Portico, Nuoro - Sardinia, Italy

Ristorante il Portico is THE place to eat if you are vegetarian or vegan and you find yourself in Nuoro, Sardinia. In fact, if you are anywhere near Nuoro while you are on Sardinia, I suggest making the trek to eat dinner here! Of course they specialize in gourmet cuisine including fish and other meat, but the chef spent his years training in Copenhagen and Switzerland among other places, and is completely enlightened about food and the ways to make it creatively. We were so happy to walk into a restaurant and have the waiter and chef know and understand "vegan" and not laugh at us or offer us only spaghetti and tomato sauce. The waiter suggested the chef starter menu and said the chef will make it 100% vegan. We sat back and waited, wondering what would come out!

First let me introduce the people who took such great care of us. On the right is Graziano Ladu, the chef, who on top of being amazingly kind to us, also makes some of the best food we have ever consumed. And on the left, his brother Roberto who spoke great English, and was very patient with us and probably got a kick out of how excited we were about every dish that came out.

When the dishes started coming we devoured them quickly, and before we could even finish one dish, another came out...

We called it the Parade of Food, because it just kept coming and coming. Each dish unique and different, and devoid of any 'fake' veggie food such as seitan, tofu, or tempeh. Just vegetables, and prepared with tender care and with great imagination. Below is a long photo line of the dishes we ate over the week we spent at Portico.

After the first day we realized we hit the jackpot, and came back every night we were in Nuoro until they closed for Holiday, dashing our hopes of eating here for another week. Let the parade begin:



I can't even begin to describe properly what all of this is

Tempura mushrooms.



Toasted bread with artichoke puree.


Eggplant.

Green beans rolled in Sardinian flat-bread.



This dish is called Fregola, and is a Sardinian specialty.






This was INCREDIBLE! Tempura style arugala.


What looks like a cupcake paper is really a hollowed out zucchini.







A pineapple dessert.

roasted radicchio.














Fancy napkin design for Deanna's birthday.

Birthday dinner at Portico, what a treat!



Endive in foil.

Endive revealed.




Yup, sushi.

Never dreamed we'd have vegan sushi on Sardinia.





Ending on a traditional note, Spaghetti with tomato sauce, and it was exquisite.
Check it out when you go the beautiful and wondrous island of Sardinia.

[Now Closed] Hans Wurst, Berlin Germany

UPDATE: Hans Wurst is no longer in operation. Hans Wurst was one of the best vegan places in Berlin. The atmosphere is very laid back, almost to the point of being off-putting, but if you can get through all that and get some food, you will be converted into a fan.

The funny thing about Hans Wurst is they used one of the graphics I made for my skateboard company Toy Machine as their logo. The first time I went in one of the kids working there recognized me and told me about the logo use. I loved it! Sadly, I just found on their website that they are closing! NO! Well here is to the memories...

The menu while we were there.

This was the Marinated Tempeh with Orange Fennel Curry.

And this was the Quiche.

And the chocolate cake for dessert. so good.
This place will be SORELY missed on our next trip to Berlin!

Dolores Burrito, Berlin Germany

Dolores Burrito was a great find for a Californian in Berlin. I never expected to find a fairly authentic San Francisco style burrito in Germany, especially since Mexican food in Europe is usually abysmal.

If you are in Berlin and have a desire for some legit burritos, seek this place out. We went for lunch every day we could while we were there. It is centrally located, only a few blocks from Alexanderplatz, and the famous Television Tower.

Deanna was getting a side of Lime Tofu, (harder than you may think, it is not "in the system" and the employees seemed to be very rule-driven and reluctant to figure out how to give a customer a side of the stuff.) which is delicious, to put on her tacos.

She's backing the tacos 100%

They serve meat at this place, but offer a 'classic vegan,' and 'Dolores Vegan' burrito.

Outrageous Desserts at Red Bamboo

The Red Bamboo website. This is a great place to go in NYC to have unpretentious vegan food at a good price. And it's way more than just another Asian-food style vegan joint. They have sandwiches, Italian, Asian, and American style food. There seems to always be a wait around dinner time, and they don't seem to take reservations by phone. At least when I called and asked for one the woman told me "no problem, just come down." But then I had to wait over 30 minutes to get a table and almost got a cab to a place where I could get a table. Anyway, we shot our desserts because they looked crazy.

Oreo Cookie Cheesecake. Man was this over the top. It looks really good, but you can only eat about two bites before you feel sick. It was also on the hard side. Maybe letting it rest a bit outside would work, but it wasn't on the light or fluffy side of life, it was on the dense and heavy side.

Peanut Butter Heaven; Deanna thought the same thing. You can't really eat too much of it without getting immediate diabetes. Too much. The frosting was a bit hard.

Cocoa V, New York

Cocoa V is a fancy upper-crusty chocolate shop that happens to make all their chocolates vegan. There is wine and vegan cheese too, but we didn't try any of that. We just got a 30+ dollar box of 12 chocolates. (and, guiltily, we went back to get more.)

The cute little box and bow.

The highlights were Salty Caramel, Pretzel Cluster, Chocolate Orange, Chocolate Peanut Butter. It's right across from Blossom Restaurant, and I think they are affiliated in some way. So if you are craving some fancy vegan chocolates, (and you just got your inheritance or won the lottery) get yourself to Cocoa V to sample the decadence.

De Frietketel, Gent, Belgium

De Frietketel stays open late and serves total junk food with lots of vegan options! Vegan fries, vegan sauces (yes, vegan tartar sauce!, vegan gravy too.) and vegan burgers. Yet again we forgot to shoot the burgers but they basically look like any other veggie burger. It was late and we were starving so by the time we shot this photo of Thomas and Kevin the burgers were history and we were stuffing our faces with fries.

And though we all know what fries look like here's our photo of them. Of course we could have shared one of these massive mounds of fries but didn't.


They also offer vegan meatballs in tomato sauce. Also scarfed before remembering that we have a food blog.