VeganMoFo 2019: Minto and The Giving Tree Cafe, Osaka

Posted on August 17, 2019 by Jenny

Weird. That’s the first word I wrote in my notebook about Minto in Osaka. It was just weird. We were looking for an eatery close to the train station, and Happy Cow was giving us this as a good option, so off we went for a very peculiar experience.

First of all, it was a slightly decrepit looking place. Mismatched furniture and shabbiness can have a certain chicness sometimes, but here it just looked quite run down. It didn’t really help that it was quite a big space, spread across at least three different rooms, and there was nobody there but us. There was someone working at the bar, so we made our way into their room to try to see the menu. Alas, it was the grumpiest person we encountered in Japan the whole time we were there. I’d found Japanese people disconcertingly polite and attentive, but this guy was sullen and monosyllabic and so we didn’t feel confident asking him for further info to help us fathom the menu.

There’s only one menu available, and it’s there at the bar. Happy Cow lists them as a veggie establishment, but the first few pages of the menu were full of meaty curries, so we were quite confused. There was only one dish that was actually labelled vegan, so we got that and just hoped for the best. We were given a little pager that went off when the food was ready, and we had to go and collect it from the bar. Again, pretty weird.

On the plus side, that one vegan option was very good indeed! I was fully expecting to hate it, based on the weird service and atmosphere, but it was lovely. We got tofu peanut butter masala which had incredible depth of flavour and was spicy without being fiery. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a dish like this on a menu anywhere else, and I’m really keen to recreate it now. We had a few Indian dishes during our travels, and this was the best. The menu had promised paratha, but we got boring old rice instead; further proof that it was not our day.

I was a bit unsettled after a not particularly relaxing experience there, and just wanted to sit somewhere nice – so we took a five minute walk round to The Giving Tree Cafe, which turned out to be a teeny tiny place with lots of daylight and friendly service. Phew! They just had one vegan dessert, which was a chocolate pudding (a nice smooth texture, but quite bland) topped with soy yoghurt (this really brought the flavour!). And the coffee came with two crunchy little cinnamon cookies, which the staff told us were vegan. This whole experience was just the palate cleanser we needed.

The real question is, would it be worth going back to Minto for that curry and risking the weirdness a second time?!

What’s the weirdest, most confusing eatery you’ve ever been to? 

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VeganMoFo 2019: Paprika Shokudo Vegan, Osaka

Posted on August 16, 2019 by Jenny

We loved our stay in Kyoto so much. It was a lovely place to visit, and I’m already dreaming of a return trip – we were so tired that we didn’t have time to see all the temples we’d wanted to, so we could comfortably go back and hit all different places. Osaka was kind of the opposite…it turned out that there wasn’t actually that much that we wanted to do there, and we’d planned too many days there. On the plus side, though, the vegan food situation was great!

Paprika was a fun place – all vegan, with a Japanese/western menu, and extremely busy! The only remaining seats when we arrived were out on the veranda, which turned out to be a pleasant place to sit and listen to the rain while eating.

Dr HH took a leaf out of my book and ordered the karaage donburi. Karaage is the juicy, tender deep fried chicken that I was already hooked on. Donburi apparently means that it comes with rice and salad (not pictured, you know what rice looks like). He was very pleased with it.

I was also very pleased with my dishes: deep fried oysters and French fries. Let’s first of all acknowledge that these are in no way French fries. That was a good thing though – in general we found the chips in Japan quite pale, and the wedges much better. These were no exception, and they were really beautifully seasoned with lots of herbs.

The deep fried oysters were in fact mushrooms in crispy batter, and they were insanely good. I’ve never had oysters so I cannot comment on how oyster-like they were, but as deep-fried mushrooms go, they were top notch! A good taste of the sea was created with the dill as well (though a little dill goes a long way, as far as I’m concerned).

With food this good, how could we resist dessert?! Dr HH ordered the baked cheesecake, and found it delightfully creamy but with an almost non-existent base. How devastating! Still, he said it was worth ordering because vegan baked cheesecake is quite the rarity in our experience.

