This Meatless Week: March 3, 2011

Attention diners: It is Dine Originals Week (again)! There are $10, $20 and $30 meal deals all around town March 7-13. Check out the many menus, and plan on eating out seven days worth of lunches and dinners in some of Columbus' finest restaurants.

Outside the Dine Originals restaurants, Dragonfly has announced a format change. Weekdays will feature a casual menu, and weekends will offer a reservation-only super club. They are also planning to re-open On the Fly as a seasonal vegetable market.

On the subject of vegan TV, Cupcake Wars on the Food Network will feature two vegan bakers on Tuesday March 8 at 9 pm EST. Both C'est La V(egan) and Sticky Fingers will compete on the show without animal products. Last year, vegan baker Chloe Coscarelli won an episode of Cupcake Wars. This episode features the first vegan cupcake duel.

The Angry Baker

The Angry Baker is a new bakery located on Oak Street in Old Towne East. Proprietor Vicki Hink offers a full range of delicious baked goods with an outstanding array of choices for vegetarians and vegans alike.

The bakery is easy to find for those familiar with Yellow Brick Pizza-- it's right across the street. The decor is old fashioned and whimsical, with seating for about 15.

In addition to the cinnamon rolls, pies, cakes and various cookies, the Angry Baker makes breakfast items like French toast and lunch options like Blue Jacket Dairy mac and cheese, a vegan sloppy joe (the snobby joe) and a vegetarian portabella "bacon" lettuce and tomato sandwich with a garlic aioli. The sandwiches come with a lightly dressed mesclun salad with house made croutons.

The aforementioned PBLT had crispy thin sliced mushrooms filling in for bacon. The soft white bread soaks up the flavor of the 'shrooms as well as the garlic mayo. It was fantastic.

The vegan blueberry brownie was delightful. The tart berries provide a great contrast to the bitter dark chocolate notes that form the base of the brownie's flavor.

In addition to catering to meatless diners, the Angry Baker also has a number of gluten-free baked goods. If they're half as tasty as the vegan sandwiches and baked goods, they are worth checking out.

The Angry Baker

Columbus Vegan Week

October 24-31 is Columbus Vegan Week (vegan weeks are both free of animal products and eight days long). Participating restaurants include Phat Wraps, Columbus Brewing Company, Knead and the Betty's family of restaurants, including Betty's, Tip Top, Surly Girl and Dirty Franks. Mercy for Animals is promoting the event, which should be a fun and delicious way to introduce people to great places in Columbus that offer vegan food.

-- Columbus Vegan Week information --

Vegan baker wins Cupcake Wars

Since I spend my spare time watching almost every competitive food program on television, I was particularly pleased when Chloe Coscarelli won Cupcake Wars on the Food Network. The vegan chef took the crown by preparing 1,000 cupcakes for a singles event, including a chocolate strawberry shortcake, a dark chocolate orange and a raspberry tiramisu. The theme of the ingredients was aphrodisiacs.

All we need is for a vegan chef to win Iron Chef America or Top Chef Master and vegetarian fine dining might get its due recognition. Much like Pattycake in Columbus, Chef Chloe demonstrated that vegan dessert can be more amazing than its non-vegan counterparts.

Whole World fire

A fire has torn through Clintonville vegetarian outpost Whole World. The restaurant hopes to re-open by December 1 of this year. (Whole World was also written about on my blog back in its infancy). Click here to read more about the fire.

Krema Nut Company

Few dishes take you back to your childhood quite like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The schoolyard staple shines at the Grandview-based Krema Nut Company, a local operation with wholesale and retail space west of 315 on Goodale.

The peanut butter recipe is admirable for its minimalism: the only ingredient is roasted peanuts. That makes the peanut butter more natural, meaning that sometimes the oil separates when the peanut butter settles.

Krema also makes candies, and there is a retail PBNJ stand in the store that makes sandwiches, shakes, and ice cream dishes.

