Back to Barcelona & fast food overdose!

 Last weekend me and Matteo went for three days to Barcelona to a friend's wedding. I was excited to go back, have only been in Barcelona once, in 2009. And it was probably my last travel until the baby is born (and also after for a while). We had a great time! Weather was amazing (so warm!) and we saved the Friday to walk around and eat (of course).


We didn't go to many different places. I have to admit we got addicted to vegan fast food place Gopal. In 2009 we didn't go there because the reviews on Happy Cow weren't good (huge mistake!) but for the last two years I've heard just good things about the place so when we arrived there on Thursday night we asked my friend to take us there. OMG! The burgers there are just perfect. I could say as good as the ones from Yoyo in Berlin. Gopal has a huge menu of burgers (19 options I think!) and they also sell cakes from Lujuria Vegana - and I was dying to try some of them cause a Brazilian friend of mine is working there and I've seen some pictures that looked like heaven in the format of sweets. We asked for burgers and french fries and there was no more room (even in my giant belly!) for the cake. Of course we asked to take away and it was our Saturday breakfast. We got the Excelcior cake (hazelnut praliné-chocolate textures) and it was the best cake I've ever tasted in my life.

Ice cream from Gelaaati! and food from Juicy Jones

On Friday we didn't come back to Gopal and decided to go to Juicy Jones, one of the restaurants we've been in 2009 that we really liked it. Everything there is vegan too. We got the daily menu (starter, main dish, dessert and water or wine for €8,50) and the food was amazing again. Their entire menu is vegan and we also asked for a Guacamole Tapas (I was craving avocado for weeks). We definitely had more food than we should but it was worth it (and in our defense I'll say we walked a lot before an after)! I got hummus as starter, cheesy pizza and salad as main course and pineapple and orange mousse. Matteo got gaspacho, a huge Indian plate with rice and three different sauces and a apple cake. Everything besides the desserts was perfect (they weren't bad but not amazing too if you get me!). At night we went to a pizzeria for a lovely pre-wedding dinner and met great people!


For our Saturday lunch, after a quick stop at Gelaaati! for a rice ice cream, we decided to go back to Gopal to try some different burgers. With so many options we had to go back you know?! Too good again. And one more cake to take away, this time the Supreme one (raspberry, pistachio and bourbon vanilla). The vanilla butter cream had a strong buttery flavour but the cake was delicious. Do you think we already had too much of Gopal at this point? Well, they were also responsible for the wedding catering! Too bad I couldn't take pictures but the menu was just perfect.

Burgers and cakes at Gopal

To finish up our trip in great style, after we checked out from the hotel on Sunday we decided to have our last meal in Barcelona before going to the airport and... yes, you got me, we went to Gopal again. But I just got a piece of the Excelcior cake and some bites of Matteo's burger (have to admit we had left overs from the party and I ate most of them as my breakfast).

If you're not afraid of addictions, go to Gopal if you're in Barcelona! Great staff, food, atmosphere, prices and desserts from Lujuria Vegana!


PS. Forgot to mention that Gopal also offers meal options at lunch time if you don't fancy having just burgers all the time!

Food with family and friends

I can't believe we're back for almost three weeks and I still didn't have time to post my photos here from my hometown. But it's a good sign, it means I'm busy and being busy sounds good for now (have to finish my thesis until the middle of July!).

My dissertation is about food, so you can imagine how much I've be reading and writing about it. And one thing that I really agree is how much food is a social "tool", how is good to prepare and share food with people you love. And I have to say that I had a lot of this amazing sharing - of food and love - in Brazil. After the tour we went to my hometown to spend two weeks with family and friend and I was also in an important "mission": to know and baptize my newly born niece (L)!

In the first week we went to this fancy place with my parents and I didn't know if we would be able to find food to me and Matteo there, but silly me, Brazil has the best fruits and vegetables ever and there's always some options for vegan. So we ate well and had tons of fun:

The place:
built around a river with natural hot water

Tropical breakfast
(the only thing we took was the soy milk)

Lunch time

Dinner time

For the rest of the days I was just eating with my parents at home or with at friends:

One of my favourites: pastel de soja

Dinner with lovely friends:
spicy beans soup/cream (caldo de feijao)

Sfiha night with more lovely friends
(sfihas filled with pumpkin and broccoli)

Last night with friends:
couldn't leave Brazil without having açai
(this one was with mint, so refreshing!)

