Clean Plate, er Daily Grub, er whatever it is now..

Let's just call it "that really tasty vegan place by Cog with the Raptors on the building". At first we were a bit iffy about the location, but renting a building with two raptors chasing each other was probably too hard to pass up for the owner.

But honestly let's not get bogged down how awesome dinosaurs and evolution are, let's try to focus on the actual restaurant itself.

As far as I can tell Daily Grub is a place invented by some really talented chef lady who wanted to serve really good vegan/vegetarian food and support locally-obtained food. Also she likes dinosaurs.

Me and the wife, who is a waffle junkie, went to this place for brunch last week, and again this week. I won't tell you much about the first time we went other than their waffle iron broke right as we were about to get some waffles, so i got a tofu scramble and we took off not as satisfied as we felt we should have been. I really should have tried something other than the tofu scramble, not because it wasn't good (because it was), but because this chef lady is an actual full-on chef and getting the tofu scramble was kind of having an Emeril in your kitchen but all you ask him to make you is a pbj.

Okay so we come back again for a second time after hearing they got a new waffle iron (hooray!). We walk in and instantly the guy remembers us as the sad couple who weren't able to get their delicious waffles, so he apologizes again and offers us a free full order of waffles to make up for our terrible luck the previous week. Megan (the wife) gets the waffles and I get English Dave's Thai Curry.

Holy shit everything was so damn tasty. Here's a rundown critiquing the different components that made up our vegan brunch:

Waffles - Sprinkled in powdered sugar and REAL MAPLE SYRUP (we're syrup snobs and we're so glad real syrup was used instead of that imitation garbage). Cut-up strawberries on the side. So good! they managed to stay thick and crispy despite being drenched in syrup. Megan loved them. I had one or two bites but let megan take care of the majority of the eating of her waffles.

Thai Curry - Thai Curry for breakfast, shut up I'm an adult I can do what I want. Last week i had popcorn and dr pepper for dinner (I ate it like cereal). Anyway this dish was amazingly tasty. Some cabbage stuff piled on top of sweet coconut curry with onions, tiny potatoes, all on top of aromatic jasmine rice. This was seriously super tasty I can't talk about it enough, and if it's any indication of how the rest of the cooking at this place is I know for sure i'm going to be coming back often. The only problem i had with the dish was that it was starch-heavy, but that's not really their fault it was my fault for ordering it. Also that didn't stop me from eating the entire dish (lime and lime peel included. okay maybe not)

The Elvis Smoothie - Cocoa, banana, peanut butter, oats, and soymilk. FFFFFFFF so good! I'm biased, however, towards anything with peanut butter. One time i made peanut-butter sushi even (wasn't as good as it sounds). This was like drinking cupcake batter.

I'm glad we came back and gave this place another shot. The first time we went it was their first week and they shouldn't really be held accountable for growing pains. We came this second time, ate a ton of great food, saw some good friends, met a new friend (John who does a vegan junkfood blog www.laziestvegans.com), saw a dude from the faint (you can't spit in this town without hitting someone in the faint), and went home and napped in post-meal bliss.


Next week: I get negative again and shit talk some restaurants that fail at vegan food, and shit talk the new limp bizkit song (without even listening to it).

Addendum to last week's Pizza Party

Friedrich Hayek came to me in a dream last night and reminded me that I neglected to review a frozen pizza available here in the omaha area in my review last week!

Holy wine-in-a-box I can't believe I forgot about Tofutti's very own frozen pizza "Pan Crust Pizza Pizzaz" square pizza-shaped product! I seriously can't belive I forgot this little guy, and Tofutti I'm sorry for fogetting you (and i'm even more sorry for the review I'm about to give it).

Remember pizza from elementary school? Yeah I do too. Well imagine that, but instead of cheese you have this white, soupy, potion-stuff on top of the pizza that is solid at room temperature but when you heat it up it combines nicely with the underlying tomato sauce to make this tangy, orangish spread/topping on top of a pretty good tasting crust.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh. It's getting late so instead of trying to mask some compliments in poor attempts at humor, i'll just bullet point some pros:

• It's pretty good comfort food when you're studying late at night
  
• the crust is actually pretty good tasting, and goes well with the sauce

Buuuuut I have to include some cons too just to be balanced:

• Tofutti is the 2nd worst product name next to Tofurkey. Sorry vegan companies, you really need to come up with better names.
• No toppings
• contains partially hydrogenated fats
• vegan cheese topping is more soup than anything
• ashamed to eat in public
• not sure if i should really consider it "pizza"
  
• box packaging looks like a Geocities website without the animated gif of a skull on fire morphing into a pot leaf. next to the ingredients they have "Best Viewed in Netscape 3.0" on the box.

Don't get me wrong I'll still get this thing because I love to eat anything vegan (except natto. /shudder), and sometimes i like not cooking, and it's fun to add your own toppings to (asparagus, mushrooms, chickpeas... mmmm).... But in all seriousness this pizza is a mere shadow of what an actual pizza should be. If you want to see what all the hype is about, or you're like me and will just.plain.eat.anything.vegan then you can pick this up in the health-market section of most HyVees in town (except for the one on 90th and center because that one sucks).

ps: hey tofutti me and my boy J-Biebs improved on your box design. you can pay me via paypal.

Add Glitter to your Photos

pps: hey tofutti i still love your fake ice creams/sandwiches and cream cheese-like spread!

Next Week: Omaha's pizza joints that serve vegan cheese pizza!

letter response

I got a letter the other day from one of my fans.

