Restaurants

Wow. Oh, wow.

Last night we were in Seattle, and it’s not that Yakima doesn’t have good restaurants, it’s just difficult to find places that serve vegan food here. So, in anticipation of our trip to the big city, I spent about half an hour last night looking at reviews and menus for vegan friendly restaurants in Seattle. That in itself is so different from Yakima, where finding a menu online is a rare treat. I had a few different restaurants picked out, depending on how we felt around dinner time. We decided on Pizza Pi, a 100% vegan pizzeria.

One of our favorite restaurants in Portland is Vita Cafe, and one of the things I really appreciate about it is that it has something for everybody: I can get a vegan veggie burger, and they also serve free range, hormone free beef. I appreciate that I can take anybody there (even veganphobics), and that the meat they do serve is produced in a more responsible manner.

That being said, it’s always an amazing experience to go someplace where I can order absolutely anything on the menu. And last night was no exception. We started off with a vegan cesar salad, and “cheesy” breadsticks with four different dipping sauces: marinara, ranch-style dressing, creamy white garlic sauce, and spinach and artichoke dip. The salad was good, if a little spartan – just chopped romaine, croutons, dressing, and pepper.

The breadsticks, though. Wow. I don’t think I could ever go back without ordering the breadsticks. They made the breadsticks by rolling out some of there pizza dough, sprinkling it with some herbs and “cheese,” and slicing it into long strips (an idea that I’m going to remember next time I’m doing homemade pizza). I wish I knew how they did their sauces, because they were great. The marinara wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but it was very good. The ranch was good, too, but again, nothing too extraordinary. What really got me fired up were the creamy white garlic sauce and the spinach and artichoke dip. Those two were obviously pilfered from the vegan gods. I have never tasted such delectable vegan sauces.

We also ordered a No-Meatball Sub, which is the kind of thing that is just plain fun to order as a vegan. The veggie sausage they used was really well seasoned, and the sandwich was huge and delicious.

And, of course, we had a pizza. Ours was a small pesto, pepperoni, garlic, and broccoli pizza. The crust was great, and just what I like: plain, thin, and crispy. And one of the perks of ordered the breadsticks was that we had lots of dipping sauces for the edge of our crusts. The pesto was good, though I think I’ll try the pink sauce next time, which is a mix of their marinara and white garlic sauce.

To finish it all off, we had a raspberry ice cream sundae, whipped cream, cherry on top and all. The raspberry sauce was really good, but the ice cream they used wasn’t one of the better kinds I’ve had. Still, in all, it was very good and fun to be able to eat.

The people working at the restaurant were very friendly and attentive. The ambience could be improved by a little more lighting, but as it is, it has a good hole-in-the-wall pizza-shop-on-the-corner feel, which has it’s own appeal.

We will definitely being going back here, probably every time we visit Seattle.

UPDATE: Finally got the pictures off the camera, so here’s a picture of me two-fisting the raspberry vegan sundae: