Hey erfoud! We were in NYC at the same time, and went to many of the same places! how odd...
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Hey erfoud! We were in NYC at the same time, and went to many of the same places! how odd...
Fancy that, Brycee!
Yeah, I´ve just read your post and we might have been sitting side by side in one of these eateries...
Well as a matter of fact, you londoners don´t have much to envy from NY, as you have plenty of veggie restaurants (I fondly remember "Chi" near Trafalgar Square, or Red Veg at Dean street!) and well stocked Holland&Barret where you can find great delicacies. How I wish there was smthing like that in forlorn Spain!
Oh I love NYC! CONGRATS on your trip! That sounds like so much fun!!! I have only been twice for short amounts of time and don't know much about the city... but I wanted to just comment on the brands you mentioned- I know for a fact that sadly Juicy Couture DOES use REAL ANIMAL FUR on some of their clothes. I acutally bought some of their tracksuits and shirts and purses before I became vegan or knew anything about it. So I just wanted you to know.
As for MAC, I own TONS of their makeup but haven't bought anything else since switching to vegan either... so I would love it if someone else knew about their products. They're AWESOME, but I am not sure if they do involve animal testing or not:confused:
Have fun on your trip!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i'm off to the US in a few days and i'm really excited.
has anyone been to Kajitsu? looks like it's fairly new. i thought i'd decided where to eat as i'm only there for three nights but then i heard about this place and i'm wondering whether to give it a try. there are a couple of glowing reviews on Yelp and the menu sounds amazing.
http://www.kajitsunyc.com/
i'm going to Red Bamboo on the first night, as it's the only place i want to go that'll still be open when i reach New York (so much for 'the city that never sleeps'!); and Blossom and Candle 79 - i'm considering doing Candle 79/Candle Cafe for lunch instead of dinner so i can check out Kajitsu, as they're only open in the evenings.
I've never heard of it but wow, pricey!
I've heard of the others and I think it's a great plan. I want to do Candle 79 as soon as I move back and Red Bamboo looks great too. You have to go here for desert though: http://www.lulassweetapothecary.com/
:thumbsup:
Reviews when you get back please! :D
thanks Dia, that looks great, and it's in the area i'm staying. i'll definitely check it out :)
Kajitsu does indeed look pricey but i love Japanese food and it's pretty much a once in a lifetime trip for me, so i'm making the most of it :D
Careful, Gorilla, I didn't see any promise that they don't use for example egg or dairy in any of the dishes. In case you don't know, in America "vegetarian food" often contains egg, dairy, and honey. [I'm not sure how it is commonly thought of where you live so I thought to mention it.]
edit to add: I see several reviews mention they believe it to be vegan but I haven't seen the restaurant themselves state so. Many Zen Buddhists use dairy I believe:
Q: Are eggs and milk included in vegetarian diet?
A: Buddhism encourages vegetarian diet out of compassion for the animals. Eggs may be fertilized and therefore have consciousness, so we don’t eat eggs. Milk does not involve killing of the animal, so dairy products are fine.
Google "kajitsu vegan". You will find many, many articles describing Kajitsu as a vegan restaurant.
Mmmm! Have you got room in your suitcase for a stowaway, Gorilla?
Rootmaster in London are vegan yet they don't explicitly describe themselves as such on their website either. it's not unheard of.
Lulas is a must! Blythe is so sweet and happy to let you know where to get other vegan goodies too.
Yeah, there used to be a restaurant called Gardners opposite Chelsea football ground, and they used to call it a "restaurant potager" or something like that IIRC. The proprietors reckoned that calling it "vegan" would put non-vegan customers off coming in. ETA this was before websites were invented I think :D
kajitsu is not a vegan or vegetarian restaurant. It is a restaurant that serves traditional religious Japanese food that happens to be entirely veggie or vegan.
I think it is a good move not to label itself as a veg*n restaurant as it will pigeon hole itself with a movement it is not part off.
Hare Krishna eateries advertise themselves as veggie food and get mocked and probably looses custom from some omnis for what is in fact a religious diet eatery.
The style food this restaurant serves is called shojin, short for shojin ryori. Although Gorilla knows them to also be vegan, people shouldn't walk away thinking shojin = vegan. It's probably a safe bet to assume shojin restaurants are usually vegetarian but here's an example of a San Francisco "new shojin" restaurant named Medecine that serves several forms of fish. [Once at the site click on "Bento" and read the first four options] In case people are unaware that fish are animals they've denoted that fact on their menu with the letter A in brackets. [A]
"* all bento boxes contain NO animal ingredients unless indicated by [A]"
I just spent 10 days in NY.