I played it safe (again! Will I never learn?!) with the brownie. It was supremely chocolatey, but really not a brownie. You can see in the picture that it looks dry rather than gooey. At least it tasted great, and overall we had a real feast and a lovely experience.

As a downside, I must point out that they proudly announce on their menu that their food contains “no chemicals”…which is quite the claim. As a scientist, Dr HH is constantly infuriated by nonsense like this. I thought he was going to have a heart attack once when we saw lemon listed as alkaline in some hippy, wellness establishment. He held it together a bit better this time, thankfully.

Does bad science put you off eateries, or can you let it go? 

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VeganMoFo 2019: Le Sel Organic

Posted on August 15, 2019 by Jenny

Kyoto is definitely the place to go for good vegan ramen – we had two of the best of our holiday there, firstly at Engine Ramen and then here at Le Sel Organic. This place was quite an unexpected find. We were actually en route to another restaurant when Dr HH spotted a “vegan” sign in the window and we dashed in before my hanger could get the better of me!

This place does serve meat, but had one vegan set option. We had to order from a vending machine, but of course we couldn’t operate it ourselves! It was quite a fancy looking place, compared to most of our more casual holiday eateries, but it was also quite relaxed. I mean, how fancy can a place be if it has a vending machine?! There were only six seats, all set up facing the kitchen so you could watch the solo chef preparing your food. And what a feast he made!

If only we’d taken a close up of this little appetiser! It’s hard to get any real sense of it from this distance, but it was seared courgette, caramelised onion puree, and shaved walnuts. It was a flavour sensation!

Next up was this exciting concoction! We got three broccoli ravioli, which were topped with broccoli powder (who even knew that was a thing?!) and some fried, crispy triangles. The texture was great, and the broccoli flavour was really intense, which can only be a good thing in my book.

The next course was a bit more boring, as you can see. But before you dismiss it as just rice and veg, note that the rice was tea-infused (nice and subtle), and the pickled Japanese vegetables (the chef didn’t know the English name and we couldn’t place it) were amazing.

And here’s that ramen I was talking about! It was just magnificent. It was a really hearty bowl, with plenty of noodles and a relatively thick broth. The flavour was coming from the earthy broth and the delicious charred cabbage on top. It would almost be worth the cost of flying back to Japan just to have this again!

After all of that, we had high hopes for dessert. Alas, this was the only disappointment of the meal. There was a layer of caramel sauce at the bottom, topped with orange shaved ice. The sauce was lovely and sweet, but the orange was insanely bitter. I’m not sure if that’s a typical Japanese orange or if we got a bad one, but it was not pleasant at all, and there wasn’t enough sauce to balance it out.

We can allow them one misstep though, when everything else was so good! It was all wonderfully flavoured, beautifully presented, and dutifully explained in English!

What’s the word dessert you’ve been served? And did everyone know about broccoli powder besides me?

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VeganMoFo 2019: Premarché Gelateria, Kyoto

Posted on August 14, 2019 by Jenny

I often look back fondly on my summer holiday a couple of years ago when Dr HH and I toured the north of Italy and ate gelato every day of our two week trip. Every day! I was well-prepared for the fact that Japan wouldn’t match that (though there is apparently a lot of vegan soft serve around – somehow we kept missing it), so we were delighted when we found this one place in Kyoto with a tempting vegan menu.

There was a separate vegan menu, and cabinet – that’s what I like to see! There were some pretty wild flavours, but I played it safe with Belgian chocolate and rice milk. They complemented each other well. The chocolate was very rich and creamy, a real treat. The rice milk was a bit bland…I don’t really know what I was expecting though. I think I played it a bit too safe really.

