrod. These two all vegan joints were RIGHT NEXT to each other in the market! It was like the vegan sandwich showdown or something equally awesome. I felt a little awkward going back and forth between the two in order to investigate the menus and make informed decisions, like I would feel bad for whoever’s wares I didn’t purchase first. They don’t care. They’re used to it. I tried Green 13 first but we ended up going back to Bessarabsky several times over our stay so we tried both places several times. Let’s talk about errthang.
As you can see in the picture above, the two vegan places were kind of like buildings within the larger building. You order and get your food inside and then there is general shared seating in the open market space. The seating was actually nice, with cute pillows tossed hither and thither. Save for when we arrived that first day before it opened, the whole place was always crowded with vegan food lovers, which is awesome, and if I wasn’t so socially awkward and/or tired at this point in our trip (not to mention without a word of Ukrainian to my name) maybe I would have talked to some of them. But honestly come on there was eating to do, not talking! We tried a good deal of what Green 13 had to offer, including wraps and burgers – what it primarily does and does well – as well as salads because of my salad obsession.
English menu yassssss
On my first visit, I had to try the grilled tofu wrap. It was AMAZING. Like really amazing. Maybe I just had gone so long without proper delicious vegan food or maybe I had been soyless since China or maybe I was just so magoo from the overnight train and the lack of shower yet that day but man alive this wrap was so good I might cry because I want it now. (I may also just be remembering it in such high esteem because I am hungry.) First of all the wrapping seemed gigantic and poufy so that was fun, and the grilled tofu was nice. Filled with cabbage and parsley and carrot and tomato, the wrap would have checked all my boxes as is, but the sauce on it took it to another level. They call it ‘tartar sauce’ on the menu but that does not do it justice. It was a really delicious white sauce that was like…really good. I might not know what tartar sauce is. Anyway it was fantastic and probably my favorite thing I ate in Kyiv.
We also tried the burger with vegan bacon. If you look at the menu pictured above, you’ll see that the first detail about that burger is ‘loaf with barn’ and I will tell you that nonsense group of words is 80% responsible for why we ordered it. We had to see what loaf with barn meant. We still don’t know what they were going for but the burger was wonderful. Soy cutlet check, soy bacon check, tomato onion cucumber mayo sweet & sour sauce check checkity check check check. Such a great, classic burger! No wonder it has HIT written next to it on the menu. Less impressive was the Green 13 Burger, which obviously I ordered because it says it’s on a green spinach bun and I will never turn down wrongly colored breads. It sounds like it should have been aces with that grilled tofu and tartar sauce that I loved in the wrap but with added pesto and mushrooms and it was good, but not as great as the bacon burger. Not bad but it is third on the list.
As I said, I also tried the tofu ball salad because it’s a salad. It was okay, but I wish the balls were bigger and that there were more of them. Hehe balls. It was fine. I’m fine. Best of all, the staff at Green 13 was uniformly friendly and so helpful, even at my first visit when I was like ‘hey you’re not open but I’m here also what should I order???’ they were still all very nice. And you can see in the picture there’s a little fridge out front that says ‘molochko’ – they make their own nut milks and sell them in glass bottles. I had an almond milk that was pretty good for being unsweetened and not being used in cereal. All around, everything about Green 13 was great and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
You’re probably wondering at this point ‘hey where are all the pictures of the amazing food’. Sorries, but at Green 13 and Sumasbrod the food is packed to go as default (since there’s no seating inside their actual storefront) so everything was ugly with the expected takeaway smush. Even I have limits to what photos I share.