Lula's Apothecary was good for ice cream but there wasn't much in the way of cakes - at least not on the day I was there - just some chocolate covered pretzels and peanut butter truffles. The shop front is very low key and I walked past without noticing it so keep 'an eye out for it. It is listed as a stockist for Sweet and Sara marshmallows but I didn't notice any there. (Sweet & Sara stockist are listed on their website - only some Wholefoods branches carry them so if you are keen to find them it's worth checking.)
I was very disappointed at Dirt Candy and would not recommend it. There aren't many choices. They veganised our starters and mains but we both thought all dishes were very bland and boring except for the dessert which was quite nice. Also they had no idea whether any of the wines were vegan. :rolleyes:
All my usual favourite haunts like Red Bamboo, Blossom, Candle 79 and Candle Cafe did not disappoint.
Counter, Pure Food & Wine and Curly's were nice as usual. I tried Zen Palate (twice) and Pomme Frittes (just chips) for the first time and both were great.
At Sacred Chow as before I wasn't that impressed with the main dishes but the dessert was fab - their home made truffle cake was one of the best cakes I had on the trip!
There were some great new Purely Decadent ice cream flavours (like Pomegranate Chip, Key Lime Pie and the ones made from coconut) - all delicious. I also had Blackwells dark chocolate sorbet and some frozen yogurt dessert.
Previously people said they couldn't find Peanut Chews anywhere - I found they were everywhere so I don't know where you lot were looking!
Can't wait to go back in December! Looking forward to hearing your reviews soon Gorilla. :)
Forgot to mention Jivamuktea Cafe near Union Square. We only had soup and cupcakes there but it was very nice, I'd like to go there again.
I watched the NY Dosa food cart guy (in Washington Square) making his wares but sadly didn't have enough room to eat anything at the time.
For anyone who might care to know, that information is not nearly as readily available to American vegans (or American vegan restaurants) for several reasons:
A) We don't have an annual compendium in the way of the "Animal free shopper" guide to confer.
B) There is no equivalent organization to the UK's Vegan Society here who monitors and certifies the vegan status of beer and wine companies.
C) I've never seen the word "vegan" or an ingredients list on any bottle of beer in my life here (I almost never drink wine so I can't comment on that), the only way to tell is to contact the company in question personally each time you buy it and hope they are willing to cooperate. About half the time the response I get is,"We are under no legal obligation to inform you about any ingredients that aren't allergens nor the filtration or finning process we are currently using this month. We consider it a trade secret."
About all we can do is compare email responses with each other from those who do cooperate and hope they are accurate and up to date which is always sketchy, at best. They could change at any time since they haven't been certified by anyone and are free to change their finning/filtration process and ingredients at any time, for any reason, and with no indication of such on their label.
As all wine is labelled with the year in which it was made and all the bottles of wine in that year's batch would be produced in the same way it couldn't suddenly change status. If a company's 2004 Chardonnay is confirmed to be vegan then all the bottles of 2004 Chardonnay will be vegan, of course the 2005 may not be, but then it would be immediately obvious from looking at the bottle that it is a different wine.
Of course it's not always easy to find out which wines are vegan, but there are some wine producers that have such information readily available, and I would expect a vegetarian restaurant that caters for vegans to ensure that all their wines are vegetarian and to know which ones are vegan.
Arguably, but some of us drink NV wine. To the best of my knowledge all beer is NV.
You can't have a "confirmed product" without having a "confirming organization" such as the Vegan Society, UK who absolutely never address American wineries.
If I contact a US winery and ask what fining compound they are currently using, even if they do divulge this info to me there is absolutely no guarantee they won't switch the next morning to an alternate one for any number of reasons, such as cost.
There are lots of beers that are vegan. Everywhere, there are whole hosts of Canadian and US breweries that do announce themselves as vegan friendly. It is always best to contact them directly though if you feel it could be an issue. There is a wonderful thread on this forum where people are contacting companies on a regular basis and US based websites that do the same with US/ Canandian brews.
Would you please kindly name one that "announces" they are vegan? All I've ever found were ones that coincidentally at the time of someone's email correspondence said they were currently only using bentonite clay as a fining compound, for example, but an established, "known" American beer company that actually announces by label (or website) that they are vegan would be most useful to me. That gives me an assurrance that they won't change day to day. Thanks.
The best thing you can do is e-mail the company direct list here
http://www.barnivore.com/beer
I beg to differ. There are none. That is to say there are no established name brand American or Canadian beer manufacturers which announce by label or website that their product is promised to be vegan, nor is there any outside vegan certification organization such as the Vegan Society UK which certifies American or Canadian breweries.
