VeganMoFo 2019: Vegan in Matsumoto

Posted on August 7, 2019 by Jenny

Matsumoto ended up on our Japanese itinerary purely because I saw a picture of this castle and wanted to visit it. And I’d say it was worth it, it was truly a work of art. We saw a few more castles during our travels, but this first one remained the best, possibly just because of that dazzling first impression.

While I loved the castle, it’s possible that there was actually something better in Matsumoto: a vegan cafe! We’d been to a lot of restaurants in our first few days in Japan, but I soon found myself craving a cosy little cafe. We finally found it in The Healthy Penguin, a cosy, friendly place run by a Glaswegian (which meant that the service was more in line with what we’re used to, rather than the hyper polite Japanese style).

They had three lunch options, all served until 2pm, though we arrived at 1:55pm and they still happily hooked us up. When we called in they had a burrito bowl, rainbow noodles, and avo toast. Dr HH enjoyed the noodles, which were fresh and zingy with some excellent textures and a sublime lime and peanut dressing – I could smell it across the table! Meanwhile, I went for the avo toast, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The bread was excellent, there was a generous helping of avocado, and the beetroot hummus was very tasty. Quite a treat!

There was only one dessert left, so we shared a portion of the raw raspberry and lemon tart. We don’t have a lot of faith in raw desserts, so we were relieved to see that this one was just a good old fashioned cheesecake! It was light and tasty, but a wee bit frozen in the centre. Still, this was a charming spot, and we had a really relaxing hour or so in there.

We didn’t actually have any Japanese food in Matsumoto, because in the evening we went along to Everest, an Indian restaurant. Happy Cow led us to believe there’d be some good vegan options, and so it was – there was nothing vegan marked on the menu, but the staff happily informed us of what we could have, and there were quite a few options, starting with the samosas! These were the highlight of the meal. The pastry was excellent, and the filling was really tasty. We weren’t expecting Indian food in Japan to be this good, so it was quite a pleasant surprise!

Dr HH went for his default order, chana masala. He declared it good but a bit too sweet, and bemoaned the presence of some unnecessary peppers. I was more impressed with my spinach and potato curry, which had a pleasant kick to it.

We shared a portion of garlic rice, which was mega garlicky, and and a few off-menu chapatis, which turned out a touch too thin and crispy, but we appreciated the effort, and some bread is always better than no bread!

I don’t usually eat in Indian restaurants on holiday because I suspect the food will never be mind-blowing, nor particularly unique to the place we’re visiting – but in Japan, these Indian restaurants became our safety choice when other vegan options were a bit thin on the ground. In Europe I feel like falafel is always my back up; in Japan, it was Indian food!

There were a few other spots with vegan options that popped up on Happy Cow as well, making Masumoto a good option for a short stay. There wasn’t loads to do, but it was really nice to be in a smaller city. And bonus points to them for having a local bus called the town sneaker!

Indian food, falafel, or something else entirely: what’s your emergency vegan spot on holiday?

 

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VeganMoFo 2019: Itaden, Kawaguchiko

Posted on August 6, 2019 by Jenny

One of my favourite things about our trip to Japan was that we’d planned so much variety. This was perfectly encapsulated in one particular day, when we woke up in a traditional ryokan in a small mountain town, spent the afternoon at a wild theme park with views of Mount Fuji (allegedly – it was so cloudy we couldn’t see a thing!), and then spent the night by a beautiful lake.

We were undecided about how to approach Mount Fuji. We didn’t want to climb it, because that would involve packing a lot of extra gear. So we thought it would be fun to go to the Fuji-Q Highland theme park and view the mountain from afar – from the top of the ferris wheel, essentially. But of course when we got there the weather was abysmal and we couldn’t see a thing beyond the theme park itself. So rest assured, Fuji is out there in the background somewhere. We didn’t see it, but at least we had a fun afternoon at a theme park!

Dr HH loved the rollercoasters and general wildness. I’m just a bit less adventurous (or as I would put it, extremely safety conscious), so I was delighted to see these helpful signs telling us which rides were suitable for dogs. While I’m not sure how good an idea it is to take dogs on any rides, these provided excellent guidance on whether or not a ride was too wild for me.

So here I am looking happy and calm on the teacups, knowing that if a dog can handle it, so can I!

After a wild afternoon of rides, we made the short trip to Kawaguchiko, a little town sitting on one of the lakes surrounding Mount Fuji. Again, we’d expected quite a view, but the clouds scuppered us once more. We were not scuppered on the food front, at least! I was surprised to see that there were quite a few vegan options in town. We only had eyes for Itaden though, as it was a tempura restaurant! What could be better than a whole restaurant dedicated to tempura?!

The first page of the menu confidently states that vegan options are marked in the menu and egg-less batter can be requested either verbally or by pointing at this page in the menu – I was a big fan of that! It turned out that there was only one option that was marked as vegan, but it was a vegetable (yasai) assorted tempura set, so we had no complaints. You could pay a little extra to upgrade for unlimited rice and miso soup, so we went for that.

The batter was lovely and light, and the veg was tender (though Dr HH found the aubergine slice a bit disappointing). The cherry tomatoes and green beans were a bit unexciting, but the yam and pumpkin were beautiful, and the two mushrooms were sublime. This was an excellent meal!

While the food was great and we loved this little town, I was a little dismayed by the service. Not because it was bad, but because it was disconcertingly polite. The staff began every sentence with the word “Sorry”, which made me extremely anxious – especially when it turned out there was nothing to apologise for! It’s safe to say that I returned to Prague with a newfound appreciation for brusque Czech service!

Would you go on any rides that were deemed too scary for dogs? Have you ever been to a tempura restaurant?

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VeganMoFo 2019: Kansuiro Ryokan, Hakone

Posted on August 5, 2019 by Jenny

NOTE: NO LONGER SERVING VEGAN OPTIONS

All my friends who’ve been to Japan recommended staying at a ryokan for at least one night while we were there: this is traditional Japanese accommodation where you are served your meals in your room, sleep on a futon, and are waited on hand and foot. I thought we’d end up missing out on this experience because of our dietary requirements, but Stephanie at Lazy Smurf’s Guide recommended Kansuiro in Hakone and this fit perfectly with our plans. It’s not an all-vegan establishment, but they understand the concept of veganism and are happy to accommodate as long as you specify when booking.

I’d been expecting Tokyo to be overwhelming, and that turned out to be a bit of an understatement: it was total sensory overload, and I’m sure the jet lag didn’t help. I mean, just look at the Robot Restaurant! When I try to explain it to people now, I just end up shaking my head and saying: “I can’t really describe it…”

So a trip to the more rural and relaxing Hakone was definitely a good idea. There were plenty of tourists there, but it was also a lovely serene place with a river racing through the town and trees towering above it.

There’s a beautifully scenic train ride up a nearby mountain that I would highly recommend: in July it’s nicknamed “the hydrangea train” because there are so many in bloom, though Dr HH lamented the fact that the nickname wasn’t “the hytraingea”.

And then the accommodation is essentially an attraction it itself: the building was beautiful, and it was quite the experience! We had a dedicated person essentially waiting on us to bring us whatever food and drink we needed and oversee our stay. On the one hand, it was nice to be doted on. On the other, it’s vaguely uncomfortable to me to have people serving me to that degree. I hate to feel like I’m inconveniencing anyone, and that was basically how I felt the whole time. Also, the person assigned to us did not speak much English, which made us feel like more of a burden. Still, she brought us great food, so I can’t complain!

On arrival, she took us into our room and made us a pot of tea and served us this welcome mochi – the equivalent of leaving a little chocolate on the bed, I suppose! (Incidentally, there were no beds at this stage – the floor was all mats and the low table so we could sit cross-legged and eat, and after dinner the staff came and set up some futons for us. The room was so lovely, with sliding paper doors, and the sound of the river right outside.)

