holy crap this is so damn good, why dont we have this back home
ive been going here so many times, and its always different food and so good, and its like standard vietnamese prices and not just a rich-people/white-people place. and such a nice communal sort of vibe as well
like imagine if this is what most people thought of when they think of vegan food, not just some sad bit of boiled broccoli or plain lettuce or whatever
I also think that people need to let go of this weird fixation with replicating meat dishes with plant based ingredients and just let vegetables and tofu be their own delicious things.
If you look at cuisines with a long history of vegetarianism, their vegetarian dishes aren't just shitty replicas of meat dishes.
yeah when i was growing up vegetables were those things you had at the side of a meat-based lump of dinner, and were generally sad grated carrot and lettuce and tomato with too much cheap dressing, or 'steamed' broccoli and potatoes and carrots cooked in a dish in the microwave, and thats kinda what my subconscious always assumed i would be dooming myself to if i went vegan
i think a huge part of the opposition (from people who already know in their hearts that eating meat is wrong) is just fear of not knowing how youre gonna feed yourself and thinking youre condemning yourself to living a monastic life devoid of pleasures, and if more people saw and tasted good vegan food in the wild their resistance to it would absolutely plummet. seeing that vegan food isnt scary and is actually 'normal' (and often very delicious) is a huge part of the battle, i think
and were generally sad grated carrot and lettuce and tomato with too much cheap dressing, or ‘steamed’ broccoli and potatoes and carrots cooked in a dish in the microwave
:lmayo:
but seriously, growing up white totally ruined vegetables for me.
yeah no shade on my mum, who was trying her best but just didnt know better, and has learned to make amazing salads and veggie dishes and would probably be at least vegetarian by now if not for my dad wanting meat
but yeah mayo 'culture' loves doing horrible things to vegetables almost as much as they love doing horrible things to animals
People fry tofu unseasoned and say it’s gross
they don't even fry it... this one guy I know was complaining about the taste of tofu and when I confronted him I discovered he'd eaten raw tofu. Like no shit it doesn't taste good like that man
it's the peer pressure of never being able to go to a restaurant with non-vegans, or a party with catering, or a visit to a non-vegan's house where you aren't bringing the food.
ymmv depending on area and friend group or whatever but ive personally found people are generally surprisingly receptive to tailoring restaurant choice to somewhere that at least has decent vegan options (if not fully-vegan places). happycow as always is a blessing for this. i realise this will definitely not be the case everywhere though
and yeah its harder for parties and other peoples places, but comrade packet-of-muesli-bars is always handy in a pinch, and going to peoples places can also be an excuse to make a big pot of vegan chili or something and start to show people that vegan food doesnt have to be sad
Man, now I want some curry.
Also try massaman curry if you haven't, it's like if you couldn't decide between Indian and Thai so you just added everything
Massaman just refers to the paste used to make it but now that you mention it, restaurants love to do that don't they?
This is a cursed concept I've never actually seen made real, and I'd like to keep it that way.
Mayo-based sauces can be good, with like mustard and spices in there
but if they did the same thing with plain chicken they’d hate it too.
british people will just cook completely unseasoned chicken breasts and gulp it down and even like it somehow
Any amount of seasoning is too much for the Anglos. Salt makes food spicy for them.
Asia (to be overly broad) is far advanced in vegan food.
I went to similar places in Taiwan. There, some folks ate vegan for religious (Buddhist?) reasons, and some did for health. But even folks who ate meat (like me) would go get vegan just cuz it was tasty.
yeah theres tonnes of vegan places here, and likewise i think a lot of it is because the version of buddhism that is widely practiced here has two plant-based days a month, so its much more normalised and it means a lot more people know how to cook vegan food and make it delicious
I would argue due to many factors, their cuisine is able to have a lot of stuff that could be meat be changed to non meat products.
Are you Vietnamese/fluent in the language? If not how easy is it to navigate Vietnam as an English speaking foreigner. I'd like to visit but I'm not sure I have the ability to learn the language beforehand.
nope not at all and holy shit its a hard language, but my partner is vietnamese so she has been handling a lot of the complex stuff. i feel like it could be tricky and overwhelming and a bit exhausting as a solo traveler if you dont speak the language and youre not the devil-may-care outgoing traveler type, and you definitely cant rely on everyone speaking english everywhere. i get the vibe that the younger solo travelers mostly try and link up with other foreigners and travel around in groups to make things easier
wait i should also add that i do have some important basic vietnamese phrases ive learnt:
đả đảo đế quốc Mỹ :amerikkka:
đả đảo thực dân Pháp :france-cool:
This looks so good. One of the things I miss about California was the abundance of good vegan food.