Dr HH certainly did not! He ordered one scoop which was some kind of nuts and coffee flavour I’d never heard of before (he liked it a lot), and the other scoop was excitingly called ninja! This turned out to be black sesame flavoured. I saw a lot of black sesame ice cream when I was living in Hong Kong, but this was the first time I’d spotted a vegan variety. It was so delicious, easily the best of the bunch. Thank goodness that one of us is adventurous, anyway!

Would you order ninja ice cream?!

 

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VeganMoFo 2019: Veggie Cafe, Kyoto

Posted on August 13, 2019 by Jenny

One thing I observed in Japan was that they weren’t always particularly creative at naming things. Pretty much every Indian restaurant we saw was called “Everest” or “Kathmandu” (not sure if we can technically blame the Japanese for that one, I suppose…), and it seemed like a lot of the vegan places we went to had the word “veg” in the title. So it was with this place, Veggie Cafe.

It truly was a cafe, quite small and cosy, but it was also almost unbearably hot, with no fan or air con on. It was a one man show, so it’s probably just as well it was so small – if a few tables arrived at the same time, you might have a bit of a wait for your food as he prepared it all himself.

The menu was all western, which is what we were in the mood for on this day. Dr HH ordered the burger this time (usually it seems to be me who’s always ordering burgers!), and it was served in a pita. He chose the “hamburger” on the menu, and deduced that it was actually quite a beany patty (with tofu as well), but it got a bit lost in the accompaniments. All in all, it was nice but unspectacular. He loved the chips though – they were perfect little wedges!

And I got the lasagne, which appeared to be freshly made (or assembled, at least). The ragout was very good indeed, really herby. And as you can see, he didn’t skimp on herbs on the top either, it was very well-seasoned! The tofu cheese was nice and the crumbs on top added some nice texture. My only complaint was that in amongst the traditional vegetables for a lasagne were some Asian leafy greens that I personally didn’t think were a great addition. I’m probably too much of a traditionalist!

For dessert they had cinnamon rolls on the menu, but we managed to turn them down because we had our eyes on another prize just along the road. More on that tomorrow…

What’s the most unorthodox ingredient you’ve encountered in a vegan lasagne?

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VeganMoFo 2019: Engine Ramen, Kyoto

Posted on August 12, 2019 by Jenny

In Kyoto we found one of the best eateries of our trip, plus one of the best attractions, so it seems only right to cover them both together! Starting with the attraction: on a bit of a whim we found ourselves venturing to the outskirts of the city (or so it felt – my geography is not very good to this might be an exaggeration) looking for otagi nenbutsu-ji, a temple with over one thousand little stone statues with varying expressions and poses.

There were so many fun details to spot – we could have spent hours there poring over each one. It’s easy to get templed-out in Kyoto, but this one was unlike anything else we’d seen – it felt as much like art as it did a temple, and it was very entertaining.

There weren’t too many tourists there either as it’s a bit out of the way, so it is well worth a visit. It was our top temple of the trip, and we did see quite a few!

We also ate quite a few bowls of ramen, and probably got the best of the bunch at Engine Ramen in Kyoto! This was a relatively rare instance where we found an omni place with vegan options – veggie gyoza and two different kinds of ramen, all labelled vegan on the menu. It was one of those places that’s fairly common in Japan where you place your order at a vending machine – I was not a fan. They had to have a member of staff standing by at all times to show people how it worked, so I didn’t feel like it even saved time (or saved people the discomfort of human interaction). Still, it’s always nice to pay before you eat so you don’t have to worry about that at the end.

We both ordered the gyozas, and they were very good indeed. Essentially, they were little samosas – they had an excellent pastry exterior, and the filling was really flavoursome.

And we each ordered a different kind of ramen. Mine was the beany ramen, which had an excitingly creamy broth (presumably from blitzed beans). It was the first time we had a properly thick broth, and we were both wild about it! There were some black fungus bits in it as well, which had a great texture and looked suitably dramatic too. This was sensational!