We were told to be in our room by about 5:30pm ready for dinner to start at 6pm – this is my ideal dinner time, so I was delighted! She brought us in one or two dishes at a time, explained what they were and suggested how to eat them, then scurried out. She’d bring the next dish 5-10 minutes later. Honestly, I wish everything had come at once and we’d been left alone, because I wasn’t confident that we were eating everything in the correct way, which is always embarrassing! However, I’m not sure the table could have borne the weight if everything had come at once: we got a lot of food.

This first tray contained some strangely addictive gelatinous slabs which we think were rice-based. We dunked these in the soy sauce. The bowl in the bottom left corner contained a little mountain of shredded radish, a cucumber spire, a piece of red pepper, and some delicious mock meat. And the one at the back had some very good tofu (we ate some excellent tofu on this trip!), with root vegetables and edamame. It was fun having lots of these weird bits and pieces, Dr HH especially is a fan of this approach to eating.

Next up was this soup, which was so close to being amazing! It was essentially a rice cube topped with a juicy mushroom, with a few cucumber slices and an incredibly flavoursome broth. The only problem was that the mushroom was topped with a piece of lime rind, which really overwhelmed everything else – I wish I’d spotted that and removed it first. Still, this was one of the highlights.

This plate was also excellent, though I can’t say with any certainty what things were! On the skewers were some bright green gelatinous slabs absolutely coated in miso sauce – they were incredible! We think the tasty yellow and red vegetable was a yam, and there were some delicious green beans.

This course was a bit of a miss: a huge portion of cold noodles with a fairly bland sauce (there was a dollop of wasabi which we were advised to use to season the sauce, but I hate wasabi and Dr HH said it wasn’t that much of an improvement anyway). So there wasn’t much flavour going on, and it was such a big portion that it really filled us up when we would have prepared to save room for the more exciting elements.

This was also a fairly hearty serving, with some rice, vegetables, and pickles. Again, it wasn’t the most exciting, but there was a piece of delicious charred aubergine in there which just toed the line between pleasantly charred and acrid.

This was more like it! Everybody loves the tempura course! The batter was nice and light, though some of the veg choices (green bean) were a bit uninspired. The two big round pieces seemed to have some miso in the middle, though we couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. Either way, it was sensational!

After that, the quality dropped off a bit: the miso soup was fine but unspectacular…

…and the less said about dessert, the better. But overall it was a lot of food, and the first time we really got to see all these exciting little components of Japanese cuisine.

We were quite full after all of that, and probably didn’t need the massive breakfast we got in the morning. But we ate it all, obviously! This time, we got all the food at once and were left to eat it in peace, which made for a more relaxing experience for us. In the bottom left corner you can see a colourful plate of pickles – I probably ate more pickled things on this trip than in my entire life beforehand, and they did grow on me a bit. We were really excited to see that charred aubergine again just above the pickles, but this time it was definitely acrid and was not enjoyable at all. It was also paired with a lot of ginger, which didn’t help matters. This was quite a disappointing dish. We ate the nori sheets dunked in soy sauce and paired with rice, which made for a nice recovery after the aubergine disaster.

In the top left corner was something we described as “mushroom mush”, and I can be no more specific than that, except to say that it was really earthy but a bit samey. The dish to the right of that was delicious: some greens and tofu skin in a little bit of flavoursome broth. We both loved this, and the tofu in the top right corner which was really nicely prepared. In the bottom right is a soup with tofu cubes in it, which was an improvement on the dull miso soup of the night before. The big tray also included some rice, nori sheets, and soy sauce, which reliably filled us up.

The side salad was quite boring, though I was excited to see white asparagus. And I’m not a big fruit eater, as you may have realised, so I could have lived without that.

There were a few bland or unremarkable bits in both meals, but overall they were real feasts and we loved pecking at all the different things.

Besides the food, part of the ryokan experience is the onsen, or public baths. Dr HH and I are deeply, deeply British in our aversion to sitting naked in a bath with complete strangers, so I decided to splurge on a room with a private bath, and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The hot spring water was just lovely (though very, very hot!), and it was nice to be able to dip in and out at leisure.

It was an expensive night, and the experience of being waited on was weird, but I would go back again in a second. This was one of my favourite locations of the holiday, and it came at just the right time as well.

