Moonlight Cafe, Seattle WA

Moonlight Cafe is a great restaurant in Seattle. They have a normal menu and an entire vegan menu which is great. On this trip we tried the chicken fried rice. This was good, but it did not have a lot of flavor. It was just like rice and veggies and mock chicken without seasoning. Good, but not the best.


We also tried the sweet and sour spare ribs. Normally I am not a big sweet and sour fan. Most places I have had it is tofu or something covered in batter and deep fried which I just don't like that much. This however was just super delicious mock meat in a tasty sauce. Whatever they use for the spare ribs is what they use for the pork skewers which are one of my favorite foods ever. This however is better since you get a lot more for your money. Man if I only knew what they used/how they prepared this mock meat I would be in heaven! Seriously it is one of my favorite foods no matter what sauce they put on it.

Overall - Moonlight is great for vegan Asian foods. They have a separate vegan menu with lots of tasty options.

Nature's Corner Cafe, Florence OR

Raymond and I went down to Florence, OR to visit his grandparents for a weekend. They wanted to take us out for dinner, but there are not a lot of vegan options in Florence. They had looked in the phone book and found Nature's Corner Cafe and how they had vegan options so we went to check it out. I ordered the tofu teriyaki as I love teriyaki. I wasn't really expecting much which is probably good as this was just okay. For a small town on the Oregon coast that only has like fast food places I was just happy to have a vegan option. It is not that it was bad, it was just not anything special. A little too salty for my tastes, but it was alright.


We also tried the tempeh reuben with vegan cheese. I was expecting this to be delicious or at least have a lot of flavor from the sauerkraut and tempeh, but not so much. I am often surprised how places can take the flavor out of foods. I mean fresh sauerkraut should be flavorful, but this was just really bland. Not sure why it was a reuben as it didn't taste like one. Also, afterwards we looked at their small store area and I looked at the cheeses they had....and I am not sure the cheese on this was actually vegan as they didn't have any vegan cheeses for sale there...

Overall - There are not many options in Florence, OR besides fast food french fries. They do have some food you can eat if you need something, but it is not the best.

The Foundation, Vancouver BC

From Vegan Gastrobot

I remember years ago when I lived in Bellingham, WA and we would go up to Canada all the time I used to go to The Foundation quite a bit. I wasn’t vegan then and I didn’t really remember what food they had, but I put it on the list for old times’ sake (and because Raymond had never been). All of the reviewers seemed to rave about the nachos, but I couldn’t remember if this was an all vegan place. Unfortunately they do not have vegan nachos. Oh well. We ordered the vegan chocolate fondue served with bananas, pears and strawberries. There was a ton of chocolate and we didn’t even get close to earing it all with the fruit. The chocolate was super dark and rich and even if we would have had more things to dip into it I don’t think I could have eaten much more since it is was so rich, but very tasty.

From Vegan Gastrobot

We also tried the east van town – black beans, banana, cocoa, and lime sauce served over rice with salsa. This was so good! I thought it sounded kind of…not so appetizing with all of those flavors together, but it worked surprisingly well. The bananas went well with the black beans and cocoa, the salsa was fruity so it added some sweetness as well and paired well with everything else. Really tasty – I might have to try and recreate it at home.

Overall – if you are in the area I would stop in here. They have some unusual sounding flavor combinations that we found actually work. It does get really busy though in the evenings.

Afghan Horsemen, Vancouver BC

From Vegan Gastrobot

We arrived at Afghan Horsemen around 10pm so it was not that busy. They did have room in the area where you sit on the floor on cushions so we chose to sit in there. I loved the way it was decorated and you just relaxed while eating. There were 2 combination options – the vegan plate (which comes with baked rice with Kabuli topping (sautéed carrots, raisins & almonds), Dahl (lentil stew), cauliflower, Salata & Pakawra (batter fried potatoes), with a vegetarian sauce dip) or the vegan platter which came with all of that plus a plate of pita and hummus and is for 2 people. Since we were not that hungry we decided to share the vegan plate since it would be less food (it was still too much for us and we had some leftovers). The salata was like a cucumber salad I make with vinaigrette – mixed onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, mint flakes and cilantro dressing that was vinegary and delicious. The Pakwara was like a giant battered potato chip. The potato slices were incredibly thin and the batter was spiced nicely.  The cauliflower was cooked till it was falling apart and spiced very well – I couldn’t put my finger on what it tasted like but I loved it, especially with the red sauce that came with it. The Kabuli topping for the rice was carrots, raisons and almonds that were sweet with a hint of cinnamon and really quite good. Finally the dal was like a garlic paste. When I first tried it I couldn’t remember what it was supposed to be it just tasted like garlic and I thought maybe it was a topping for the other things. But it did grow on me until we had eaten the entire bowl of it.

Overall – Definitely check out Afghan Horsemen and get a vegan combination. All of the flavors were amazing and much different from other foods I have eaten.