Meanwhile, Dr HH ordered the zingy ramen. He said that it really was zingy, with a good citrus twist. His broth was also quite thick, and really rich with a good spicy kick to it. We agreed that this was even better than the ramen at T’s, which had so far set the standard for great broth.

Amusingly, the ramen came with a disposable paper apron to wear to avoid splashing. We thought we were too classy for this…so we wore our broth splashes with pride!

Is ramen with a thick broth common in your neck of the woods? And have you ever seen such a fun temple as this one?

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VeganMoFo 2019: Kinatei, Nara

Posted on August 11, 2019 by Jenny

Nara was one of the places that popped up on every Japanese itinerary I looked at while planning our trip, generally as a day trip from either Kyoto or Osaka. We decided to do it from Kyoto, and it was a reasonably short train ride away. I was pleased to see a few place with vegan options on Happy Cow, meaning that we didn’t need to take a convenience store packed lunch with us: hurray!

The place with the most Happy Cow reviews was Kinatei, a vegetarian place with mostly vegan options. It sounded so popular with tourists that we decided to rush there right from the train station to be there for opening time, fill up on noodles, and then get to the sightseeing. It turned out to be a brilliant plan!

There was a small menu – I think it was pretty much ramen with udon noodles or ramen with soba. For a little appetiser, we were given these pickles, which were colourful but not that remarkable.

Dr HH got the soba noodles, which he said came with exceptionally flavoursome tofu but a relatively bland but pleasant broth.

As usual, I only had eyes for the udon! The noodles were fat and delightful, but otherwise I agreed with Dr HH’s assessment: amazing tofu, pretty meh on the broth.

Most excitingly though, we got some actual Japanese sweets for dessert! Well, some fruit too (YAWN!). These little balls were sweet and sticky, and a very nice treat after lunch.

This place was extremely tourist-friendly, but I would say almost aggressively so – service was very interactive. We were handed a guest book to write a review almost as soon as we got through the door, and were told to put stickers on the wall map showing where we came from. The owner was very chatty, and also took a picture of us and asked for my email address to send it to us. It was nice in a way…but I just wanted to have my lunch in peace! I think some people would love this kind of service and a chance to get to know the locals, but it makes me feel quite awkward. I would still recommend it though, the owner was nice and the food set us up perfectly for an afternoon in Nara.

There are some exciting temples in Nara, but the main thing I knew about it in advance was that there were lots of deer wandering free. Obviously I’m an animal lover…but it’s very much a theoretical love, and I’m terrified of every animal I encounter in the wild. So to me, a trip to Nara was like a trip to Jurassic Park when the fences are down. This was not helped by the fact that I saw the deer in this picture use its nose to press the button to open a shop door. Much like the velociraptors, the deer have learned to open doors!

Most people were getting up close to the deer, stroking them and feeding them – many even manhandling them, which made me feel very uncomfortable. I’m not convinced that most people were acting in the best interests of the deer. I was a bit anxious about getting close to these fearsome beasts…

…in fact, this was as close as I was willing to get!

Do you share my terror of animals in the wild? Has anyone ever taken your picture in a restaurant?

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VeganMoFo 2019: Veg Out, Kyoto

Posted on August 10, 2019 by Jenny

The worst thing about going on holiday is all the other tourists: why are they all so annoying?! I’m sure lots of our fellow adventurers were mad with Dr HH and me when we went to the famous inari temple. I think we did things right by blazing our way up regardless of other people’s photo ops, but it seemed like there were a lot of people harrumphing in our direction. I’m a firm believer that taking a photo with no people in the background is not a human right: if it happens, it happens. I don’t expect anyone else to get out of the way of my stupid photos, and so I’m not wasting my time while other people take nine million snaps trying to get just the right expression.

We got to this temple, with its famous 4km walkway or orange gates, bright and early to try to avoid the crowds, and it worked pretty well. We quick marched to get past the crowds at the start, then had most of the walk more or less to ourselves after that, meaning we got to savour the sights and take all the silly photos we wanted.

Here I am dressed as one of the gates…not intentional, I assure you.