Being waited on hand and foot: dream holiday, or mega awkward?

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VeganMoFo 2019: T’s TanTan, Tokyo

Posted on August 4, 2019 by Jenny

Several days into my Japanese VeganMoFo theme, it’s finally time for some bonafide Japanese food! I wasn’t really sure how much Japanese food we’d find in vegan eateries, and I’d expected to find a reasonable amount of vegan sushi. But in fact we only had sushi once in the whole trip, and the real dish that delighted us was ramen. I hadn’t eaten much ramen before, but I was very excited about the prospect of trying it at the various T’s establishments around Tokyo, as I’d heard from other vegan travellers that this is Tokyo’s must-visit vegan establishment.

Usually I’m quite the traditionalist when it comes to breakfast food, whereas Dr HH believes that any food at all can be eaten first thing in the morning. So he was quite shocked on our first morning in Japan when I suggested that we go for a ramen breakfast. He was less shocked when I explained that T’s was basically the only place in Japan that serves vegan options before 11am: he knows I wake up hungry! Suffering with jet lag, we woke up at the crack of dawn on our first day in Japan, watched England get dumped out of the Women’s World Cup, and then battled through the rush hour traffic to go for a restorative bowl of ramen at the branch of T’s in Ueno Station. (As a bonus, it’s in the same neck of the woods as Senso-ji, the temple at Asakusa.

The breakfast menu is served from 7-10am and has four options. I kicked off the holiday with the Tantan noodles, and they were amazing! The broth was quite nutty and had a really good kick to it, and T’s did not skimp on the noodles. There were also some beansprouts and greens in there, along with what we deemed a “beefy ball” which was supremely flavoursome, though trial and error taught me that the best approach was to crumble it and spread the goodness around.

It was one of those rare occasions where neither of us was sure who had chosen the better dish: Dr HH’s shouyu (soy sauce) ramen was also exceptional. The broth was really savoury and delicious, with a good hit of soy sauce. The noodles were accompanied by beansprouts, spring onions, and some tofu chunks that were exciting, if a bit soggy. All in all this was a good hearty breakfast and set us up for our Tokyo adventures, and for a love affair with ramen that would continue throughout the holiday!

There’s another branch of T’s TanTan at Tokyo Station, and we actually had three meals from there on the day we went for a day trip to Nikko (highly recommended, by the way – it was a nice change of pace from Tokyo, and the temples were amazing).

The breakfast menu, which also starts at 7am, was identical to that of Ueno Station. Dr HH tried the same dish I’d had the day before, while I resisted that temptation and tried something different. The dashi-udon had quite a simple broth that lacked the depth of flavour of the other dishes. Udon noodles are my favourite, and these were delightfully fat and lovely. The tofu was really good too, but I wish there’d been more of it. I wouldn’t rush to try this one again.

For our lunch we got some beef lunch boxes to take away with us and eat in Nikko. Disappointingly, they came in a lot of plastic (everything in Japan is made of plastic and wrapped in plastic), but they were really tasty and better than what I would have expected from a takeaway lunch. The beef had a great texture, and there was a nice gingery flavour running through it. And the portion of rice was very generous. This was solid packed lunching!

And then we were back for more in the evening when we got off the train! The gold sesame tantan had a similar nutty broth to the breakfast one, and the same beefy ball. However, it was more exciting than the breakfast version, because it had more stuff in general, including a dollop of peanut butter and a heap of sesame seeds. These are all good things in my book!

Dr HH was slightly less impressed by his ma-po tantan, which had a great savoury broth but quite bland tofu. Fortunately, the staff bring out a little pot of spice with each meal, so he could add a bit more flavour himself.

On our last day in Japan, we got the shinkansen from Hiroshima back to Tokyo and couldn’t resist popping in to T’s one more time for a quick lunch. This time I went for the black sesame noodles, which looked suitably dramatic. This was quite similar to the golden version, but perhaps not quite as good.

