Boring tagine in Morocco

It’s possible to get vegetarian food in Marrakech. Most restaurants will sell a vegetable tagine. However, I found them to be quite boring. Perhaps I needed to visit better restaurants.

Earth Cafe

You can imagine my delight when walking through the market and spotted some hand made signs for “Earth Cafe” a vegan restaurant. I had to find this place and enjoy a good meal, it did not disappoint.

The first thing you see as you step down into this cafe is the open kitchen, a beaming chef will greet you with pride as you enter her domain. As you pass the kitchen the restaurant opens vertically. What seems like a small space grows to several floors with an open space in the center.

The menu

I was surprised to see the menu lacked tagines and couscous. How very non-Moroccan! How very refreshing after dealing with some rather banal versions found in other places.

Instead you’ll find a creative assortment of dishes that span the North African and Mediterranean flavor spectrum. My meal had a variety of vegetables wrapped in filo dough, baked and placed on the plate with mango sauce. It was delicious and very filling.

Earth Cafe also features some yummy smoothies that will hit the spot on a warm African afternoon. The friendly hosts speak French and English. The waiter even walked with me through the souks to find a hammam.

You’ll owe it to yourself to visit Earth Cafe when visiting Marrakech. You’ll get great food, great service, and a jovial, peaceful environment. The flavors are so great that your meat eating friends will also enjoy the meal.

Report From Vegan Paris

But sadly, it seems that the restaurant couldn’t go on without us and just a couple of months after we left they have transformed into the Foie Gras-friendly “Le Passage Obligé”
There is one bright side: the new restaurant is run by the same “équipe,” who were always fairly well informed about what ‘vegan’ means, and the menu is clearly labelled with several vegetarian and vegan options. Also, they have vegan desserts.
Paris loses a Vegan restaurant: La Victoire Suprême du Cœur becomes Le Passage Obligé

La Victoire was a high-end vegetarian restaurant in the Marais district. I’d been there a few times and enjoyed the variety of dishes.

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I was about to eat at Restaurant aux Artistes as they mentioned several vegetarian options on their menu. However, it was getting late and I wasn’t ready for dinner in a restaurant filled with laughing, chatting, debating clients. Not that it is a bad thing, just not for last night. I wanted something more relaxing.

About a block further I came across a small pizzeria with a quaint facade and interesting options on the menu. Pizzeria Hinno is a small place with about 15 tables and several vegetarian pizza and pasta options.

I ordered the namesake pizza Hinno. It includes mushrooms, cream, an egg, and bacon. Naturally I requested it without the bacon. They have other options that would be good without the meat component, such as the 4 seasons pizza.

Pizza Hinno’s great food and service

The pizza was great. The cream and egg gave it a smooth taste. It was a very thin crust pizza and the flavors and textures blended perfectly. While I thought I was pacing myself; the plate was empty before I knew it.

No matter how good the pizza, it is only secondary to the service. The owner is the friendliest I have ever met. He has a smile that could melt Greenland and makes you feel like you are the only person in the city when he takes your order, delivers the food, or even the bill.

I left the restaurant satiated from the pizza and feeling much happier. I’ll definitely return to Hinno. It’s a destination restaurant, not the convenient place you stop off on the way home or to the hotel. I would gladly go out of my way for Hinno.

Location

Pizzaria Hinno is at 56, rue Falguière near metro: Pasteur (#3 and #12). As you exit the metro, walk towards the Montparnasse tower and it’s about a block away on the right side.

Vegan options and Accessibility

I don’t remember seeing anything on the menu that was vegan specific. I’m sure there was a green salad. However, they are very accommodating and would certainly remove the cheese from an existing pizza option.

Pizzaria Hinno has a small step at the entrance and I don’t know if the bathrooms are wheelchair accessible. The interior is small but not cramped.

Pizzeria Hinno

56, rue Falguière (15°)

01 43 27 01 14

Metro: Pasteur

Pizza restaurant

Wheelchair friendly: Entrance has a step

• Overall: 5/5
• Location: 4/5
• Taste: 5/5
• Service: 5/5
• Vegetarian Friendly: 4/5
• Vegan Friendly: 3/5
• M.E.F. Friendly: 5/5

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Restaurant Tibetain Dolma provided one of the best dining experiences I’ve had in a long time. It’s a small, intimate restaurant filled with charm… and that includes the people. The menu is a cross between Asian and Indian food; the flavors of India with the preparation of China.

I found the restaurant after walking around the city for hours and needed a place to plop down and eat something warm. I hardly got a chance to plop as the service was so warm and the food so interesting.