We also encountered some silly tourists back in Kyoto at Veg Out, a lovely light, spacious spot overlooking the river. There was a pretty small menu, but the options were fairly tempting. I ordered the panini, which was filled with roasted veg and allegedly tofu feta, though there was clearly none in mine – not a big deal, but they should have told me when I ordered. It was tasty and filling, a solid lunch.

Dr HH ordered this assorted plate, with some very exciting goujons in the centre, accompanied by fairly bland tofu, nice seaweed, and a few other vegetable sides. It also came with rice and soup. He declared it nice, but a bit unremarkable.

Dessert was a winner though! We ordered strawberry and choc chip muffins which had a great bake and flavour and weren’t too sweet – which seemed to be a hallmark of Japanese desserts, nothing seemed super sugary. It was a bit weird that it came chopped in half like this (everyone knows that the muffin top is all that!), but we could work with that.

The first thing I wrote in my notebook about this place was “Tourist friendly, nice service”, but clearly someone disagreed with me – some other western tourists arrived and wanted to order the panini as well…but they wanted to know exactly which vegetables were in it. They were trying to request some specific vegetables (lettuce, of all things!), while the poor staff tried to explain that they couldn’t really pick and choose. Eventually the tourists declared, “We really need to come back into the kitchen and see your whole vegetable selection” – when this was vetoed, they complained, “Well, coming here was a massive waste of time!”

In conclusion, tourists are the worst. Still, this wasn’t quite as bad as the time we went to Nottingham and some other people in our breakfast spot brought their own sausages and asked the chef to cook them!

Have you ever demanded to see what a cafe has in stock so that you can personalise the lunch option? Or accidentally dressed as the attraction you’re going to see?!

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VeganMoFo 2019: Organic House Salute, Kyoto

Posted on August 9, 2019 by Jenny

From Nagoya we moved on to one of my favourite destinations of the trip, and possibly the one that I was most excited about: Kyoto. I was expecting a calmer pace of life than the other cities we’d visited, and lots of fun temples, and that’s basically what we got, though Kyoto is still a big city and thriving tourist spot, so it wasn’t entirely restful. It’s also quite a sprawling city, meaning that we spent a lot of time hustling between temples and, while there were plenty of vegan options, they weren’t always in our vicinity.

Organic House Salute was really close to our airbnb, so we headed straight there once we’d checked in. It wasn’t the most encouraging of places – it was small and dark, and a bit tricky to find. Also, we had to take off our shoes. How annoying!

Nevertheless, we persisted. The menu was quite small, and truthfully not that inspiring. Dr HH ordered the curry plate, which involved a nice but not mind-blowing vegetable curry, some very good coriander potatoes, and a sweet tofu side dish, along with rice and salad. The verdict was that it was solid but unremarkable.

I got the fish burger, which came with no accompaniments! The burger had a really good fishy taste, and the patty was pristine white inside – I’m really intrigued as to what it was made of. The toasted bun was great too. It was a good and fairly unusual burger, and I’m not sure I’ve had a fish burger before.

And out cake streak continued! Dr HH had this peach and cardamom cake, which was quite subtly flavoured.

I kept going with matcha, trying to make myself like it more. Again, the flavour was quite subtle, and just look at all that base! What fun!

Taking your shoes off in a restaurant: yay or nay?

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VeganMoFo 2019: Vegan in Nagoya

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Jenny

Nagoya only ended up on our Japanese itinerary because there was a sumo wrestling tournament on and we desperately wanted to see it. It was definitely worth going to the sumo, but the city itself was a fun place too and I’m glad we got to see it.

Along with a charming Japanese garden, we also visited the Toyota Museum, which was really fun. For one thing, there was a robot playing the violin! It really played it! It wobbled its head and everything. We also got to see some car assembly robots, which were really fascinating. I wasn’t expecting this museum to be my kind of thing (a bit too sciencey, perhaps), but it was truly excellent!