And we have no recollection of what Dr HH ordered, we were too tired to make any notes by this stage! There were lots of vegetables, we weren’t keen on the addition of cherry tomatoes, and it was the least impressive of the bunch. So let’s pretend we made a strategic decision not to take note of its name…

There are a few different side dishes that can be added to each bowl – every time we went, we opted for the dumplings, because we’re no fools. They were nicely fried and flavoursome. We had some good dumplings while we were in Japan, but I do wish there had been more!

Would you believe that these are two completely different desserts?! The top one is soy milk pudding, while the bottom is ice cream. The pudding was strange and gelatinous, and pretty much exactly what you would expect from a soy milk pudding: fine, but weird. The ice cream was better, if only because it was less gelatinous, but these are never going to be contenders for the best dessert of the holiday.

I think every branch of T’s stocked these pot noodles as well. I’ve never been a fan of these products, but this one made for a solid and reliable emergency meal. It came with four components: noodles, sauce (an actual packet of sauce, it wasn’t dried), some dried veg, and a bit of spice. The spice was certainly spicy! It was easy to make just by adding boiling water, and we both found it better than expected. Again, given the dearth of vegan breakfast options for the early birds, this was useful to have on standby.

Possibly the best thing about the T’s chain is that there’s a branch at Narita Airport! This was truly a game changer for us. On our flight from Dusseldorf to Tokyo I’d found the in-flight food largely inedible, so we were a bit anxious about how we’d cope on the long journey home. We had snacks with us, of course, but we decided to get to the airport nice and early so we could fit in a proper breakfast before our flight. The menu was shorter than the other branches, and contained no dishes that were unique to this branch, so nothing special to report here, besides the novelty and relief of having a great vegan option in an airport! It was a fitting farewell to the Japanese vegan scene, and we were very pleased that our ramen adventures both started and ended in T’s. There’s lots more good ramen to come this month too…

Noodles for breakfast: yay or nay? Which one of these dishes would you try?

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VeganMoFo 2019: Nataraj Harajuku Omotesando, Tokyo

Posted on August 3, 2019 by Jenny

Harajuku has a reputation for all the crazy cosplay kids and fun outfits, but when we went on a Wednesday lunchtime it was disappointingly sane. In fact, one of the things that disappointed me about Japan was how unexciting the fashion was: everyone wore black or neutral colours, and regular high street clothes. Everyone seemed to be dressing to blend in all the time. Whenever we saw anyone wearing anything brightly coloured or with a bold pattern, we were very excited!

While the fashions of Harajuku may have been disappointing, the food was not! We were in the area to take a stroll along Takeshita-dori, a shopping street which was billed as quirky and fun but was actually quite underwhelming and repetitive, and visit the nearby Meiji shrine, which was much better. We had eyed up this Indian vegetarian restaurant as an ideal lunch spot.

The menu clearly labelled which items were vegan, and there were plenty to choose from – there was also a lunch buffet on, which did not label the vegan dishes, which was a bit disappointing. So we stuck with the menu and each ordered a premier set: curry, salad, and a choice of rice or naan.

The salad had this weird dressing that we encountered in many eateries in Japan – I don’t know what it was exactly, but there was lots of it, and it wasn’t great.

I ordered my go-to Indian dish: aloo gobi. It was a very good one too! It was spiced, but not too spicy, and had really good chunks of potato.

Dr HH was equally pleased with his baingan bharta, a tasty aubergine curry. It was listed as “spicy”, but he deemed it a solid “medium”, so bear that in mind if you’re ordering here.

We’re no fools, so we both ordered bread instead of rice. There were several vegan naans, so we split a garlic and a sesame. Garlic naan is always our first choice, and this was a good one. Sesame was something of a novelty, and we only ordered it because we’d never seen such a dish before. It was a bit underwhelming, and there’s perhaps a reason it hasn’t really caught on.

We were very excited to see vegan soy mango lassis on the menu, so we had to try them – it looked quite curdled, but tasted delicious! There were a few vegan dessert options too, but we were too full to partake.

This place was also our first encounter with the Japanese phenomenon of the call button. Quite often in Japan there’s a little bell or buzzer, and you press it when you want service. On the one hand, it’s obviously very practical and saves us that five minute dance of trying to catch someone’s eye. But on the other hand, it feels very demanding and decidedly non-British to press a button and demand service! We did eventually become a little bolder when using these over the three weeks, but it’s hard not to feel apologetic about it.