or do I
Moving on to Sumasbrod, a foot away from Green 13. I’ve mentioned their proximity several times now and I think it’s because my god man, if you are there, there’s no reason not to go to Green 13. I’m sorry Sumasbrod but you were disappointing in most aspects. The food was fine – when they had it. Every time I went to their counter, the (quite rude) staff would tell me that they only had this one wrap or this one soup available that day – even though the wraps are made hot for each order so I’m pretty sure they had most of the ingredients (considering they were all very similar). The salads were even more upsetting. See the above picture, how they have salads in plastic cups? Dude, it is NOT EASY to eat salad out of a plastic cup. First of all, that means the dressing (when it existed) fell on like, one piece of spinach and did not reach any of the other ingredients. And you couldn’t mix anything together. It is not a smart idea. And you’d think that if you were serving salad in a tall cup that maybe you should cut the ingredients up small so it would be easier to eat but instead the ingredients were like, extra larger than normal. One stupid long and thick strip of carrot took up half the cup. Also, the cup display salad situation meant that they only offered what was already made and displayed. When I first ordered a salad on the menu, the girl said they only had what was in the case – one option. It was right at lunchtime too but they didn’t have any plans to make anything more that day. I could see the rest of the staff was laughing and joking and eating back in the tiny kitchen instead of making more food for the big crowds but I guess they don’t care.
So the salad was too hard to eat and impossible to dress properly. As for the wraps, our conversation literally went like this: Can I have the tofu wrap? No we don’t have it. (They had tofu and the same veggies as everything else…so…) Can I have the Fishless wrap? No we don’t have it. What wraps do you have? The seitan sausage wrap. That’s it? Yes. Man aliiiive. Honestly considering that everything has basically the same ingredients, they make the wraps fresh for each order, and there was always staff just chilling and not working, I think it’s just down to lazy workers. Anyway, I had the seitan sausage wrap, and it was neither seitan nor sausage but more like pink ham half moons. It was decent, but small and with tiny amounts of fillings, so if you have the choice (and you do), always always get your food from next door. Green 13’s food is much better and the people are much more accommodating, even though on paper the Sumasbrod menu feels much more my style.
The only thing you should go to Sumasbrod for is the dessert.
In that display pictured above, Sumasbrod has those poorly conceived salad cups, but also chia pudding cups and mousses. The best thing they make is this Chocolate Cake Trifle and it was AMAZING. Truly. True I hadn’t had a proper dessert in many moons but Z agreed that this was fantastic and we got it several times. The chocolate cake was probably dry, as most places’ chocolate cake is (it’s not hard guys!) but it didn’t matter because it was covered and moisturized by chocolate mousse that was pretty damn fantastic. So definitely go next door for everything except dessert, and be sure to grab this. We got one for our train out of Kyiv too, and honestly nothing helps elevate an overnight train experience than a cup of chocolate cake trifle. Well except clean sheets and maybe a non-flooded bathroom but we aren’t talking pipe dreams here!
this will be the one non-food related picture in this post so enjoy
Another mixed bag experience awaited us at Tri, an upscale restaurant definitely catering to the Gwynnie types of Kyiv. This place had rave reviews on HappyCow so I made sure it was at the top of our list. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the HappyCow reviewers just haven’t had good food before so they were like ‘oh I guess this is what good food is because it looks cute and is expensive so I’ll just give it five stars so I don’t look bad.’ No. Or maybe we went on a bad day for them, but it’s still unacceptable. The restaurant is lovely inside and clearly gives off a more fancy vibe than anywhere else in town. Some of the food was generally interesting but the service was horrendous. It literally took hours. A family who came a half hour after we did got their food first. I don’t want to hear that nonsense about ‘but you don’t know how long the kitchen needs for each dish!’ because we were the only patrons there and I ordered a salad. It would take AGES to find someone just to ask what was going on with our food – and like I said, there were only two tables in the giant room. It shouldn’t be that hard to find staff. What is this, the National Theatre?
Tartlets? Tartlets? Tartlets?
We started with the raw tarts with cashew hummus and microgreens. It was pretty good, but it was not hummus so much as a definite cashew cheese., tasting like like any other raw cafe’s dollop of raw cashew cheese. Fine, though, whatevers.
Then an hour went by.
Then my salad came. This was supposed to be a ‘guacamole, kale, and hemp seed’ salad.