Jesus I was there two weeks ago. We could have hung out. Ya the vegan scene was insane.
Was this the place called The Veg? They were on the second floor of a fucking eyeglasses shop.
oh dang unfortunate timing! and havent seen that place (theres so many!), this one is veggie castle just a bit north of the old city
so many of these cool places just tucked away everywhere
This is all vegan?! Ohmygosh. I want to vacuum it all up into my mouth right now! I'm leery of east Asian food in general because I don't know what I'm looking at and I hate biting into some hunk of meat when trying to enjoy my food. I'm not vegan but, to my palate, meat always ruins a dish. But it's impossible for veggies to not be delicious. I could just wolf everything down without even looking!
i think east asian and indian food is some of the best for veganism, as its generally so easy to switch out small pieces of meat in a dish thats a mix of stuff like a stirfry or a curry for non-meat like tofu or mushroom or bits of fake meat or whatever. though yeah i agree theres that extra bit of worry that there might be actual meat mixed in (and also the worry about stuff being labelled 'vegetarian/vegan' with fish sauce/oyster sauce)
i think one of the difficulties for veganism in mayo countries is that white people food is so often one giant lump of meat with veggies just as a side, and its much harder to veganise a standard mayo diet, hence why there seems to be so much focus on fake chicken nuggets and burger patties and stuff like that
im only here a few weeks and working a fair bit of it (im piggybacking off my partners work trip), so im not getting the full experience, but its been great. too damn hot right now, and i cannot express how incredibly fucking terrifying the traffic is holy shit, and the country is clearly not perfect and still has its share of problems. and apart from a bunch of propaganda posters everywhere, is not overtly socialist in a way that most people would recognise, and there are certainly tensions and contradictions of capitalist encroachment. but the vibe is great and in the places ive been round theres a sense of actual communities that function rather than just alienation and atomisation. and theres clearly people without much wealth but i havent gotten any sense of any grinding poverty in the way that ive seen in eg latin america. and i get the sense that people are fiercely and justifiably proud of the country that they fought and suffered so hard for.
also fwiw hcmc feels a lot more 'westernised' than hanoi and the other cities ive been in
Dude go to the Lenin statue, war museam, and Ho Chi Minh tomb.
Ya I didn't like HCMC.
yeah the lenin statue was cool, im more ancom than ml and my (apolitical but im working on it) partner doesnt really get the specifics, but she made a point of taking me to the statue because she thought that was my jam. yeah shes a keeper
uncle ho was busy getting some beauty treatment or something done so i didnt get to see him, but yeah that whole precinct was cool
and yeah i didnt dislike hcmc, but the other cities ive been to had a better overall vibe (from the limited viewpoint i had), especially da nang and hue
That looks so good and I'm only slightly jelly that you're visiting Hanoi right now. Hope you're having a decent time!
buddy call me tom soyer and poggleberry finn because I'm doing the faces right now
Looks great/interesting.
Questions: How are the noodles served? What kind of roll is that in the bottom right? Yellow sauce looks like some kind of curry. What are the fried orangey and yellow bits?
Had some Pho outdoors in Chinatown last weekend. And my partner asked, “did it come with a small plate of basil, bean sprouts and chili peppers”? Love that accompaniment to the soup. So good!
to be honest a lot of the answers are "i dunno, i just shoveled it onto my plate and then into my stomach and it was good"
yellow sauce wasnt really a curry, just a probably turmeric-based marinade for the triangles of tofu i think?
there were the fried noodles in the buffet containers, and they did also have soups and noodle-soups (not pictured) - some with vermicelli noodles some with pho noodles
the deep fried crispy bits were a variety of things, some were tofu or king oyster mushroom, my favourite were the deep fried banana pieces omg so good :pingu-horny:
But why would you actually eat a vegan? The female orgasm is a myth. :jordan-eboy-peterson:
