Veg-friendly restaurants

[Undead Molly]

Does anyone know of a local website or publication that reviews restaurants with a vegetarian emphasis? I know that there are a few Chinese places that will make all of their entrees with a meat substitute, but I'm wondering about other dinner options. I'm looking for places that have more than just one or two vegetarian options on the menu.

Also, does anyone know of a website or forum for local vegetarians/vegans to share resources?

Thanks!
Molly

[Morganna]

How local do you mean? Does central Vermont count or are you only talking about the Burlington area?

I don't know of any websites that gather that intel, but I know some vegetarian/vegan focused places in central VT.

[Undead Molly]

Thanks Morgana! I guess I am thinking more in the Burlington area, but I'd love to know about the places you mention.

I don't mean this as a passive-aggressive jab at Suzanne and Alice or 7D, but sometimes I do wish there was a vegetarian focused food resource in the Burlington area. It's surprising to me that there isn't because there are so many vegetarians and vegans here! It seems like there must be something, I'm just not finding it.

[Suzanne Podhaizer]

Hey Molly — no offense taken!

Our hope was that the food forum would be a place for people with any number of dietary restrictions or culinary inclinations to share their resources: That's the reason we made "Vegging Out" one of our primary topic headers.

Obviously, because it is growing slowly, that hasn't really come to fruition. However, I think that this platform could be a great one once more people join the conversation. Imagine if hundreds of people were checking in every day and responding to posted topics...The forum could quickly become a wealth of information and opinions unrivaled in the area.

As far as Seven Nights is concerned, I asked a couple years ago if we could add "vegan-friendly" and "gluten-free options" to our list of amenities. "Vegetarian-friendly" was already on the list. Restaurant owners are the ones who determine whether or not they fall in those categories. You probably know this, but the advanced search allows you to select only so-called vegan-friendly restaurants.   

Of course, anybody who wants to can leave comments about their dining experiences at any of them.

My perspective is that we've created the infrastructure to allow information to be disseminated and conversations to occur, what we need is a bunch of people who want to talk...

[Morganna]

In Central Vermont, places that have vegetarian and/or vegan options that aren't just salad are:

River Run, Plainfield: They need a website, I'll poke my friend who works there about that. They've started serving tapas at night. We ate there Thu night and it was AWEsome.  I'll be writing a review soon.   He makes a vegetarian paella.
Kismet (http://kismetkitchen.com/aboutus.aspx), Montpelier: Breakfast and lunch, very vegan and vegetarian friendly, all the menu options are tweakable.
Rhapsody (http://www.rhapsodynaturalfoods.org/), Montpelier: I've never eaten here, but vegans I've known have said it's good, this is a vegetarian/vegan restaurant, no meat at all.

Most of the restaurants in Montpelier have serious vegetarian/vegan options (though perhaps not the more than one or two choices you stipulated in your original post) because there's a lot of vegans/vegetarians in central Vermont.  There's Royal Orchid Thai (I really like their food), That's Life Soup, Black Door, Restaurant Pheobe, Positive Pie (both Montpelier and Plainfield), Sarduccis, and Hunger Mountain Coop (has a cafe), all in Montpelier have solid vegetarian if not vegan offerings.  In Barre, El Sol has 8 or 9 vegetarian options on their menu (which is around a third of their menu), though with Mexican food, that consists of replacing meats with veggies, I don't know if that's bad or not.  I've enjoyed vegetarian Mexican food just fine. I'm not sure about vegan there, though, they're very fond of cheese there (it's really Tex-Mex or Ameri-Mex food). Their beans are really good.

I just know there's someplace in Waterbury/Stowe that's specifically vegetarian but I can't seem to pull that out of my noggin.

Oh, and for options in Burlington, does Skinny Pancake not have enough options?

[Alice Levitt]

River Run, Plainfield: They need a website, I'll poke my friend who works there about that.

Hi Morganna! River Run does indeed have a website. It's http://www.riverrunbbq.com/.

[Morganna]

Amazing.  This is very much not up to date, and I'm pretty sure that I'd heard Jimmy'd let this page lapse.  Though I suppose it's possible he resurrected it and I just didn't hear about it (I hardly hear everything).  I'm still going to poke my friend about it.  The breakfast and lunch menus are, IIRC, unchanged, but the dinner menu is completely different now.  And the "how we do BBQ" section is utterly and completely wrong.