Ahem. Does that look like kale to you? It is not. It is merely green curly lettuce. Plus sprouts and tomatoes instead of hemp seeds, which I really don’t understand as a substitution so it has to just be a mistake. There was indeed a lump of ‘guacamole’ in there – a very lemony mush of avocado – but come on, this is not what the menu says. It is a green salad though and it was fine tasting so I wasn’t going to send it back (also it took an hour??) but still, what’s going on in the Tri kitchen??
Then we ordered the polenta with grilled vegetables. This one took an extra hour after the incorrect salad. I wanted to leave and really almost did but we were in so deep and I was trying to be optimistic about my beloved polenta. Polenta is sooo good and I was picturing this lovely pile of it with all kinds of vegetables in like a sauce or something amazing.
I got this tiny little tower of terror instead. The polenta rounds were good because it is hard to screw up polenta but yes you’re right, those are discs of eggplant and tomato with it. JFC. I should have known it was going to be grilled eggplant. Even at a vegetarian restaurant I have no other choice! There was nothing else to it, no sauce or anything, just grilled Vegetable of the Summer and two 50p-coins-worths of polenta. Bahhhhh. I wish we could have dined and dashed, I really do for the first time ever, but by the time this came we were alone in that big white fancy room and they would have caught us. Maybe. Actually, maybe we could have slipped away considering how hard it was to find a waiter. Darn. Next time! Just kidding we’re not going back there. I really don’t understand all the glowing reviews, unless everything else is really that much better (doubtful) or maybe I’ve just been lucky enough to have something better to compare it to (literally every restaurant seems more functional).
Next we tried Nebos, the famous raw restaurant. Raw foodists (omg is there a worse word than foodist to describe a person? oh yeah foodie) all over the globe rave about this place, so after our trip to Chernobyl we checked it out. I figured eating a big meal of raw vegetables would undo some of the negative effects of radiation or something? No it’s just right at Independence Square where the tour left us. Anyway, like with Tri, the reviews online were almost embarrassingly effusive. People were going on and on about how this is the best raw restaurant in the world and ‘trust me I’ve tried them all’. Bitch please. I’ve tried them all. This is not the best. But it is fine. Too much of the food had that vibe that is common in raw restaurants of being too…warm and sludgy, like it had been sitting out. Raw restaurants should be better at that but alas. But a lot of the food was really good, so overall Nebos is a positive for me, with caveats on things to avoid.
I started with the Olivier salad. They had a really impressive salad section (I mean every raw restaurant should come on but this is one of the few) and it was hard to pass up things with broccoli and arugula, but Oliviers are so common in this part of the world that it’s required to try them when you have the chance. I had a vegan one before, I think at a Mongolian Loving Hut, I want to say? and it was great so I had to try again. Also, this was the one salad that the Nebos menu had starred as a customer favorite so I trusted the public at large even though you should never really do that about anything really. Luckily it was really good! It was a mix of carrot, cucumber, avocado, peas, peas, zucchini, microgreens, and of course ‘Olivier sauce’ and it was very enjoyable. I also adore how they always come in the same weird shape.
Okay deciding on the Olivier wasn’t as hard as I made it out to be because we also got a Caesar salad! Double salad what a life! I was intrigued by the promise of cashew cheese sticks covered with pitta sauce in the Caesaw. It didn’t sound like a Caesar and it didn’t taste like one, but I really enjoyed it. Those cashew cheese croutony things are legit! They were so plentiful (look at that plate it is positively covered with them) and had a great sharp cheeziness with a z. It could have used more lettuce but it was pretty interesting. And really filling. Cashew cheeze is filling! I just jump back and forth between spelling raw vegan cheese like a normal person and an ass so don’t mind it.
Next was the tasting plate, with flax breaded cutlets (I don’t know either), falafel cutlets, and vegetable balls. I don’t know what the difference between all the different cutlets or balls were – they’re all made of the same nuts and vegetables – but they were all pretty good, and the three sauces they came with added some nice flavors. Approved!