And on the last Saturday there I had the chance to do something I wanted since before going there: cooking a vegan meal to my family. I'm the only vegetarian in the family and my parents are not into it at all (well, my dad is curious about trying everything but not my mom or my brother). So there was this family lunch on Saturday to celebrate my niece's baptism and they've asked me to cook. Because my mom doesn't like a lot of things, me and Matteo decided to go basic: we'd cook corn risotto (what a surprise, but my sister-in-law loves it and asked me for that, so not my fault this time!) and pasta with two simple sauces - ragu and white sauce. Have to say it was a success and everybody enjoyed the meal and had a great time. I couldn't be happier.

We're back! Stronger than ever

Smoked tofu burger - Vegacy (Sao Paulo)

After basically one month I'm back in Dublin. Have to say I had the best time.

Ten days with Purification made me feel even stronger about the values I have, about the choices I've made and about what I believe: hardcore, veganism, straight edge. South America is an amazing place to go and play if you love hardcore and if you're vegan straight edge. If you fancy watching a hardcore metal (vegan) band with me playing the bass, here's a video:

After the tour I went to my hometown to spend time with my family and it was just perfect. But this post is about the tour and about all the vegan food we had on the road! I'll post some photos and I have to say that we had more time to spend in Sao Paulo, Brazil, so most of my pictures are from there. And Vegacy is still my favourite vegan restaurant ever.

My favourite snacks and soda - Vegacy

Salad buffet - Vegacy

Vegacy serves the best feijoada ever

We spent three days in Buenos Aires and basically all we had was Chinese food! I'm not sure about other vegan options in Argentina, but I hope there's more than that. But we had the chance to go to a vegan take away place with good food and one of the best food we had in Buenos Aires was on Saturday night, before the gig. The guys from "Comida Vegan Delivery" made us an excellent catering with three different types of burger, empanadas, mayonnaise and hummus!

Chinese vegan food

Vegan take away place in Buenos Aires

Vegan food before Purification's gig in Buenos Aires

In Chile we stayed less than 24 hours but we had a delicious lunch at my friend's house (who were putting out the show) and Cintia is an amazing cook. She also bakes "empanadas" and cupcakes so during the show we could taste some of her amazing vegan food.

Cintia's vegan cupcakes

One more music and food trip!

Today I'm leaving for this:

Purification is Matteo's band and they're a vegan edge band. They'll play six shows in South America and I'll be playing the bass for them. It will be 11 days playing, meeting friends, eating vegan food, having fun and spreading the word about veganism. If you wanna check the band, go to their Facebook page!

Our first stop will be Sao Paulo and I can't wait to go to Vegacy, a vegan restaurant there that I really love!

After the tour I'll be heading my hometown to spend some days with my family. Can't wait.

Have to say I don't know how I'll be able to manager the posts here, but I have a few guest posts prepared and scheduled to keep the blog alive while I'm in South America.

See you all soon!

Don't keep it secret!

I'm pretty sure you've heard before about the "Secret Society of Vegans" and if you haven't it's time to know all about it! SSOV has been producing vegan gear in London since 2004 and in 2009 they decided to open their first shop in Camden Town. In the beginning of 2010 they moved to a new place, called Vx, the new home of SSOV.

Since I've heard they had opened the shop I wanted to go there and never had the chance until last week! So, what's so special about the shop? For me, the most exciting thing is that it's not (just) a food shop (I know you don't believe, but I think about other things too!). They sell clothes, vegan shoes, books, grocery AND food.

We ended spending more than a couple of hours there and it was amazing. Everybody in the shop is very nice and we had the opportunity to meet one of the guys responsible for the Accidentally Vegan (they supply the shop with some of the most amazing vegan treats, include a vegan profiterole that is to die for!). It was a lovely afternoon and I bought some great stuff.

Besides the shop, they have a lounge in the basement where you can relax, drink some coffee while eating some of the delicious vegan treats and chat with the friends.

Vx is totally wort it a visit when in London! And don't keep it secret, spread the word as much as you can.

Vx

73 Caledonian Road

Kings Cross

Vx on Facebook

Accidentally Vegan on Facebook

Music and food trip to London

Oh, boy! I thought I had written about London here before and now I realized I didn't. I wrote about the trip we've done last year but in my old column in a Brazilian website. Shame on me. But well, better late than never and now I have even better tips and photos, so here we go!