You know, I went looking for this site a while ago, and it was utterly gone.  That's what got me asking my friend about it in the first place.  Aaaanyway, guess I'll ask them to update it so I can link to it from my central vermont restaurants links page.

[Undead Molly]

Suzanne,

I think the forum is great - I just wish more people would use it! Most of the vegans and vegetarians I know in real life tend to eat the same things all the time... I'm anxious to connect with new people who happen to be gourmands as well as meat avoidant. I'm not a vegetarian - I still eat meat on special occasions. I just want to eliminate it from my daily home cooking and find restaurants with decent vegetarian options. I'm specifically very interested in exploring more non-coastal East and South Asian cuisines because they're highly flavorful but a lot of them have little or no emphasis on meat.

I'm grateful that you and 7d have made room for this kind of sharing and dialogue to take place here, that was part of the reason why I wanted to make sure you didn't think my comment was directed you at you.

Morgana,

Thank you for the list! Skinny Pancake does have many wonderful options, but we don't want to go there every time we go out (about once every two weeks or so).

[JasonFrishman]

In terms of vegetarian options in the Burlington area, I feel like many places, even if they are not expressedly 'veg friendly', have good to very good options...

Shana (wife) is veggie, so we choose places based on this and don't have to work too hard to find options.
We like (def not in any order):
 
Pacific Rim - service is incredibly variable (good -> terrible), but the food is pretty reliably good - lots of tofu dishes

Single Pebble has great veg options - i love the sesame buddha beef and shana loves the mock eel (which doesn't taste like eel at all and is slightly too salty in my opinion) but my absolute favorite is the sweet and pungent walnuts.

Flatbread always has veg specials and, while is somewhat expensive for pizza, i always leave satisfied

Penny Cluse has amazing lunch sandwiches that are veg (fantastic breakfast as well, but i imagine everyone knows that already!)

I know that there has been debate/discussion about the Bluebird, but i've been there 3 times with all veggiepeople and we've never left dissatisfied.  true, it is not inexpensive, nor is are there a ton of vegetarian options, but the ones that are there are wonderful and certainly enough for a meal...

I like the sandwiches at stone soup and red onion a lot

i'll try to think of more, but that should be a decent start...

[Morganna]

I just wanted to add to this list here that Seyon Lodge is GREAT!  They're a state parks owned B&B but they have a Thursday night dinner.  I stayed there this weekend past for a knitting retreat, and the food was really great.  They go out of their way to make interesting and tasty alternatives for people with food allergies, or various preferences (like vegetarians and vegans).

It's well worth making a reservation for their Thursday night dinner, and let them know you're going vegan.  They love exploring new foods and delicious options for different palates.

(mild disclaimer: I don't work for the state park service, but I do work for the agency of natural resources, which is the agency that the park services works under, and I sometimes help some of the staff there with their web stuff, this post, however, is purely subjective and based on my personal experience as a citizen, not being posted as an employee. )

[Dani]

More for the Burlington area that haven't been covered...

Pennycluse--yes mentioned, but wanted to add that their marinated tofu salad and the taco salad w/ tofu are A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!!  And their coffee is utterly fantastic and the soymilk never clots up in it, wonder why?  Hmmm...

Tiny Thai in Winooski has an entirely vegetarian menu (ask for it when you're seated) with mock duck and tofu and some sort of fake fish option.

Asiana House has a great selection of vegetarian maki.  YUM.

The Daily Planet now has a vegan lasagna entree on their menu.  Haven't tried it yet.  A few other veggie options are on there, too.

Pho Hong has plenty of good veggie options and they are very affordable.

New Moon Cafe, next to OGE, has a fantastic marinated seitan sandwich (can sub hummus for pesto if vegan and it's just as good), plus lots of other veg option.

I personally avoid Sweetwaters, RiRas, Church St. Tavern, and Halversons b/c of a lack of good vegetarian options, but that's just me.

Flatbread cannot be emphasized enough...excellent food flavors and the best beer in town.

[Haylley Johnson]

I'm really glad Jason mentioned Stone Soup, but I just wanted to give it some more emphasis because it definitely changed the way I looked at vegetarian and vegan food. I'm from Texas originally, and when I first moved to Vermont, I was a bit skeptical of vegetarian food. Stone Soup convinced me otherwise. Their hot bar has really creative options too.