Lastly was the thing I urge you not to order, even though like everything else I chose it is listed on the menu with a little thumbs up to show it’s a customer favorite. Well, the public is wrong so often so I was bound to get screwed listening to other people. Don’t listen to other people. (Well except me of course.)
The Dragon Roll. I’m actually starting to gag just remembering trying to eat this. I was soo excited for some raw vegan sushi – I hadn’t had sushi in ages, and it was even longer since I had good sushi. Well it would be a lot longer, I learned. The Dragon Roll promised epic tales of nori, avocado, cauliflower, cucumber, cheeze, something called ‘false flax seeds’ that I am sure is just lost in translation, sunflower mayo, and more ingredients that sound good but when you stop to really think about it you should think ‘wait how is all of this going to make a sushi roll’? Remember it’s raw, so without the structural integrity afforded by sticky rice, they were going to rely on minced cauliflower to hold all the gloppiness together. It didn’t. Forget Gwynnie’s website (how many times will this post mention her, I wonder), THIS is the real goop. The toppings blended in with the middle and it all mushed into one beige bland blob of oozing warm sludge and I tried to eat one and had that immediate reaction where if you eat any more of the thing you are going to be sick. Shaaaaaame. The consistency was so off-putting and so wrong, like when I try to eat mochi but 100x more. Sushi should not need to be eaten with a spoon! Bleh what a soft slimy mess. Bleh!
The rest of Nebos was decent though. Just never get the sushi.
The last of the vegan food I’m going to share might be my favorite in Kyiv. It’s not a restaurant, it’s more like a counter service. And the place is not vegan, or even vegetarian, but it has a few options. Now, what’s my favorite thing? If you follow my instagram (see link at top corner of page!) you probably know I make soup for dinner 90% of the time. Yes it’s because it’s a one-pot thing and that’s best for me but also because soup is amazing! Well, lords and ladies, Kyiv has a soup counter around town called Soup Culture! And best of all, they serve it in a BREAD CUP. Not a bread bowl, not those things that you don’t know really how to attack and you’re like wait so do i eat all the soup and then this bread but I want bread with the soup I’ll just take a little piece and ahhhh now there’s soup spilling everywhere! No, Soup Culture has perfected the bread container method by putting the soup in a much sturdier carbolicious cup, and so you drink the soup (I hate using the word ‘drink’ when discussing soup because it’s FOOD but here you kind of must because it’s a cup and you drink from a cup anyway) and chew the cup as you go down. It’s splendid.
They always have one or two vegan soups on the daily menu. We tried the lentil, which was delicious. And the bread cup is SO fun. Like I said, it’s sturdy so it retains its integrity as you take bites of it. SO FUN! There are a few locations around town so it’s a wonderful little lunch stop as you explore town.
Kyiv has a lot of vegan options – we barely scratched the surface! Even when we weren’t looking, we would chance upon vegan friendly places, like this place in a major underground food court/mall under Independence Square.
Hopefully, this roundup will help you make decisions about what to prioritize (go to Green 13; skip Tri; bring me back a bread cup). I have heard that even in the past few months, even more vegan food has popped up in Kyiv. I think the scene there is going to get better and better and it’s definitely a city to keep your eye on.
Vegan in Jamaica? Yah Mon!
Don’t worry, I’m not gonna pull a Tom-Hanks’-least-fave-child and say anything else patois. Recently, we escaped the dreary dullness of a London winter and went to WEPA JAMAICA (that’s how I referred to it the whole time, in the style of In the Heights when everyone shouts “Wepa! Vanessa!” but I said Jamaica instead, it does not make sense no but I heard it in my heart) for a wedding. I know the known thing is like ‘people have destination weddings if they don’t really want you to come’ but hell no were we missing our best excuse for a trip to Jamaica! We stayed at the famous Round Hill resort in Montego Bay, but we also made sure to visit the actual city and its vegan food options, which were prettayyy great, mon.