Thank you for the Barnivore link, which I've seen before.
Enchantress, although I signed up, I am unable to access the on-line version of the "Animal Free Shopper" because when I attempt to the system blocks me and says," Unauthorized/Unable to access due to computer server in some other country/ not UK"
Might you please do me a favor and tell me one of these California/US wines they've certified?
Thanks.
Edit to add: I've just tried again and successfully got on for the first time! All the California made wines seem to be supermarket brands we don't have here: The Co-operative, Asda, and Waitrose. I did a search on "California" and it states "Results for california returned 17 entries of which 1 have a Vegan ® trademark " yet I don't see the green flower symbol next to any of them?:confused: [Not that I could easily buy any of these short of importing them from one of your supermarkets.]
Thanks though.
You are using the word announcing as to shout from the rooftops ''we're vegan'' no you have to contact companies and ask them. That is how everyone else has to do it. For a company to suddenly change from Bentonite to fining's is a very costly and expensive thing to do. The whole fermenting and brewing system has to be cleaned completely and it can shut production for days.
Most companies are able to know how much beer, cider and wine they are making by the amounts of ingredients they have to start with. By doing this they are able to work out how much Bentonite to buy to clarify it as it is cheaper to buy things in bulk sometimes.
Changing from Fining's to Bentonite can change the whole essence and taste of a beer and to suddenly change from one to another would make the quality differ. Fosters and Carling get away with chucking occasional fining's in because they are p**swater and have no flavour to ruin.
The US does need a vegan society too, start one or ask other Canadians and US vf beer fans to contact a proportion of the breweries themselves.
The UK vegan society does ask US brew companies whether they are vegan or not and report this information back. Samual Adams is one that consistantly reply to UK vegan society questions and are updated on Barnivore as vegan 5 nours ago. That is quite an update really.
And yet as you mentioned we know for a fact some do switch fining agents such as Fosters did recently.
Bentonite is a fining agent, BTW, although it is a vegan one.
Same could be said of all American beers, no? [Just joking. I can say that because I am an American, BTW, I never would have cracked such a nationalistic joke of another country, that is.]Quote:
Fosters and Carling get away with chucking occasional fining's in because they are p**swater and have no flavour to ruin.
A search of the Animal Free Shopper for Samuel Adams came up empty. Might you mean Samuel Smith, from your country?Quote:
The UK vegan society does ask US brew companies whether they are vegan or not and report this information back. Samual Adams is one...
Speaking of Sam Adams, from their FAQ website:
Are Samuel Adams® beers vegan?
The Samuel Adams brewers do not use any animal products in the beer.
None in the beer but what about to filter it? Also I guess the honey they use in their Honey Porter and Cherry Wheat must be some new kind made from petroleum!:p Considering whoever wrote this web page doesn't know bees are animals, I kind of doubt they'd even know what isinglass is. I certainly didn't before becoming a vegan, I only knew of it as a form of mica (mineral).
Of the 267 beers listed at VS/UK I did see two I think of as American, Michelob and Budweiser, unfortunately I drink neither, and know some of theirs have honey right in the name also.
:confused:
Above I listed all the other places I've eaten at (this trip and previously) and all of them can tell me (and 99% have it marked on the menu) which wines are suitable for vegans. In all those vegetarian eateries the wines which aren't marked as vegan are stated to be vegetarian.
So really it cannot be as hard as you say to find this stuff out Mahk.
Actually I said: I never said it was impossible, just much harder to ascertain.
We don't have seven different supermarkets like :
ASDA, Co-Op, M&S, Sainsburys, Somerfield, Tesco, or Waitrose all of which supply free prepared detailed lists of vegetarian and vegan wines and beers options. We have in fact none.
We don't have a single name brand of US beer that labels their product with the word "vegan" either on the label or their website.
We don't have a comparable watchdog/ monitoring/ certification organization looking out for us such as the Vegan Society, UK which releases an annually updated list of (currently) 267 readily available vegan beers in the UK market, 58 with green sunflower symbol certification stamps or 1507 readily available vegan wines, 190 of which having green sunflower symbol certification. Only a handful of these are coincidentally available here in the US market and we have no guarantee their brewery methods are identical for our US distributed versions.