I started with a large pot of Chai tea. This is the real stuff, not the frappe-sweet version from Starbucks. It’s spicy, hot, and not too sweet. It was the second best chai I’ve ever had. The first was in the lunchroom of Yahoo! in Bangalore. The third was in a tea shop behind Pikes Place in Seattle.

The entree sounded like a curry. The menu described it as potatoes and peas in a curry flavor. What arrived were two racquetball sized, fried dumplings filled with potatoes and peas and seasoned with curry and other spices.

On the side was a home made chutney. Watch the chutney, there are some hard spices that could break a tooth. They look like raisins but are more like solid pepper seeds. Just don’t chomp down on them.

This was followed by two steamer baskets of spinach and cheese dumplings with another custom pepper sauce. The dumplings were great and quite filling. The waitress probably guessed I was American and thought I’d enjoy some chili sauce. After asking, she brought over some thicker pepper sauce. While I like the heat, the first one was more complex and tasted better with the dumplings.

The final course was home made yogurt with honey. This was the perfect finish to a fairly light lunch in a city filled with heavy crêpes. I planned on returning the next day but got sidetracked by a trip to Mont St. Michel. Which was definately a good idea.

Don’t miss this restaurant when you travel to Rennes. You’ll find warm service, great food, and a memorable meal.

Restaurant Tibetain Dolma

36 rue St. Melaine, Rennes 35000

Metro: St. Anne

02 99 36 84 63

• Overall: 5/5
• Vegetarian Options: 4.5/5
• Vegan Options: 4/5
• Value: 5/5
• Location: 4/5

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I’m proud to announce my latest creation: V3GGIE, a vegetarian search engine. I’ve used the power of Yahoo’s new BOSS Search API and focused the attention on vegetarian and vegan friendly resources. V3GGIE makes it much easier to find what you are looking for.

This means you can find a corn chowder recipe without wading through thousands of clam chowders. You can quickly find the buzz from vegetarian blogs, the closest vegan restaurant, and more.

The following is a short list of web sites that V3GGIE.com recognizes as experts.

• motherearthnews.com
• parisvegetarian.com
• happycow.net
• yelp.com
• fodors.com
• vegdining.com
• allrecipes.com/Recipes/Everyday-Cooking/Vegetarian
• vegetariantimes.com
• ivu.org
• wholefoodsmarket.com
• foodnetwork.com/food/lf_hl_vegetarian
• vegcooking.com
• epicurious.com
• food.yahoo.com/recipes
• recipezaar.com/recipes/vegetarian
• vegweb.com
• 101cookbooks.com/vegetarian_recipes
• syvum.com/recipes/ivrindex.html
• all-creatures.org
• Technorati

V3GGIE is still a work a progress, please feel free to leave comments and suggestions for web sites to add as resources. I hope you find it as useful as I have. I especially like the Vegetarian Recipe Search.

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Tien Hiang review

I had been planning a trip to Tien Hiang to try their food and imagine my surprise one night when I walked past it on a warm evening stroll. Although I wasn’t hungry, I had to stop off for a meal. This restaurant is great fun for small groups and the menu is a smörgåsbord of vegetarian Asian food.

The Menu

While this restaurant is listed as Chinese in many guides, their menu is sprinkled with dishes from across the Asian spectrum. Vegetarians are used to deciding between one or two dishes on a menu. It’s difficult to actually choose between 50-60 dishes. Prepare yourself for ten minutes of indecision.

Tien Hiang has a good fixed menu to make that choice easier. You simply choose two appetizers, dinner, and desert from a smaller set of dishes. The menu prices are outrageously affordable. 10 euros gets a full meal!

I chose to skip the fixed menu and ordered a bowl of Thai soup and Vietnamese omelet. To be honest, I had no idea what I was going to choose and finally pointed at a random customer and said “I’ll have that.”

The soup was fantastic. It had coconut milk, pepper, tomato, fake chicken, and basil. It was a great mix and I’ll probably come here more often for just a bowl of soup. The omelet was good, but I was satiated after the soup and earlier meal. So, I wasn’t prepared to really evaluate the dish.

Popular + small = warm

Tien Hiang is a small, popular restaurant. The place was packed with a wide range of alternatives, hipsters, families, and hippies (faux hippies). In other words, it’s a casual, come as you are restaurant. However, it’s also a small place and it gets warm with all of the bodies. I can only imagine what it will be like during the late summer months.

Summary

I really enjoyed this restaurant. The menu is expansive and you’ll probably find yourself wanting to come back and try something else. The dishes range from Pho, clay pot, steamed dumplings, fried rice, and much more. You’ll find vegetarian versions of the most popular Asian dishes. The prices are super cheap, the service friendly, and the community unique. It’s not the easiest place to find, take a map with you. Unless you’re lucky like me and stumble across it accidentally.