"Dear Dave,
What do you eat when you go camping?
Sincerely, Silas R. Tripplehorn"

Well Silas that's a great question. When I go camping i follow two main rules when bringing stuff to eat which will guarantee a maximum amount of fun:

The Two Rules of Camping as a Citybwoy:
Rule 1) Bring something you can stab with a stick and roast over a fire
Rule 2) Bring Something tasty you can get tore up on

A few weeks back I did just that. A friend of mine, James, was getting shipped off to the army so what better way to wish him goodbye than to get all of us in our late 20s/early 30s and get a few cabins out where the authorities don't care what we do.

Here's what I brought to satisfy rule #1: Tofurkey Italian Sausages. Tofurkey probably has the worst name I've ever heard and I feel embarrassed even thinking about saying it, but if you can say one thing about Tofurkey it's that Tofurkey knows how to make fake sausages. They also impale themselves nicely on a stick for roasting over an open firepit. I ate an entire four-pack that night

For rule #2 I usually fall back on old faithful here: Trois Pistoles beer-like drink from Unibroue. Now there are TONS of beer selections out there for vegans, and thanks to http://barnivore.com/ it's now super easy for us to figure out if a beer is vegan or if it has fish guts or honey in it. At 9% ABV this stuff is indeed designed to get you faded (and I think it's too high to consider it beer anymore), but it tastes great along the way. But honestly the biggest reason i get this is because there's a giant flaming nightmare horse flying over a church at midnight on the packaging. I don't think they could have made a logo more in tune with my tastes than that. Well maybe they could have put a Beholder fighting a Wizard or something on the logo, whatever, you get my point.

All and all a fun night of camping, friendship, vindication, and everyone being drunk and peeing in the woods. The sausages are exclusive to Whole Foods here in Omaha. The beer i think you can get more places like whole foods, Peony Park Hyvee, and I think Nomad has it too. I'm sure more places have it but those are where i usually get them.

Here are some more pics of us camping and being ridiculous (thanks erica's facebook and princesslasertron.com for the pics). I'm in the red hood:

war of the frozen pizzas. Amy's vs Kashi.

For those too lazy to read ahead, Amy's cheeseless pizza wins.

Amy's No-Cheese Pizza: Take away the cheese from pizza and what's left is actually pretty boring. Amy's knew this and didn't just try to pass off a pizza without cheese, they damn well reinvented the pizza altogether. The crust is amazingly sweet and crunchy. The sauce is a sweet onion sauce that tastes nothing like boring tomato sauce. Oh shit and the toppings couldn't be better! artichoke hearts, red peppers, and shitake mushrooms? HERRO YES PREEZ. Holy sweet merciful jesus this stuff tastes so good. This frozen pizza you can get from Whole foods, bakers, or hyvee is permanently on my "list of top 5 comfort foods that i need when i'm staying up late studying for some bullshit test". About the only thing wrong with this pizza is you'll be tasting onions in your mouth well into the next morning. Perfect for lan parties where other gentelmen of ill hygene habits are known to frequent.

Kashi Some Bullshit Pizza with no Cheese: I learned a new german word today. Seelenschmertz. It translates to "Pain of the Soul". I don't think I have to say much else about this pizza. Perfect for people who don't know what the word "taste" means. Sorry Kashi.

Ever since i lived with my parents I've loved clif bars. Then a few years ago Clif (or his son or whoever runs the company) got wise and made these candy bar things.

THESE THINGS ARE AMAZING. seriously. they have like 50 flavors whereas most other vegan bars have either "cardboard" or "interesting" flavor. Peanut butter, chocolate, cookies and cream, lemon, almond vanilla, and my personal favorite MINT CHOCOLATE GIRLSCOUT COOKIE TASTING FLAVOR. (i'm not kidding, just like girl scout cookie)

Anyway I think he made this to appeal to guys who work steel, or weld pipes all day, but i don't care i still eat them. 20g of protein per bar i guess if you're an athlete that means something, but i'm more interested in these things having 20g of chocolate per bar (statement not evaluated by FDA).

They're great meal substitutes in a pinch, like if my wife springs some shit on me like we have to go shopping for baby clothes and i just got done pulling weeds in the yard all sunday afternoon and i'm so hungry stomach is digesting itself i can just pull one of these beauties out of my pocket and go to town on some 200+ calorie awesomeness... all of which i will use for shopping :(

Get these at pretty much everywhere now. bakers, hyvee, whole foods, wohlners has 'em now too, walmart, target... but by far the cheapest and best place to get them is Whole Foods. Yeah weird i know, something is cheaper at whole foods?















(this vin diesel lookin' dudebro has the right idea)

this shit is good. all other soymilk tastes like juiced wheaties as far as i'm concerned, even other silk flavors. Not really sweet at all but it also tastes nothing like that "soymilk" taste that every other brand has. I think the omega3-dha they add gives it an awesome creamy flavor my cereal craves.

everywhere has it except wohlners. WOHLNERS YOU HEAR ME? WALMART AND TARGET HAVE THIS SHIT BUT YOU DON'T?! Wohlners i love you but you gotta stock this stuff, seriously.

also bakers on saddle creek sells out of this shit so fast because they only stock it one unit thick when CLEARLY everyone knows it's the best. bakers wake up.

AboutTime

My name is Dave. I've been a vegetarian here in Omaha since around 1997, and a vegan since probably 2002 (although technically I didn't give up honey until about three years ago). I've had several years to figure out all the good places to eat, and the horrible places I won't step foot in again. The reason for this blog is so I can make everyone elses' journeys of self discovery in this not-so-vegetarian-friendly town a little less painful.

With that said, bring on the reviews!