London must be in every TOP 5 cities for vegans. It's very vegan-friendly and the prices are decent too (well, I always compare to f***ing-expensive Dublin!). And being a tourist there rules too. Me and Matteo went there in the end of April to see Descendents for the first time. The show was on of the biggest frustration of my life cause Milo (the singer) lost his voice after the third song. But well, this is not a blog about music so this was just an introduction (you know how much punk/hardcore is a big thing in my life!).

We stayed three days in London and went to some places to eat, including the vegan Thai place in Camden Town that is a must (it's all you can eat and it's basically in front of the tube station and close to most of the venues we go to). The place is not hard to find but I can't remember its name (sorry about that!) but there's a sign in the front door "vegetarian Thai buffet" and the place is big enough to see it :P Just one note: it's almost impossible to go there two days in a row cause the food is heavy, everything there is fried and in your first day there you will really want as much as you can, so do it right!

Second food stop was Gallery Cafe. The guys from the Vx store (I'll write a separated post about it) recommend us their vegan pizza. It's served after 3:30 so we decided to go there before the Saves the Day gig on Tuesday. Can't describe how good was the super cheesy vegan pizza! One of the best vegan pizzas I've ever had. Could eat there every day (yeah, you know, I do love pizza). The place is vegetarian, not vegan, but they have vegan options and the staff is pleased to help you to "build" your favourite pizza.

Gallery Cafe

St. Margaret's House
21 Old Ford Road

Bethnal Green Third stop was Ms. Cupcake. When I read that they had opened a store in London I got so excited and couldn't leave the city with a least one visit. They're located in Brixton so we took the tube and, have to say, I had the best cupcake of my life there: a Ferrero Rocher cupcake. We had the honor of meeting Ms. Cupcake in person too and she's a lovely lady. The shop is big and it's in a nice gallery with a coffee shop in the next door, where you can order your vegan favourite coffee to have with your cupcake. Matteo had the Triple Chocolate one (which also comes with homemade vegan marshmallows on top!) and I had another one, Raspberry Cheesecake. So, next time you're in London, make sure you'll stop by Ms. Cupcake, it's 1000% worth it!

Ms. Cupcake

408 Coldharbour Lane

Brixton

And our last stop before coming back to real life was Maoz Vegetarian. I know it's not a meal, but I love falafel and Maoz is handy, cheap and tasty. The filling options in London are great and the falafel balls are delicious too. And the shop is at Soho so it's always a good idea to walk around the area too.

Maoz Vegetarian

43 Old Compton Street

This is it! There are at least a million other vegan places to go so I'm sure I will have to keep going there to keep this blog full of tips.

On the road: vegan in Sardinia

Marinara pizza with artichokes and black olives

A couple of weeks ago me and Matteo went to Sardinia, Italy. We had a lovely time there and the island is really beautiful. We rented a car, so we could go to as many places as possible. The weather wasn't amazing, but it was still warmer than Ireland and it was sunny most of the time.
How was the food, you might be asking? Well, have to tell you that Sardinia was a good surprise for me. We didn't find much information on line before the travel and decided to go with the spirit that in Italy there's always pasta and pizza, "so will be fine". When we left the airport we stopped in a regular supermarket and found some vegan stuff to have in the hotel. It was a very good start.

In the first two days we kept eating breakfast in the hotel, eating some snacks in the car while driving around the island, having sandwiches, juice and fruits in the afternoon and pizza at night. But our vegan supply was ending and we were in a very small city and had no idea about what to find around to eat. But when we were coming back from La Maddalena, a small island part of Sardinia, I spotted an advertising on the road about a organic store and guess where was it?! Oh yeah, at "our" city (Olbia)! We went straight there and I was very surprised with the size of the store - it is huge! It's not a vegetarian or vegan place - so they had some fish (I didn't see meat) - but it had many vegan products and we could supply ourselves again. Talking to the owner, she said there are many vegans around!

Emporio Alcatraz
12, V. Roma, Olbia, OT 07026
07026, Italy

So, if you decide to go to Sardinia, don't be afraid, you will always find the Italian classics - pasta and pizza (marinara pizza with the vegetables you want) - and also vegan products in regular supermarkets and organic shops.

I couldn't help myself and had a marinara with french fries
It's not Italian at all but it was good (and funny!)

And don't forget, if there is any important Italian words to know when you're traveling and doesn't speak Italian at all, the word is "strutto" (it means "lard" and it's still used in some doughs in Italy, mainly in focaccia bread).

Lime granite in our last day, in Alguero