So let’s learn about Jamaica real fast! Jamaica is an island mon! You knew that! In the Caribbean! You know what’s weird, everyone says ‘Caribbean’ with the accent on ‘RIB’ BUT whenever anyone says Pirates of the Caribbean they put the accent on BE isn’t that something. Columbus happened upon in in 1494 and so he said ‘The Spanish own you now!’ and the Spanish killed a lot of native people either the old fashioned way or by bringing new diseases to them. Fun fact: Columbus is in the Bad Place because of all the raping, slave trade, and genocide!
After some more shit, the English conquered it, named it Jamaica mon, made it into a leading sugar exporter (more slave trade), yada yada yada, it became independent in 1962, though it is still a Commonwealth country (so Lizzie Dos is their queen). Jamaica is a wee small island with international fame and influence much greater than you’d expect for a wee small, considering the spread of Rastafarian culture, reggae music, and their bobsled team.
Kingston is the capital and the largest city, but tourists tend not to go there because it has some violence. Tourists, especially from the UK, will likely fly into Kingston, however, and unless you get a connection to MoBay (that’s how the cool kids say Montego Bay), it’s a 2.5 hour drive at least. Luckily for us, we were coming from Philadelphia so it’s an easy flight to MoBay. I’m gonna tell you all this up front before you get to the beautiful resort stuff and fun vegan food jawn: the Montego Bay airport is a nightmare. It’s an absolute zoo, and after you get off the plane you will wait in a sea of endless people pretending to be some semblance of a line until you get to immigration hours later. HOURS. And this entire route, snaking from the gates to immigration, have no toilets. (Obviously I weasled my way through all the halls to the front of the mess somehow to find the bathroom but then went back to Z.) Immigration has kiosks where you enter your info, it prints out a document, and then you take it to a person at a desk. It’s a MADHOUSE. The only funny thing is that tourism is such an enormous part of the economy that the short list of ‘reasons to be in Jamaica’ that you have to answer – the normal options being ‘business or travel’ – also includes ‘for a wedding’.
Also baggage took FOREVER to arrive. You might be like ‘oh that’s fine I always just use a carry-on’ but our flight was ‘overcrowded’ and made everyone check their carry-ons too…and then all the overhead bins were empty, completely empty. The people in front of us on the plane were carry-on people and they were LIVID. See sometimes it’s good to overpack!
Alright you did it you made it through the nonsense. And now:
The Round Hill is lovely, refined resort that seemed perfect for the calmer crowd that does not go clubbing every night (like us!) (although tell that to the gaggle of divorced blondes who arrived on our last day and WERE SO LOUD). It was honestly one of the most ridiculous places I’ve ever seen in real life. Not for regular tourists like us who stayed in the main hotel (it was nice but regular), but for bigwigs staying in the luxury villas on the outer grounds. If you are supes loaded and want to go to Jamaica, THIS is where you stay. One of them was a favorite vacation spot for JFK and Jackie, and one is owned by Ralph Lauren (who is on the Round Hill board). If you are really eager to waste a bunch of your time today, go to the Round Hill website and take video tours of each of the 28 luxury villas. It’s like watching the (amazing) Netflix show The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes but somehow more upsetting. The posher of the wedding guests stayed in villas, so I visited and took some sneaky photos (shared anon).
We stayed in the main hotel since we are Not Royalty, with a really nice room that we got for half price with the wedding rate. Honestly, I cannot believe that people pay twice TWICE as much as we did for the basic rooms. It was nice but man alive that’s some crazy talk. And NB this is NOT an all-inclusive resort; in fact, we felt quite nickel-and-dimed by how exorbitant the cost for food &c turned out to be. We definitely had snobbish attitudes in the past about all-inclusive resorts being like lower class or something STUPID like that, but after experiencing this ridiculously expensive place where you get like a $20 salad and you’re like ‘ugh that was mediocre but we knew it would be expensive’ but then you get the bill and there’s already 20% service included which fine that’s fine waiters deserve it but then there’s also like an extra tax fee and then a separate service charge and you’re like wait how is that different from the other service fee but you don’t want to make a fuss don’t make a fuss and then somehow there’s also a random $5 like resort fee or something that is inexplicable so if you ever order a drink it will not be $8 it will be $25 which is why I only drink water, we are so ready to board the all-inclusive train (not that we have ever done a resort vacay before or plan to in the near future, you know us and our penchant for difficult travel!).
