Wedding/Honeymoon Restaurant Reviews

[Guest guest]

Hi everybody. I just got married on the fourth, and went on a 5 day

honeymoon in Humboldt County, California. So I have lots of food

critiques for that period. Everything is in Northern California.

 

The rehearsal lunch was at Tandoori Nites, an Indian restaurant in

Stockton. Most everyone had the buffet, which included meat and dairy

in everything but the rice. The five of us who are vegan had to order

from the menu. Their pakoras, samosas, and garlic naan are exquisite,

but I had quite a lot of trouble deciding on an entree, as I just

found out my favorite (mushroom matar) has dairy in it. I settled on

a potato dish that I didn't like very much when it came. I think it

was the first dish I ever got there that I didn't like. Prices at

this place are pretty reasonable, ~$20 per person in a sit down

restaurant atmosphere. Sometimes communication is difficult as I

don't know Punjabi. I had a very difficult time making or changing

our reservation. The oldest woman in the family doesn't know a lot of

English, but if the son is their it is very easy because he is

completely fluent with no accent in English. Everyone else there it

is easy to communicate with.

 

For the wedding, the food was from Tofoo Com Chay in San Jose. That

is a Vietnamese (?) vegan fast food restaraunt, very small. Ben, the

owner, deals mostly in mock meats. It's a really inexpensive place to

eat normally (with $2 sandwiches), and we got enough food to feed 30

people and have plenty of leftovers for $140. Everything was

delicious. We have been eating there for a few years, a few times a

year as we are not living nearby, and our favorites have proven to be

the drumsticks (they are even on a stick), chinese sausage, and sesame

chicken. The textures are very realistic, and some of the other

things we had at the wedding were: spring rolls, black pepper sausage,

tuna, meatballs, fried rice, and chicken patties. Everything at this

place is vegan except one coffee drink that was in the cooler the last

time we went and one of the desserts.

 

The cake was a Chocolate Almond Midnight from Millennium in San

Francisco. They are a delicious all-vegan restaurant in the Savoy

Hotel. Their regular prices are out of our range, so we only go there

once every year or two, but to get three rounds of the cake only set

us back $145. This was for plain rounds, and we decorated it

ourselves on the wedding day. Both the food from Tofoo Com Chay and

the cake were put in a fridge for two days before the wedding, and

they still tasted great on the wedding day.

 

Only five people at the wedding were vegan, but everyone else was good

sports and tried everything we had out (except my father, who is

anti-vegan and went to McDonald's before coming to the wedding. He

did, however, have salad, rice, and cake.) Everyone complimented the

food and especially the cake. Everyone wanted to know what was in it

since there was no dairy. My father got halfway through his piece of

cake before someone mentioned there was tofu in it, and then he

quietly gave it to my mother. The cake was a mousse-cake kind of

thing, so it was real easy to make it vegan.

 

We also served Bolthouse Farms juices at the wedding. They are from a

farm here in the San Joaquin Valley, and were delicious. There is one

called Green Goodness which everyone was hesitant to try (we still

have most of the bottles of that left over.) It even has wheat grass

and spirulina in it, but is kiwi flavored.

 

For the honeymoon, we drove out through Berkeley and stopped at a

place called the Intermezzo Cafe. We each got a hummus sandwich and

orange juice, and split a bowl of chili. This place is vegetarian

friendly, but there were only a few vegan things on the menu. And not

all of their breads are vegan. The sandwiches were *huge*, big enough

that when we left we still had an entire sandwhich left between us.

And the prices were good. I think it was ~$20 total.

 

Then we went up to Humboldt county, to the Wildflower Cafe in Arcata.

It is a vegetarian restaurant with some vegan things on the menu. I

had the vegan manicotti, and my husband had the mushroom cashew

stroganoff. It was made with a cashew gravy (vegan), and was very

good. I was less than impressed with my manicotti, but it was very

similar to real ricotta cheese. We also had coconut-pear juice and

Thai Coconut soup. Both of which were very good. I think this place

cost a little more, $30-$40.

 

The next morning we ate the rest of our hummus sandwiches for

breakfast and went caming for several days. On the way back out we

stopped at the Wildflower Cafe again for lunch. This time I had

" Eric's Favorite " , a tofu sanwich with portabello mushrooms and I

added avocado to it. It was so good, and I finished it long before my

husband finished his. It usually comes with cheese, but I left it

off. I forget what my husband had. I had the tortilla soup, too, and

I wasn't so keen on that. We also had pear juice and a fresh fruit

smoothie, both of which were delicious. I should mention that they

have a " vegan cheese sauce " that you can get instead of regular

cheese. I have never seen vegan cheese as a sauce, and that is the

only way the menu said you could have it. On the way out we also

bought some cookies from them. They have labels up that tell the

ingredients on all the pastries, but some are called vegan when they

still have honey in them. We got two each of espresso almond,

chocolate mint, peanut butter, and raspberry thumbprints. All of this

cost $40-$50.

 

We saved one of the peanut butter cookies for my two year old brother,

but he didn't like it very much so I ate it myself. It was kind of on

the dry side.

 

This last restaurant I don't know what city or county it is in. Maybe

Mendocino County? It is called " Burrito Exquisito " I believe. We

were driving through this small town and my husband goes " I know this

place. There's food here for us somewhere. " So we found this tiny

burrito place about 3 minutes before they closed and got a burrito and

a Maui smoothie. It was the best burrito I think I have ever had, and

the smoothie was pretty good. I think we paid ~$15 to split a burrito

and a smoothie. They were nice and progressive, with condoms and sex

ed pamphlets on the counter, along with a sufficiently

liberitarian-socialist free newspaper with a front page critique of

the war in Iraq. I would definitely go there again.

 

Tsaria