Have you ever had to ring a bell for table service in a restaurant? How socially awkward was it for you?!

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VeganMoFo 2019: Starbucks, Tokyo

Posted on August 2, 2019 by Jenny

I continue to be a terrible tourist who only eats western food and goes to Starbucks on holiday! But before you think too badly of me, please note the swarm of people in the background here: this is the Starbucks right above the famous Shibuya Crossing, where seemingly millions of people cross in the multiple directions every few minutes. The 1st floor Starbucks seems to be the best place to sit and observe the mayhem, if you’re willing to wait long enough for a window seat to become available – as you can see, we’d made it quite a way through our drinks before we got our chance!

Japan was at times a terribly confusing place, but Starbucks actually made things a bit easier by giving out these little cards to anyone who ordered a drink with soy milk. Then I simply handed this over to the barista when I collected the drinks, and we could clearly see that I’d got the non-dairy version. The cup also came with a little sticker on it to make doubly sure! For a paranoid, confused vegan, this was a great idea!

Even if you’re anti-Starbucks, it’s worth making an exception to enjoy the spectacle of the crossing. I think it’s probably more fun to people watch here now that everyone’s got smart phones and social media: we loved watching the dedicated souls who crossed a million times filming their partner from various angles until they managed to get that elusive perfect shot. The high (low?) point for us was when one woman crossed barefoot, sprinted to the centre of the crossing ahead of the crowds, and turned in slow circles while her partner filmed her. Arty.

On our various Starbucks stops around Japan, I always ordered the soy matcha latte. Truthfully I’m not that keen on matcha, but I felt a duty to try to like it as I was in Japan. It was better than the matcha lattes I’ve had in Europe, so there’s that at least.

Have you ever forced yourself to try to enjoy a national dish even though you really weren’t into it? Or have you ever sprinted barefoot into the middle of a busy crossing to get that perfect shot for social media?! Be honest now…

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VeganMoFo 2019: Ain.Soph, Tokyo and Kyoto

Posted on August 1, 2019 by Jenny

Sometimes I feel like quite an unlikely candidate for my relatively adventurous life of packing up and moving to new countries and taking exciting city breaks galore: almost every kind of transport makes me feel sick, travelling makes me very anxious, and I’m a creature of habit and comforts. The adventures always make it worthwhile though, don’t they? Still, when we finally landed in Tokyo after a long journey in the beginning of July, all I wanted was a bit of comfort food.

We were staying in Shinjuku, for proximity to the train station and some good vegan spots, so it was only a ten minute walk to our first eatery, Ain.Soph Ripple. Of course it would have been fun to have some Japanese food right away, but we’d been travelling for so long and were so overwhelmed, it had to be burgers!

This place was a small, predominantly takeaway place with one big communal table, a nice relaxed atmosphere, and an excellent Aimee Mann soundtrack. The menu consisted of four different burgers, one salad, a burrito and burrito bowl, and a few side dishes. I can rarely resist mock chicken, so I opted for the crispy chicken burger. It did not disappoint! The patty had great texture and taste, and was really juicy and delicious, except for getting a bit lost under all that tartare sauce.

Dr HH got the messiest burger he could, as usual. This was the ripple cheese burger, which he described as extremely slippery and impractical, but very tasty. It featured a beef patty, some avo, cheese, and fried onions: all the good stuff, basically.

We also had a good salty hit of fries, which were pretty standard fast food fare and hit the spot.

After so much travelling, of course we needed a dessert too! They offered waffles and French toast, and we decided to share the latter – we weren’t really hungry at this point, we just wanted the first sweet treat of the holiday. Due to something of a miscommunication with the server, we ended up with a little pot of sour cream on the side. Dr HH was bold enough to assume that the Japanese had discovered a delicacy that the rest of us have overlooked by pairing French toast with sour cream…alas, they have not. It was not a good combo. Fortunately, the toast on its own was excellent: super soft inside, with lovely flavours of coconut and maple.

