Restaurant Challenge #002: The Barge

The Barge

Dublin, Ireland

I just got home from a long weekend Dublin, Ireland, which was awesome! Ace (the bf) and I spent four days in downtown Dublin sightseeing and hanging out with the Irish. Dublin is a great city to be a tourist, because it's surprisingly small enough that most everything you want to see is within walking distance, and its full of great shops, beautiful old buildings and cathedrals, and little local hangouts full of really friendly people.

I have to admit, though, it was hard to be vegetarian in Ireland! The Irish are the epitomy of meat and potatoes folks, and they don't seem to spend too much time worrying about eating their fruits and vegetables. I mostly survived on french fries (chips) and Guiness while I was there, not that this was really anything to complain about. Ace and I did try to do the tourist thing and stick to the traditional looking Irish pubs, which probably didn't help my cause. We saw a number of restaurants offering different kinds of cuisine (we saw a great looking Mongolian Barbecue place in Temple Bar), where it probably would have been much easier to find vegetarian options. That being said, I did manage to find a few vegetarian dishes at the places we went.

We stayed in the Hilton Dublin, and there was a bar and restaurant right next to our hotel called The Barge. We didn't actually go in until the last day that we were there, because it looked like just another little pub on the corner. We stopped in on our last day there to grab lunch, and were surprised to find that the place was actually huge inside, and offered all kinds of food. There were at least three stories inside with bars on each one, and there was also a cafeteria style section with hot food, what appeared to be a coffee bar, and an area serving soups and sandwiches. We went to the soup and sandwich area where I ordered an "egg mayonnaise" sandwich and cauliflower soup. It turns out that egg mayonnaise in Dublin means egg salad, and the egg salad at the Barge was good. I got egg salad, lettuce, tomato, and cucumber on white bread, which was pretty basic but exactly what I wanted. The cauliflower soup was really good, very rich and comforting.

The waitress told me that the soup was vegetarian when I asked, but I'm not entirely convinced it wasn't made with chicken broth, unfortunately. I'm not one to worry about this all that much (it's not like it's going to kill me if it was chicken, after all), but this is definitely one of the hazards of eating out as a vegetarian - there are sometimes hidden animal derived ingredients in what you order in food that appears to be vegetarian. You just have to decide to either be vigilant about asking your server what goes into the food you're ordering, or you have to decide that you're just not going to worry about it.

The Veggie Bacon Verdict:

The Barge worked out okay, but finding anything vegetarian in Ireland is hard! Be prepared to check several different restaurants, and look for places that offer choices other than traditional Irish fare.

Super Easy Marinara

This recipe is so simple, but I wanted to post it since it's one I use all the time, almost always using ingredients I already have in the pantry. We talked about the great marinara at Tutto Bene, but this one is also delicious and is one of the easiest things you'll ever make. I never use spaghetti sauce from a jar any more, because this one is cheaper, healthier (because you control the ingredients), and tastes better.

Olive Oil - 3 tbsp

Onion* - 1/4 to 1/2 (depending how big it is), diced

Garlic - 2 large or 3 small cloves, chopped

Crushed Tomatoes** - One 28 oz can

Garlic Powder - 1/2 tsp

Dried Oregano - 1 tsp

Crushed Red Pepper - 1/4 tsp

Salt and Pepper - to taste

(If you have fresh basil, oregano, or parsley in the fridge, throw this in the sauce too. If not, don't worry about it.)

*I like to use a sweet yellow onion, such as Vidalia, but use whatever you have on hand.

**Try to use good quality canned tomatoes, as this is really what makes the sauce good. My favorite brand is Cento. If you like chunkier sauce, use diced tomatoes instead of crushed.

Heat 2 tbsp of olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, then garlic, and cook until onion becomes translucent, about 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and reduce heat to medium low. Stir in garlic powder, oregano, crushed red pepper, and fresh herbs if you're using them. Cover and allow to simmer for at least 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve over pasta***, drizzled with extra olive oil and covered with grated cheese.

***My go-to meal when I'm feeling tired or lazy is whole wheat angel hair pasta with this sauce, a basic tossed salad with olive oil and red wine vinegar, and a bottle of cheap red wine. I eat a lot of pasta (most vegetarians do, because it's easy), so I try to stick to whole wheat so that I don't load up my body with empty carbs. If you're not into the taste of whole wheat pasta, try mixing it with half regular white pasta to get yourself accustomed to it. I've also been told that Dreamfields pasta is a really good alternative, though I admit that I haven't tried it.

Restaurant Challenge #001: Tutto Bene

Veggie-Bacon Restaurant Challenge #001:
Tutto Bene, Arlington, VA

As part of our mission to make vegetarian food easier to eat, this is the first in our series of local restaurant reviews. Rather than just reviewing how good the food, service, price, etc. is, we’re going to let you know how easy it was for us to find delicious vegetarian options.

One of the first questions that you get asked as a vegetarian is, “how hard is it for you to go out to eat?” We don’t know about you, but going out to eat is one of our favorite things, and we totally weren’t about to give it up when we gave up eating meat. But we were both pleasantly surprised to find that it’s very rare to go to a restaurant and not find anything on the menu that we can eat. Sometimes we have to be a little bit creative (we often eat an assortment of appetizers or sides for a meal, rather than ordering an actual entrée), but we’ve found that often these meals are our favorite ones.