Tien Hiang

92 rue Chemin Vert (11°)

01 43 55 83 88

Metro: Pere Lechaise, Voltaire

Chinese/Asian Vegetarian Restaurant

• Overall: 4/5
• Location: 3/5
• Value: 5/5
• Taste: 4/5
• Service: 5/5
• Vegetarian Friendly: 5/5
• Vegan Friendly: 5/5
• M.E.F. Friendly: 3/5

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But alas, beef doesn’t sit well with the vegetarian in us. My favorite chef, Jacques Brosse, once created a heavenly French Onion Soup with a rich wine base for me. It was one of the best dishes I’ve ever tasted. Jacques is about to open a new restaurant in Paris, so watch for the news.

It was with these high expectations that I ordered a bowl of Onion Soup from Le Potager du Marais. First off, the soup was good. It wasn’t great. It didn’t make me jump up and scream “Mother Trudy, come here and give me a big fat hug!”

Frankly, I don’t think jumping up would even be possible in this tiny table with a long community table. It would have been more like asking the person next to you to stand up, pull the table out, extricate yourself between two other diners, stand up and then yell “Mother Trudy, come here and give me a bit fat hug!”
The Onion soup had a rich broth but could’ve used more onions. Instead of a big hunk of crouton, the soup was dotted with smaller chunks. Frankly, the smaller chunks are much easier to manage. It was then covered with a thin layer of cheese. It was also a tad bit salty for my taste. The bread they served on the side was also a bit bland.

Don’t get me wrong, Le Potager is a popular, friendly restaurant that features a great menu of vegetarian and vegan food. There were several daily specials, including vegetable curry, broccoli soup, and pasta primavera. The other diners licked their plates clean. The lady next to me just about died when her nattily atired boyfriend held his curry plate up and licked the last drop off.

It’s just that the Onion Soup had a lot to live up to. It’s hard to beat a memory.

Le Potager du Marais is super easy to find. It’s just down the street from the Rambuteau metro. It’s a great place to get something to eat after spending a day at the Pompideu. Be forewarned, this restaurant is tiny and packed. It’s a good idea to make a reservation during peak hours. However, they are open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Surprisingly, they do not accept Cheque Dejeuner (subsidized lunch tickets for those that work in Paris).

Le Potager du Marais

22, rue Rambuteau (3°)

01 42 74 24 66

Metro: Rambuteau

Organic Restaurant

Cheque Dejeuner are not accepted

Wheelchair Friendly: This restaurant is not wheelchair friendly. It is very tight inside.

• Overall: 4/5
• Location: 5/5
• Taste: 4/5
• Service: 4/5
• Vegetarian Friendly: 5/5
• Vegan Friendly: 5/5
• M.E.F. Friendly: 3/5

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This leads me to Gout Zen. I stumbled across this restaurant while leaving an unfamiliar metro exit (Bibliotheque). The street is subterranean, with car-filled bridges above, towering buildings, old stone steps to new areas, and a green beacon of light and energy.

Gout Zen is a restaurant, cafe, and organic market all wrapped into one. It reminds me of the No Stress Cafe, near Place de Pigalle. There’s more to just eating at Gout Zen. You can rent a heated wrap for your tired shoulders at 1 Euro for 15 minutes, use free wireless, and purchase some organic food and supplies. It’s a friendly cafe that is bright and comfortable.

I had the vegetable bruschetta at 6 euros. Although a tad salty, I enjoyed the snack and used the wireless until my laptop battery died. The cafe also features some interesting vegan alternatives. I’m dying to try the faux steak au poivre. The fixed price menus range from 8 to 15 euros and include a variety of vegetarian and vegan options.

Finding Gout Zen is a bit tricky. Take the Rue Du Chevaleret exit if you are coming from the metro line 14 or RER C. You can also reach it by climbing down the steps on Rue de Tolbiac, Rue Thomas Mann, and Rue des Grands Moulins. I’d suggest using the Rue de Tolbiac steps.

Gout Zen

54, Rue du Chevalaret (13°)

01 45 86 26 23

contact@goutzen.fr

Metro: Bibliotheque

Restaurant and Epicerie

Free Wireless

• Overall: 4/5
• Location: 3/5
• Taste: 4/5
• Service: 5/5
• Vegetarian Friendly: 5/5
• Vegan Friendly: 5/5
• M.E.F. Friendly: 3/5

I stop by to get my morning coffee and love the selection of salads, soups, smoothies, and lunch items. It’s a shame I don’t work nearby to enjoy their lunch time offerings. Of course, this really isn’t much of an excuse. They have pre-packaged lunches just waiting for you to pickup on the way to work.