As we were paying up, we also snaffled a packet of cookies to take home for breakfast the next day (cookies are an acceptable holiday breakfast, as far as I’m concerned). They were crunchy and delicious!

There are two other Ain.Soph branches in Tokyo, which we hadn’t planned to visit. That plan was scuppered somewhat when one of our other eateries turned us away because they were too full, so we soon found ourselves at the fancier Shinjuku branch, Ain.Soph Journey. Dr HH and I arrived here with extremely different appetites and took wildly opposing attitudes to ordering. I went for a plate of karaage, which quickly became my favourite dish in Japan: basically, fried chicken. This was sublime, so juicy and tender. I thought it might come with chips, but I didn’t complain (too much).

Dr HH, on the other hand, ordered the Everything Course, a set menu including a little bit of everything from the menu (well, not quite everything, but a lot!). Unfortunately, most of the dishes were a bit underwhelming. The salad parfait sounded exciting but it was just a salad in a glass – though the dressing was reportedly very tasty. The tomato soup was a bit uninspired. On the main plate, the karaage was the highlight (good to know I’d picked a winner!), the Spanish omelette was good but not groundbreaking, and the wrap was very leafy but still flavoursome.

His dessert plate was also a bit underwhelming: there was some fruit (yawn), a strawberry cake with cream on top, and some rum and raisin ice cream. They were all good but not overwhelmingly so. My dessert, on the other hand…

…will go down in history as one of the all time greats. The creme brulee was so delicious! It was smooth and creamy, with a perfectly caramelised top. Also, bonus points for how massive it was! Dr HH was extremely jealous that the two dishes I chose were so exquisitely superior to his.

But he didn’t have to miss out for long! We couldn’t resist visiting Ain.Soph Journey Kyoto at the halfway point of our trip, largely so he could have a full portion of this masterpiece and not just a few spoonfuls of mine.

They had burgers on their menu, unlike the Tokyo branch of the same name – I stuck with my chicken one, and Dr HH went one better with the cutlet burger, which had quite a hammy texture and taste, and a sauce that perfectly balanced the sweet and savoury. It was one of the all time great burgers!

And he got the creme brulee for dessert, while I tried the chocolate gateau, which was insanely rich and chocolatey – very good indeed, but possibly a bit much after a big dinner.

And on our last night in Japan we decided to return to Ain.Soph Journey Tokyo to revisit some of our favourite dishes: we shared a plate of delicious karaage, along with these cutlets, which were the same ones Dr HH had in his burger in Kyoto. Then we split a couple of desserts: the creme brulee, one last time (who knows when we’ll have a dessert that good again?!), and the heavenly pancakes, which seems to be something of a speciality. They were very plump, cakey pancakes, so I was a big fan – they were not as good as the creme brulee, but were still a great dessert.

I know nobody really wants to be that tourist who visits a country with amazing local dishes and just eats burgers…but Japan was quite an overwhelming country to visit, and we found these comfort food options to be very much a necessity from time to time. And while there were many surprising things about Japan, the fact that I found one of the all time great creme brulees there is perhaps the biggest surprise of all!

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VeganMoFo 2019!

Posted on July 29, 2019 by Jenny

It’s almost time for my favourite month of the year: VeganMoFo! Starting on Thursday, I’ll be posting every day for the whole of August. As I’ve just returned from a three week holiday, my theme this year could only be: Eating Around Japan. It was the holiday of a lifetime, and the route we followed (in the map above) was the perfect balance of thriving modern cities, peaceful temples, and beautiful scenery. Every day was completely different from the one before, and full of some amazing new experiences. Dr HH and I had been daydreaming about this trip almost from the day we met, so it had a lot to live up to: it did not disappoint.

And I’m pleased to report that the food was also very good! We had some of the all time great ramen, some thrilling twists on tofu (have I just gone up a vegan level by describing tofu as “thrilling”?), and one of the greatest desserts of all time.

So I hope you’ll read along throughout August to discover the numerous incredible things we saw, did, and ate. And if you’ve been considering a trip to Japan yourself, maybe I’ll give you the push you need to go ahead and book it – I’m sure you won’t regret it!