Since veganism isn't as well respected here in the US we don't have as candid email responses from companies when we do privately contact them and even when we do get a response the answer can be considered transitory at best since their selection of fining agents has nothing to do with having to maintain a "vegan status"; after all not a single one has claimed to be vegan in the first place [with beer at least] so they might switch at any time for any reason as did Fosters recently and also St. Peters Brewery:
"... brewers change the ways in which they brew their beer. A case in point is that St Peter’s Brewery (Suffolk), a brand of beers to be found on many UK supermarket shelves, has recently started fining with isinglass all its beers. When Linda McCartney foods switched the ingredients of their vegetarian sausages away from solely vegan, they advertised the switch with the word “improved” on the box – a warning bell for all vegans. Brewers do not advertise changes either to ingredients or to conditioning method. Until recently, St Peter’s classed (although never labeled) some of its beers as suitable for vegans. Information is only any good if it is up-to-date."
Source.
You might want to ask these restaurants their source of data. If they respond that they are going by Barnivore (as I know one veg*n restaurant near me states they do on their menu), you are taking a big chance. Barnivore data is completely unsubstantiated and merely average Joes, nobodies, writing in claiming to have received email responses from various companies. If someone types in "I emailed Burger King and they told me their Whopper with cheese is vegan", does that prove that it is?
If any of you are of the mind that none of the reasons I've given would in any way make it harder to determine the vegan status of beer or wine when shopping here in the US, that's fine, I'm just stating my opinion, that's all. I have no idea why me mentioning "It's harder over here." has snowballed into such a ruckus. I never said, "impossible".
:rollseyes_ani:
And actually I said:
I did not say that you said it was "impossible", I said it cannot be "as hard" as you say. I have no idea why you have read that differently. :dizzy:
I don't think there has been a 'ruckus'. It seems to me (just my opinion) that whenever anyone disputes anything you say, in many threads I've read, you turn it into an epic debate to prove your point. I'm not interested in doing that so this is my last post on the subject. I find pedantry very boring.
It is as hard as I say. Living here I'd say I'd be in a better position to assess that than people who only visit occasionally and then attend vegetarian and vegan restaurants which may have spent months and months of difficult preparation in selecting their wine list beforehand, whereas in the UK one can access the Animal Free Shopper for free and in seconds and have over 1500 readily available wines to choose from at your disposal, immediately, without having to do any personal email research on your own or simply visit one of seven different supermarkets all with pre-prepared vegan wine lists. Neither of which one can do here.
If you don't believe me you might try this little experiment next time you visit. Ask your concierge or other expert friends to recommend the most knowledgeable and prestigious wine store in all of the city. Then call them on the telephone and ask if they have someone on hand there who might help you select a vegan wine to buy when you come visit them later. The answer will be a polite "No". That is to say your supermarkets, for Pete's sake, are openly willing to provide a higher level of service than our most expensive and supposedly knowledgeable, "customer service focused", dedicated wine stores.
The animal free shopper is actually quite crap. As soon as it is out it is out of date. I buy it as a donation to the VS. The need to e-mail on a regular basis is one of the jobs a vegan needs to do. The Animal Free Shopper is not a definitive guide and I don't think anyone really uses it past the first few weeks it is out.
The only sure way to do it is to learn what chemical names, trade names and assorted ingredients are animal derived products and look at allergy advice. I keep a list of chemicals in my work diary and can usually tell if something is vegan within seconds 90% of the time. It is not a great skill but something very easy to learn.
I am only aware of one wine shop i've been in and the server knew what was vegan and that was because he is. Supermarkets are not staffed by all knowing staff most of the managers are even worse. It is the ability to shop with confidence, knowledge in what is vegan and a lot of homework that makes vegan shopping easy.
Being vegan is not easy, it's not just about educating companies about what you can eat but ourselves in how things are made or produced. :)
But by buying one of the 58 different green sunflower stamped certified beers or 190 wines you are getting an assurance that they must maintain their exact same fining process and ingredients at least for that year or else they wouldn't have been certified. [A luxury us Americans don't have since they don't certify any North American companies that I am aware of.]
http://www.vegansociety.com/images/trademark/tmtm.gif
Trademark - Registered Vegan
The Vegan logo is a registered trademark and is a symbol of our Vegan 'Animal-free' Standards. It appears on thousands of animal free products, and is displayed by catering businesses, that have been registered with The Vegan Society.
Do you want to start using the Vegan Society trademark on your products or in your restaurant? The application form is available here online.
Currently you can view listings for trademark holders - a complete product listing feature is planned.
Copyright © 2004-2008 Vegan Society.
Would I be correct in presuming that you'll also contend these seven supermarket lists are also similarly "crap"?
If I were under the impression that I couldn't rely on the Vegan Society prepared lists and other vegan internet sources to determine the vegan status of goods and instead had to rely on emailing a barrage of personal emails every week to every company I do business with, each time I buy their product (because we know for a fact they change from time to time and without any indication of such on their label) I'd pretty much say being a vegan is impossible or more precisely impractical. IMO.