Vegan Eats in Washington D.C.

It's taken me a while to get sorted out with my crowded memory cards, but necessity is the mother of getting crap done, so when both of my memory cards filled up this weekend, I finally transfered all of the photos off of them. This gave me a delicious chance to review some of the food I had on my recent trip to Washington D.C.

I hadn't spent much time in D.C. since back in the day (about 10 years ago) when I interned at PETA (yah. I did. In the Grassroots Campaigns Department...and it was actually really interesting, awesome and valuable, which doesn't mean that I don't still have a scathing critique of, roughly, 60% of their stunts). Not being far from D.C. in Norfolk I would sometimes go up to work on things there or experience the city for a weekend. It was a really great time of exploring eating out as a vegan in a major American city, something I had really only done much of in New York at that point.

Being back in D.C. gave me great memories of Soul Veg brunches (and everything else), late night chats in what used to be the wonderful space of Food for Thought (now an awful hole with seriously remedial food in the Black Cat), and my first experiences with Ethiopian at Meskerem. Ah, memories.

This time around, I had very limited time to enjoy eating out, but I did work some treats in. I also neglected to bring my camera a few times--notably, a few Sticky Fingers breakfasts and the time I got food from Meskerem, which is too bad because the bounty of their vegetarian plate is something to behold.

I was very excited to get to Sticky Fingers for the first time. Lucky, or rather, dangerously, for me, the all-vegan bakery was located directly on my route from the place I was staying to the train. Whoops! Where did this huge, fresh, soft, delicious, vegan cinnamon roll come from?

All of the sweet treats from Sticky Fingers were really good. There was a disappointing incident with a breakfast sandwich that was seriously lame though--dried out English muffin, sad square of baked tofu, shriveled veggie ham--but all in all the bakery was a huge winner. I was however, surprised to find that the decor was not cozy. It was pretty sterile and cafeteria-like, though cute with their bright pink chairs and retro-table tops, but for my notes toward planning out the vegan coffee/bakeshop that I will likely never be able to open but still dream about, I will pen an entry that instructs me not to follow the Sticky Finger's design model.

I will happily copy their little devil model though:



Yum. And it was very cool that they had vegan soft-serve by Temptation! Perfect for a hot D.C. afternoon.


Random, but welcome top your own nachos made a useful and filling snack after a day of missed lunch. I'm powerfully curious about the cheese sauce and planning to get in the kitchen to mess around recreating something like it soon.



Sticky Fingers
1370 Park Rd., N.W.
Washington, D.C.
202-299-9700

Maybe a surprise favorite--Asylum. If there were one restaurant from D.C. that I would take back to Boston with me if I could, it would be this one. We have a dearth of veg-friendly places to get brunch in Boston and I for one wouldn't mind spending the majority of my brunch outings at Asylum. It's a sort of bizarre goth/wrestling club with a restaurant on the side that plays (at least for brunch) great music (punk, '80s goth, new wave, weirdo pop, '80s hardcore--I was eating my breakfast and the Crass song "Big A, little a" came on--amazing!)

Unlimited refill coffee in gothy mug:



My Huevos Rancheros! So good! Potatoes pan fried with vegan cheese, smoky black beans, tofu scrambles with salsa and cheese on top of a lovely tostada.



I stole a bite of these too--strawberry banana pancakes. Delicious.



Our brunch appetizer: faux chicken wings. These were pretty good, but still had nothing on Kate's, especially when it comes to the dipping sauce. I missed the faux blue cheese that Kate's serves up and found this one to be really uninspired. Still, worth ordering.



Those who know me will know I'm not usually suckered in by the vortex of little kids' cuteness, but Lucy got me repeatedly. I was like, why am I standing on my head right now? Oh, Lucy demanded it. Why am I dancing with a two-year-old to the Beatles (a band that does not grace my willing to listen to them list)? Oh, Lucy. Why am I taking out my camera for a reason other than to take pictures of delicious food? Oh, Lucy, who along with her proud poppa, John, appealed greatly to my sense of juxtaposition while we ate together at Asylum. Dungeon themed restaurant, little girl in pink dress--I'm all over it.



Asylum
2471 18th St., N.W.
Washington, D.C.
202-319-9353

I had to spend time in the Capitol district attending a workshop. It's not the best area to be in for vegan lunch, but it's a very good area to be in for cute ducks in the courtyard sightings.



Truthfully, it also was sort of impressive to go to a workshop housed in this beautiful Library of Congress building. I got to skip the line to get in too, which was fun. Later for you, tourists!



I did have one good, if overpriced, lunch in the Capitol district though. Mock Duck stirfry at Thai Roma:



I am sort of mystified about this restaurant though. It said it was called Thai Roma because it was Thai-Italian fusion, but I didn't see anything that looked remotely fusiony on the menu. It was solid Thai food though and they did have a large veggie menu.

Thai Roma
313 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E.
Washington, D.C.
202-544-2338

For the rest of my trip, I spent most of my days in at a conference in the Convention Center, which put me nice and close to Java Green, which quickly became a lunch-time favorite. It is a great model of what quick, healthy veg food can be and an awesome model of an eco business using wind power, fair trade ingredients, biodegradables, organics, etc. It was insanely popular and seemed to attract lots of different kinds of people, very cool.

Soba noodles with curry and faux chicken and a delicious green tea frappe:



Salad with Seoul Chicken:



Faux Chicken Deluxe Bento (this was my favorite--the chicken dishes were great I loved the crisp morsel of lotus root):



Java Green
1020 19th St., N.W.
Washington, D.C.
202-775-8899

The only night I had a chance to go out, I visited Busboys and Poets, another great place that I wish I had regular access too. It was part radical bookstore (focusing on race and politics), part performance space, part coffeeshop, part cocktail lounge and restaurant. They were out of vegan cheese, but served up a nice pizza with faux-pepperoni and lots of great veggies. Cocktails were pretty great too and the atmosphere made it be the kind of place where you wish you could hang out indefinitely.



Busboys and Poets
2021 14th St., N.W.
Washington, D.C.
202-387-7638

You can read brief reviews of these places and more at Compassion Over Killing One thing I was particularly impressed by was COK's printouts of this guide that they distributed all over the city. I saw them everywhere and saw them being used by lots of people. It made it easy to find vegan options and made it seem like D.C. was bursting with vegan food. In some ways this later point is true, but the majority of the places in the guide are not vegetarian and some even have very few options. It's important though because it points out that you can eat veg in many places. It's really inspired me to think about doing something like this for Boston. The physicality of the pamphlet was so important--just having it out all over the place for people to grab makes it easy to connect with veg food, because, I've heard it said (though obviously don't know from experience) that some people don't plan and plot and lust over the places they will eat upon visiting a new city.