The resort comprises endless standalone buildings spread throughout the expansive grounds (most of it unseen by the regular guests, with the grounds uphill from the beach reserved for villas), with the public areas – the restaurants, the reception, the main block of rooms, the gym, the pool – along the beach in a semi-circle. The entrance to the hotel room building was surprisingly drab compared to the rest of the place – you entered from a very industrial-looking side with all the giant tanks and AC units on your doors’ front stoops (all rooms entered from the outside). Weird but inside was a beautiful room.
I love a hotel bed and this was a pretty good one! Not in my top 5 of all-time hotel beds but probably in my top 10! I loved the little sitting area by the balcony; you can’t see in this photo but against the right-side wall is a daybed (“Janet! Fetch my dizzy couch!”). Here’s the view from our balcony:
The weird thing about that unfinished-seeming entrance to the hotel block meant that the resort staff worked like right up against our windows and we could hear everything they did and said whenever we were in the bathroom. It was awkward! There were also like bags full of linens and towels on our front stoop at all times (and not for me to use!). So that was weird.
Here are the pics I promised from inside one of the villas – not even one of the “fancy” ones.
This is their private pool – every villa has a private pool so they don’t have to hobnob with the poors. It’s about the same size as the main one!
We used the main hotel pool every day, and it was super lovely. During the weekdays, it wasn’t too crowded at any point, but on the weekend it was a bit. The infinity pool stretching over the ocean was so beautifully designed. I was just surprised that it was a little small (and that there was no other public pool on the grounds like for lap swimming (I brought my googles!)). I guess most people are using their private pools!
One day we had the pool to ourselves at sunset and it was the most magical thing ever.
Round Hill has a great gym (included in the room rate thank goodness) that I super enjoyed, although it’s about a 15 minute walk around the beach from the main hotel block (and you have to pass the restaurant, so I’d see people I knew having breakfast and I’d be all sweaty). They also have a yoga pavilion next to the gym – which sounds amazing, right? Except the yoga classes are around $25 and it’s more like hot yoga since pavilions are outdoor structures. I was okay sticking to the gym.
The whole fitness center complex also had a deluxe spa, which I did not use (cannot imagine how expensive the massages are) but I used the bathrooms during the wedding and they were super nice.
Admission: I didn’t actually go to the beach here. Eeeek. I mean I walked in it and put my foot in just to have done that, but when faced with a beach and a pool/the chance to be sandy vs not sandy, I’m always going to pick pool. I should have had at least one beach day, I know. OOPSIE.
So as you can see, the Round Hill was pretty paradisical. The only drawback was that I was SUPER excited to play tennis every day and…I just couldn’t. It was too hot. I was shocked that the courts were always empty, but then the staff and Jamaican friends were like, uh yeah? People only play before the sun is up, otherwise YOU WILL DIE. I even had a lesson booked and everything but had to cancel because it was 1000 degrees. So sad! (And they were like oh thank god.) Aside from that, we had an amazing time, even though we aren’t really sit-by-the-side-of-the-pool-for-days-and-don’t-see-anything-of-the-land-you’re-in kinds of travelers. And we weren’t! We were the only guests to venture downtown into Montego Bay, even though we were told pretty much that “tourists stay in their resorts.” I must admit, everyone downtown was staring at us, with faces like WHAT are you doing, you lost? But the people we actually spoke to/who fed us seemed happy to see us out and about. And we had to go, not only to see the real Jamaica and not just a resort, but to find the good vegan food.