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Vegan in Prague: Lifehouse

Posted on June 24, 2019 by Jenny

UPDATE: this restaurant closed in 2023

I’ve been stuck in something of a food rut lately – too tired to dig into a new cookbook, always preferring the comfort of recipes that I know and love. And even though the vegan scene in Prague continues to expand on an almost weekly basis, I haven’t had my old enthusiasm for venturing across the city looking for a new spot to try. On that note, I’m going to take a brief hiatus from this blog for a few weeks while I’m on holiday, and hopefully return reinvigorated (and ready for VeganMoFo in August – sign ups here if you’re interested!).

It seems fitting to finish for the holidays with a brief post on a quick and simple lunch I grabbed in the city centre recently. The centre of Prague is incredibly beautiful if you’re a tourist – and incredibly annoying if you live here! The streets are quite small and winding, and, unsurprisingly, there are tourists everywhere who want to stop and savour everything, making it difficult for those of us who are simply try to hustle from A to B. Also, the city centre doesn’t have the best vegan options, more’s the pity.

Lifehouse is a solid option for a light bite though, and it’s located really close to Wenceslas Square. It’s a teeny tiny place with just a few stools in a really cramped area, so it’s definitely better as a takeaway option. They have a small menu, with some milkshakes, some very exciting looking cakes, and some of the open-faced sandwiches that the Czechs love so much.

There are three toppings available, and we tried the avocado and the cheese (the third was ‘egg’). The avo one was solid – it’s hard to go wrong with well-seasoned mashed up avo! The cheese one was beautiful, so creamy and flavoursome. I’ll definitely be back again for that one! However, I felt like both of these would have been better on toast than just bread, if only because the size of the slice and the weight of the topping made it extremely floppy and difficult to manage!

So if you do find yourself in need of a quick bite in the city centre, this could well be the spot for you!

Friends, I’ll be back at the end of July, hopefully with tales of all the exciting food that Japan has to offer! See you then!

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Vegan Products: M&S Plant Kitchen Range – Part Two

Posted on June 17, 2019 by Jenny

Great news: the second wave of M&S’ Plant Kitchen range has made it to Prague! (Actually, I think some of these were first wave, but they’ve only made it here recently, so they’re still new and exciting to me.) I reviewed some of the earlier products I tried, and now here’s another batch. It’s so exciting to me that I can pop to M&S and get products like this on my way home from work!

I’d been looking out for the no pork sausoyges for a while because I’d heard that they were shockingly meaty. And it’s true! The taste, the texture, everything is spot on! I’ve always been loyal to Linda McCartney sausages, but these are my new favourites. They make for a top notch sausage sarnie!

The no beef burgers were also excitingly meaty – we don’t buy burgers that often, but these are definitely good to keep in the freezer for emergencies.

These nuggets are one of my new favourite things! If Dr HH is out socialising of an evening, I always pick up a packet of these for my dinner…and usually have a splash of M&S vegan wine to go with them. Very classy! The texture is so good, the outer crumb is good and crunchy, and they taste great.

I had really high hopes for the mac bites but actually, they were not great. The picture on the box shows each individual piece of macaroni, but in reality the inside was just mush: no shape, and no bite to it at all. They tasted fine, but they weren’t at all what I was hoping for, and I wouldn’t pick them up again – even with the yellow sticker.

The not-zzarella sticks were also very high on my wish list, and I almost screamed when I saw there was one box remaining. These were gooey inside, and had a really tasty crumb coating – nice junk food! I prefer all of the meaty goods to these cheesier ones, but I will still grab some of these again, should the opportunity present itself (so far I’ve only spotted them in the Wenceslas Square branch).

And finally, some dessert! The chocolate mousse pot was rich and creamy, a really good sweet treat. I’m so happy that this kind of dessert is available now!

There are still a few things in the range that don’t seem to have made it to Prague (isn’t there a pizza?), and a few that I just haven’t been inspired to try (the tofu teriyaki). British friends, am I missing out? What should I try next?!

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