The sumo was a fun experience, but it was about 90% ceremony, 10% wrestling. It was interesting to watch, and the matches themselves were exciting, but there was a lot of waiting around for action while people bowed and squatted. It was really fun still.

And there were a few vegan places in town too, so hurray for that! When we arrived at lunchtime we made a beeline for Vegefirst, which was a tiny, mostly takeaway bento box place near the castle. It had already sold out at 1:15pm, but one local person arrived right behind us and the staff kindly agreed to hook us up with something.

There was no menu, we were simply given the daily set: brown rice with beans, some kind of tofu dumpling topped with sweet aubergine, various salads, and an excellent curried tofu scramble. We also got a pot of potent spice on the side! This wasn’t the most exciting meal, but it was a tasty, solid lunch, and it was quite a novelty for us. I really liked the idea of serving the little elements in separate cake cases, but found the plastic use a bit wasteful.

Our next spot was another fun little place, Vegi Kitchen GuGu, which was a cosy, laidback cafe. The daily specials menu was not in English, but the regular menu was – the staff spoke little English, but everything went smoothly. Dr HH ordered the tempura plate, because who could resist that?! We were expecting golden, crispy vegetables like we had in Kawaguchiko a couple of days earlier, but instead he was served a veritable nest of oily, salty tempura goodness, all merged together. It included corn, kale, and other good veg. He declared it delicious! It also came with some rice and a nice corn soup.

I got the same sides with mine, but they weren’t really necessary with my nugget plate (that may not have been the correct name, but let’s not kid ourselves: it’s a nugget plate).

The chicken nuggets were delicious, and the chips were nice but a wee bit pale. The vibrant pink sauce tasted unexpectedly of olives, which was nice, but I was not very happy that there was already ketchup on the chips when it was served. Let people decide their own level of sauciness! I like my chips dry, but Dr HH was delighted to take these saucy ones off my hands.

Then finally we found the first cake of the holiday! It was a barren few days, I can tell you. We both ordered the chocolate brownie, which was a nice cake but definitely not a brownie. It was not gooey at all, nor too sweet, but a very pleasant cake.

We were so impressed that we got a couple of slices of carrot and banana cake to take away for breakfast the next day. Alas, this one was surprisingly dry and flavourless – how can that happen with a banana cake?!

Our final stop in Nagoya was actually a familiar one: Itadaki Zen. We’ve previously visited one of these restaurants in London, so we were excited about going to a proper Japanese branch. I was less excited when I learned it was one of those places which requires you to remove your shoes on entry. Sigh. Anyway, we were there right at opening time and there was only one other customer the whole time, but service was painfully slow – we were watching our clocks so we could hop on a train to our next destination, but not much was happening. At least we got this little dish of seaweed and salad to keep us going in the long wait.

We both ordered lunch sets, with slight differences. Dr HH ordered the sushi, which I think was the only sushi we had in three weeks. These were tasty little morsels.

I ordered the nigiri, which were topped with carrot, mushrooms, avocado, and a giant mushroom. They were simple but delicious! Please note that these are not great for sharing, because obviously everyone wants that giant mushroom.

These dishes were the accompaniments to the main event, a big bowl of noodle soup! It was a good savoury broth, but paled in comparison to the magnificent offerings of T’s TanTan. One big point in its favour was that it was not scorching hot, meaning that we were able to slurp it with (relative) abandon. Usually it’s so hot, we don’t know how the locals can bear the temperatures as they’re slurping it down!

Clearly we were making up for lost time on the cake front – I got this chocolate mousse cake…

…and Dr HH got the matcha variety. Both were creamy, and pleasantly mildly flavoured. But, oh for a crunchy base! Cheesecakes with soft, soggy base layers are so disappointing, and a good biscuit base is quite elusive in the vegan world (at least in my circle).

Would you have relinquished that mushroom nigiri for your loved one? (I did!) And how outraged would you be if your chips arrived with ketchup already on them?

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