Round Hill catered fine to my veganism, and I had some nice quinoa stir-fries and veggie stews. Also, if you are in the market for a destination wedding, their buffet at this wedding was incredible, and super vegan-friendly (and also really, really not) (you know what I mean, think Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall when he cries on the beach). But as I said, the food was supes expensive, and Montego Bay had several exciting vegan joints to check out anyway.
It’s annoying to get downtown, because you probably aren’t renting a car (if you do you are nuts in that traffic and all-around lawlessness re traffic laws), and the resorts charge an arm and a leg to take you downtown, but that’s the way you have to do it. It’s such a racket. We planned on getting our own cabs once we were downtown, but we literally could not. Every single taxi we saw was a route taxi, meaning they fill up with lots of people and operate like a small bus. They weren’t taking us to our specific destinations, let alone back to the resort! So that’s just one annoyance you have to suck up.
One morning, we had to go downtown anyway for the BEST MOST RIDICULOUS experience (with dogs) of all time, which will be its own (next) post. After that morning experience, we went straight to Millennium Victory, a vegan Rastafarian restaurant. It was THE BEST.
There’s a long history of vegetarianism in Rastafari culture. It’s called Ital food in the Rastafari tradition, derived from the word ‘vital’ but with no ‘v’, emphasizing the ‘I’ as it emphasizes the unity of each individual with nature. (Thanks wikipeeds.) It means food that’s natural, pure, and from the earth. Ital food aims to increase “livity”, the life energy in all people. (That’s why that vegan raw dessert market stall in London is called Organic Livity, I am just now realizing; and yes the people who run it are Rasta.) Rastafari commonly believe that everything you put in your body should enhance livity and not reduce it. That means there’s no chemicals or additives. It also can sometimes mean no salt, which is yikes (but often especially means no salt treated with iodine, which is yay for me), but this food was seasoned well and delicious. I would LOVE to go back here.
We asked the staff to decide for us, as everything on their big board menu sounded excellent. So they brought us two big plates of their best stuff, and everything was indeed excellent. We had jerk tofu (omg), roasted plantains and veg, all in amazing sauces. There were huge chunks of homemade seitan and sauteed ackee, the famous Jamaican fruit that whips up somehow just like eggs. AMAZING. I don’t remember everything else so just ask them to decide for you if you go, which you def should if in MB.
UGH IT WAS SO GOOD. We also got a melon skin juice, which was ace. There was a really friendly man eating at the table next to us who was like ‘this melon skin juice is the best, you need to try it’ and we were like ‘we’re okay thanks though’ and he was like ‘no I insist, I’ll order it for you’ and we were like ‘ok thanks man!’ and he really did just mean order it, not pay for it, it sounded like he was going to pay for it, but then the staff was like you need to pay for your juice, it was funny and also a Larry David moment. We also got Jamaican patties (like pasties/hand pies but not flaky crusted, which is amazing for me because I don’t like buttery flaky things (I do know that this is weird)) filled with veggies to take away to have the next day.
The best part of any hotel room is a fridge that’s empty (not full of minibar crap you don’t want (or worse the kind of minibar where it charges you if you MOVE something? LET ME USE THE DAMN FRIDGE ASSHOLE)), and since we had one in our room, we went to a giant supermarket called Progressive, in a downtown mall, so we could stock up on snacks, fruit, breakfast foods, and drinks.
I forking love this supermarket. They had SO much vegan stuff, like an entire enormous aisle of non-dairy milks, a war chest of strange vegan meats that I’ve never seen before even in Chinese groceries, a juice/smoothie bar, all kinds of great stuff.
what meat is batonette 
all kinds of vegan whats 
this is vegan corned beef WHAT 
whole new to me vegan burger brand 
the label says ‘Golden Vegan Balls’ hehe balls 
did not buy because rum 
did buy but didn’t try yet 
we got chocolate almond milk to make oatmeal with it’s my best trick 
i love ginger cookies but these aren’t very sweet honestly the Ikea ones are the best I’m serious
I had two ultimate favorite items from this shopping trip: one for its hilarious packaging that still makes me laugh, and one because it is g-d delicious.
