I am no vegan, but one of my favorite places to take myself out for a veg-er-riffic lunch is Minneapolis's finest raw vegan restaurant and oxygen bar, Ecopolitan.
The cooks — er — uncooks? — there are certified magicians. How do they do it? They tell me they have some fancy gadgets back there, e.g., for turning root vegetables into "noodles." Last time I ordered a Thai curry noodle, full of coconut and macadamia nut and sparkling with ginger, lime, and basil. Today I had a half-order of the "sausage" "pizza" and a side salad with tahini-garlic dressing:
The pizza "crust" is a sort of sprouted and dehydrated buckwheat flatbread. The "sausage" is a spiced mushroomy-walnutty-mixture, with a flavor as satisfying as meat if you ask me — lots of umami. There are also onions, peppers, olives, and a sort of tahini sauce on top. This was a half order — I wished I'd ordered a full order after I had a single bite.
This is the kind of thing I don't think I could ever recreate at home. Maybe someday I'll take their uncooking class. I fear, though, that to make this food one needs a lot of specialty equipment: juicerators, dehydromogrifiers, daikon noodleizers, extruder dies, etc.
I ordered dessert — I skipped the spiced carob cake (not a carob fan) and went for the oatmeal raisin cookie. Sorry, no picture. It was a fork cookie — too soft to pick up — a sweet, crumbly sphere of soaked oats, chopped nuts, and plumped raisins. Like eating a nut-filled streusel topping, straight! It was nestled in a bed of a sweet, honey-colored paste of apple and spices.
I don't know why I always feel compelled to explain to my server that I am Not Actually A Vegan when I eat there…
Ecopolitan is a great place to take your vegetarian friend, who will surely be wowed, and also for multiply allergic people – unless one of the allergies is tree nuts, in which case you probably don't even want to walk in the door. (link to .pdf menu)
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