I made myself a peanut butter sandwich with the hot and spicy peanut butter, cucumbers and white onions on toasted Italian bread. It was reminiscent of Thai peanut noodles (which I also plan on making with the hot and spicy peanut butter). I spiced it up with a hint of sriracha, and it turned out delicious.

Krema Nut Company is a great local spot that might be easy to overlook. I learned about it from an article on a local blog. The write-up profiled a tour of the Krema facilities, and reviewed the (mostly) vegetarian sandwiches and other fare. Both Krema and the blog entry are worth checking out.

Krema Nut Company

ComFest Vegetarian 2009

It's that time of year again. Time for toplessness and beer in the park. Time for bands mixed with the scent of body odor and incense. That's right...it's ComFest time.

In between brews, it is often important to obtain sustenance. You could always pick up a vegetarian cookbook from the Krishna tent. However, if you'd prefer somebody else to cook for you while avoiding buying a new wardrobe and changing your hairstyle, there are plenty of options for the vegetarian diner that don't involve changing religions.

Dragonfly's On the Fly (review here) is on-site, featuring your favorite vegetarian comfort food options. The empanada was made with a chickpea mash, black beans and curried onions. It was delicious.

Rad Dog (review here) is also set up at Goodale Park. Vegan dawgs should be leaping off the grill as proprietor Tawd Bell tries to keep pace.

Flavors of India (review here), as with most Indian restaurants, features many vegetarian items. There are veggie platters, veggie wraps and samosas available to cure your addiction to curry.

Whole World Cafe (review here), Columbus' grande dame of vegetarian dining, features one of its most famous items: the broccoli burger. A concoction consisting of brown rice, onion, broccoli, bread crumbs and peanut butter, the sandwich proves that the whole is often times greater than the sum of its parts.

Benevolence Cafe (review here) also made the short trek down the street to feed the vegetarian masses at ComFest. I've yet to have something I didn't like from Benevolence, so this should be a safe option. (Firdous also brought the Mediterranean fare over from the North Market--review here).

Wellness Forum Foods (review here) is a cool operation in North Columbus that prepares ready-to-eat foods for those looking to make healthier lifestyle choices. Chef Del Sroufe is on hand this weekend to whip up the tasty fare.

Living on the Veg is a place I was not familiar with before ComFest. They have a delicious looking menu with an eggplant parm burger and rosemary potato salad on the entirely vegetarian menu board.

Finizio's Family Foods is an Italian catering service. Many of the menu items are vegetarian-friendly.

There are a number of other options scattered throughout the park. The turkey leg place has veggie fried rice. There are many carnival food locations that offer fries, funnel cakes, fried cheese and lemonade. If none of these options work for you, Jeni's root beer floats with Ugandan vanilla bean ice cream should safely put a smile on your face (that is if the rest of the ComFest activities have not done so already).

Comfest Vegetarian

Z Pizza

Z Pizza is a health-conscious pizza shop with West Coast roots in the Short North. There are a wide variety of veggie-friendly options on the menu including salads, a sandwich and pizza.

The pizza is available with a pile of topping options. There are also great order-by-name pies, including the above pictured Berkeley Soy Cheese Veggie Pizza. I ordered a whole wheat crust made with a pesto sauce, bubbling soy mozzarella and a mountain of veggies including green and red peppers, tomato, mushroom, onion and zucchini with crumbled veggie burger in place of sausage. The pesto is garlicky. The vegetables were crisp and colorful. The crust was thin, delicate, flavorful, and hearty enough to survive the pesto coating.

There are a number of other delicious sounding pizzas for vegetarians. The Tuscan is described as: Homemade roasted garlic sauce, mozzarella, Cremini, Shittake and Button mushrooms, caramelized onions, feta, truffle oil and fresh thyme. There is also a Margherita-esque pie called the Napoli.

There is a more complete review of Z Pizza on Columbus Alive. It was a positive write-up.

The organic tomato sauce and wheat dough are cool reminders of the healthy foundation of Z Pizza. They sell pizza by the slice, and there is limited space to dine in.

Z Pizza