The funny one:
wat
(and has protein!)
The next restaurant we tried wasn’t vegetarian or vegan, but it had tons of vegan options. It was the kind of cafe you would find on every block in Malibu or something, with an extensive trendy menu, lots of green smoothies, and a yoga-studio vibe. I obviously loved it. DLE Cafe is right around the order from the Progressive market, btw.
I could tell you how extensive DLE Cafe’s menu was but I’m just going to show you so you can appreciate how difficult my decision was.
I don’t remember which green smoothie I got but obviously I got one, and it was great! I was annoyed to get a plastic cup since I drank it there, but I did have it while I was waiting for them to make the rest of my order which was takeaway so I guess that’s a good reason and prob my fault. The straw was paper though, which is good in theory but they disintegrate super fast.
Here’s just one of the food menu pages ugh I still can’t decide and I’m not even there. There’s a feeling long-time vegans know well, when you are used to not having much decision-making power and then you’re faced with a menu with so many options and you are like NO STOP IS TOO MUCH.
I decided on the ackee wrap because you must eat as much ackee as possible when in Jamaica it is a MAGIC fruit and I don’t understand why jackfruit blew up as pork and ackee hasn’t as eggs? Someone sell it! I also got the vegan mac & cheese because I’m a mac & cheese fanatic and also look at that menu it says “hands down this is probably the best mac you will ever have” and I was like “excuse me is it ‘hands down’ or is it ‘probably’ you can’t have it both ways this is like how my brother and I for some reason say ‘poss def’ all the time and no one gets it and for good reason! Anyway the mac was just okay. No pics because it was takeaway and the pictures I took were sad.
Lastly, poss def my favorite, was the Chabad Kosher Hot Spot. You say Chabad, you say Kosher, I hear hummus and I come running.
The Hot Spot is an Israeli food joint right across the main road from Margaritaville (which apparently is the hottest place to party, even for locals, on a Tuesday night…or maybe it was Thursday…I don’t know because I didn’t go obvs but ask a local). We called in an order before our flight home so we could get it en route to the airport (smort!). The number on the website…is not the one to call. Somehow, when we called to place an order for HUMMUS, we heard “this is Rabbi x…?” THE RABBI PICKED UP. HAHAHAHHAHA. We apologized and were like sorry we were trying to reach the restaurant? and he was like ‘oh sure here’s their number!’ It’s all connected, the Chabad org and the restaurant, see all these Jews in Jamaica just want to make sure everyone who wants hummus can get the hummus, THAT’S ALL THEY WANT SO BE NICE.
We did get our hummus, which was excellent, and our amazing flatbread, and Israeli salad and a jerk falafel wrap (that’s right) so yeah DEFFO a must in MoBay. Again, I’m not going to share takeaway pictures because yeesh and oh no. But trust me that everything was great! What a great find! When we told our driver where we wanted to stop, he was like ‘oh yeah I’ve heard of that place!’ and seemed excited so I hope he went and liked it.
At the airport, leaving is much saner than arriving, and they have giant water bottles at most vendors! Huzzah! (Small water bottles are the devil’s playthings.) There’s also plenty of recognizable food outlets. I had my hummus and falafel but I did buy one non-water airport treat, a packet of moringa powder. You know I’m a sucker for all things superfood and apparently moringa is big in Jamaica. I had to buy it because a) it’s a Jamaican variety so that’s cool and b) the brand?? do you see the brand name? LOL. (Shavuot is a Jewish holiday.)
So that’s my time in Jamaica, my babies. I leave you with a Jamaican proverb, just one of the many such cards that housekeeping left on our pillows every night – literally the best part of the trip.