We love going out to eat, but it can be really hard to convince non-vegetarian friends and family to come with us to vegetarian restaurants. This doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t go out to regular restaurants with them and find plenty of veggie options! To make this a little easier, we’re going to try out some local places and let you know whether we think you should try them out or skip them.

Last Friday, Katie and I went to Tutto Bene in Arlington, VA (http://www.tuttobeneitalian.com/ABOUT_US/about_us.html) for the rehearsal dinner before our friend Carla’s wedding. Tutto Bene, we discovered, is a small hole-in-the-wall type Italian restaurant in the middle of Arlington, near Ballston mall. For a Friday night, the place was practically empty, which left the bartender and our server free to be extra attentive to our party. That being said, the service wasn’t fabulous, but it wasn’t awful either.

Tutto Bene offered the following vegetarian entrees:
Eggplant Parmigiana
Grilled Vegetables
A Risotto of the Day, which happened to be Vegetable
Spaghetti with Marinara
Cheese Ravioli
Gnocchi with Marinara
Manicotti
Ravioli Alla Panna (Ravioli with cream and cheese)
Fettucine Alfredo
Capellini with tomatoes, garlic, basil and olive oil

They also offered a margherita, veggie, and white pizza, as well as several meat-free soups, salads, and appetizers.

All in all, we were impressed with the vegetarian options available. Italian restaurants, though, are often pretty veggie-friendly. There are usually several meat-free pasta and pizza dishes to choose from. This one offered most of your typical vegetarian options that you’re going to find at the neighborhood Italian place (spaghetti with marinara, cheese pizza, eggplant parmigiana, fettucine alfredo). We were pleased to see some options that were a little less conventional, however, in addition to these classics.

For an appetizer, we split the fried zucchini. It wasn’t the best we’d ever had, but it wasn’t the worst either. It came French-fry style (cut into sticks), and was a bit greasy. The breading was good, though, and so was the marinara that came with it as a dipping sauce. There was a ton of it, too, which made us happy (we hate small portions!).

For our entrée, we ordered the Grilled Vegetables. We thought this dish sounded a little weird, so we had to try it. Once again, we were pleasantly surprised! We had visions of a pile of soggy vegetables on a plate, but this was far from the truth. It was a beautiful dish of perfectly grilled vegetables arranged on a bed of linguine, topped with a generous dollop of goat cheese and covered in the same great marinara that came with the fried zucchini. When Katie cut up the vegetables and stirred them into the goat cheese and marinara, a chunky, rich sauce was created which was delicious with the linguine. She ate every bite! This dish was definitely a hit.


The Veggie-Bacon verdict: Tutto Bene was a success! There were plenty of options for vegetarians and for carnivores, and the old stand-by veggie options were supplemented with some creative and tasty meat-free dishes. We’d definitely go back.

The way we see it...

Vegetarian food doesn’t have to be weird. And you don’t have to be a vegetarian to eat it. Think of some of your favorite classic junk food - pizza with extra cheese, french fries, microwave popcorn - they’re all vegetarian! In fact, we guarantee that you eat vegetarian food all the time; you just don’t think about it.

Some vegetarians are perfectly content to live off of nothing but bulgur wheat and sunshine, and turn their noses up at a piece of greasy bacon. But not all. We have been vegetarians for years, and bacon still smells pretty damn delicious to us. We understand that a lot of meat dishes taste really good, and in order to willingly and happily swap them out for vegetarian dishes, the veggie stuff has to taste equally good or better. Our recipes will give you some veggie options that will taste so good, that you’ll forget (or at least forget to care) that you’re eating vegetarian food.

There’s a misconception that eating vegetarian food requires a major life change. If you’re going to try becoming a vegetarian, we recommend you don’t do it all at once. That rarely works, and it will only make you feel like you’re missing out. We don’t know about you, but we love food. We also hate diets, because they only make us feel like we’re missing out on the delicious food that we love so much. Many people view becoming a vegetarian the same way they view going on a diet. That it’s all about completely changing the way you eat overnight and giving up the all the things that you like to eat (or feeling like a total failure when you cheat and eat a potato chip). No one can stick to that! Or at least, no one can stick to that and be truly happy. We say, what’s the point of that?

Rather than making the switch cold turkey, why not try replacing a few carnivorous dishes a week with vegetarian ones? This may be as far as you’ll ever want to go with it, and that’s totally cool. Or maybe, like us, you’ll go veggie all the way and never look back.

There are countless benefits for you and for the world you live in to cutting some of the meat out of your diet. But, it bothers us when someone tries to make us feel guilty for how we live our lives. We’ve found that eating vegetarian has suited our lives and the things that we’re into, and that’s why we do it. But that’s our lives, not yours, and we don’t know what suits your life. Don’t let us make you feel guilty with any of this. If you want to go home tonight and eat a rack of ribs with chicken nuggets on the side, go right ahead - we won’t judge you. That’s not what we’re trying to do here. We just want to give you some options that you may not have realized that you had before, and provide you with some resources that make meatless eating seem a little less intimidating.