Their menu is stacked with vegetarian and vegan options inspired by seasonal fruits and vegetables. Here’s a sample of their menu:(as of Feb. 2008)

• Carrot salad with coriander and dressing
• Lentil salad with red onions and coriander
• Vegetable plate with zucchini, eggplant, leeks, and fennel
• 4 different vegetarian/vegan pasta dishes: Vegetarian, Mushroom, 3 cheese, and tomato/pimento
• Brie, arugula, and walnut sandwich
• Seasonal market vegetable soup and tarts
• Fruit salad with mint syrup
• Fruit smoothies
• Fresh fruit
• Teas, coffee, water, and more

Lunches range from approx. 4-7 Euros. It’s affordable, friendly, and an oasis of vegetarian options in this neighborhood.

Parisian Sweet Bar

10 rue de Dijon, Paris 75012

Metro: Cour St-Emillion

01 44 73 40 44

parisiansweetbar@9business.fr

Hours: 8h-18h Monday to Friday

Accessibility: Outdoor patio with easy access, small step to interior, no bathroom service

• Overall: 4.5/5
• Vegetarian Options: 5/5
• Vegan Options: 5/5
• Value: 5/5
• Location: 3/5
• Service 5/5
• Wheelchair Friendly 3.5/5

Once upon a time, a small vegetarian restaurant opened on a small street devoted to butchers. The irony couldn’t have escaped them and their growing clientele. Wheat and soy proteins have replaced the ghosts of cows, lamb, and fowl on this alley behind Notre Dame.

I decided to visit Le Grenier de Notre-Dame after reading several reviews on Happy Cow, a vegetarian travel site. The reviews were mixed, so I had a back up plan. Practically next door is Cafe Panis, a sister restaurant to Chez Prosper and Lili et Marcel. I figured I could always grab a great salad at Chez Panis if Le Grenier did not pass muster. I can wait on Cafe Panis, Le Grenier was a great restaurant that served unique vegetarian food.

I’ve traveled to many countries and always enjoy vegetarian alternatives to local dishes. Soyrizo at Ranchos in San Diego, curry vegetable popovers in London, Mock duck in thai restaurants, vegetarian Ghoulash,… I couldn’t pass up the vegetarian cassoulet for dinner. I didn’t know what to expect. It must have white beans and baked with tomatoes and bread crumbs. But what else will replace the fat and meat normally found in a cassoulet?
The dish was a filling, baked vegetable dish with two types of protein: tofu and seitan (a wheat based protein). It also had tomatoes, peppers, and lots of white beans. I have to admit the seitan was a bit strange for me. It’s the first time I have tried this tofu alternative. I would have prefered something a bit more substantial in the mix, such as roasted brussel sprouts or potato. But, alas, the dish was exactly what I had hoped for: a stick to your ribs, filling, novel dish that stands out from the week of salads and cheese sandwiches that somehow find their way into too many meals.

I also had the vegetable soup as an entree. This was also a hearty soup with strong vegetable flavors and a unique topper. I couldn’t quite place the vegetable floating on the top of the soup. It reminded me of baby carrot greens. The soup was also served with a dense whole-grain bread.

The couple next to me were in Paris to celebrate their engagement. They too had found the restaurant via reviews at Happy Cow. Their meal started with an avacado dish that looked surprisingly unique to someone that grew up in Avocado country. The avocado skins were re-used as containers for a blend of avocado, tomato, and yogurt. They were quite pleased with the dish.

I wouldn’t rate this too high for your Meat Eating Friends. They’ll be impressed by the selection of vegetarian dishes, but not the taste of seitan. It’ll probably make them think twice before trying another of your recommendations.

It should be noted that Le Grenier is a small, tight restaurant. Enjoy the company next to, behind, and in front of you. The service is very fast and courteous. Reservations would be helpful during busy periods.

I skipped the dessert, but they have the traditional items: chocolate mousse, fromage blanc, fruit tarts, etc. They also feature normal coffee and a decaf coffee-alternative. Personally, I’d suggest going next door to Cafe Panis and try their tarte chocolate with creme anglais or the berry crumble. I’ve eaten more than my share of these dishes at their sister restaurants. You are also just around the corner from the Berthillon ice-cream store. just look for the line of people in a small street of Isle St. Louis. Berthillon ice-cream is worth the hype and there’s nothing like buying it from the source.

Le Grenier de Notre-Dame

18, Rue de la Bûcherie (5°)

01 43 29 98 29

St-Michel, Cite

Vegetarian Restaurant

• Overall: 5/5
• Location: 5/5
• Taste: 4.5/5
• Service: 5/5
• Vegetarian Friendly: 5/5
• Vegan Friendly: 5/5
• M.E.F. Friendly: 1.5/5