Stumptown Vegans

Times Visited:Many

Tucked above the NW 23^rd shopping district, The Clearing Café is a welcome addition to its neighborhood. Just a few blocks north of Food Front Coop on NW Thurman between 27th & 28th, this café is owned by the same people as the adjoined Dragontree Spa, who obviously follow the mantra that Portland can’t have enough coffee shops.

It’s been open for less than 2 months and this café still has a clean, new vibe. With a focus on ‘organic’, the shop is much more vegan-friendly than you’d probably even expect. If you’re like me, you quickly hope the label ‘organic’ has to do with the veg*n food scene, and in this case it certainly does. Not only is the food menu packed with organic vegetables but there’s a full juice and smoothie menu that features wheat grass shots and some vegan-friendly supplements. They use Ristretto Roasters beans, and all non-espresso coffee is made by press pot. You heard that right - they don’t serve Stumptown. Latte art is often practiced and who doesn’t enjoy that? Their teas are from Tao of Tea, another high quality, local-based favorite. Quite a few of their baked goods are vegan, and come from Crema; they offer soy and almond milk for drinks (50 and 65 cents extra, respectively), and two vegan paninis. The staff is vegan-friendly, too, and willing to turn that formerly chevre-stuffed panini into a vegan one. The made-from-scratch soup of the day is often vegan, and nearly always vegetarian and will be labeled as such on the menu board. Embracing seasonal produce, the soup is often vegan, and always vegetarian.
On one of my recent visits, I ordered a hybrid of the vegan Constantine and the (not vegan) Lincoln paninis. The employee was happy to tell me if their tapenade and pesto were vegan (yes! although pesto was out this day) The paninis are freshly grilled, or panin-ered if you will, to order, and served on local artisan breads. My sandwich was on a perfectly chewy and crusty ciabatta roll with kalamata olives, balsamic vinaigrette, dijon mustard, spinach, tomato, walnuts and pear. Each bite had just enough tear to it, and such a pleasant, almost fancy flavor. The Constantine panini ($6.50) typically comes with onions, tapanade, tomatoes and spinach. There is also a warm and gooey Bambino Panino ($3.75) with peanut butter and jelly that is vegan by default. I hope that if this shop gets enough vegan support and feedback, they’ll start stocking a vegan condiment or two as well. Just imagine vegan mayo or cream cheese on the Constantine!

The best dessert is the banana chocolate chip bundt cake.   A slice of that and my delicious, almost decadent almond flavored soy latte in this quiet, cozy and local-art filled cafe are enough to make me want to return, and I live across town. Hopefully their vegan sandwich options will one day match their range of desserts and juices, and I’ll have more of a reason to.

Vegan Panini and Soy Latte

Almond Soy Latte

Rating: 3 out of 5
Address: 2772 NW Thurman St Portland, OR 97210
HOURS: 6am-7pm Mon - Fri, 7am-6pm Sat, 7am-5pm Sun

Date: November 13, 2007
Times Visited: Too Many Too Count

It’s a Beautiful Pizza has a fun name to say and sing. Their creatively named and fresh ingredient topped pizzas are generally beautiful too, as well as their artsy sign and spacious, comfortable location on SE Belmont. I dig that although their double dining room is incredibly large, the lighting and the table layout makes your table space feel intimate. Their two-sided menu asks you to ‘paint your own masterpiece’, aka design your own pizza. The pizza is touted as ‘legendary’, and their aptly named specialty pizzas are named after music legends: Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Ravi Shankar, Jimi Hendrix and just ‘Jerry’. I don’t know about legendary, but the veganized Ravi Shankar featuring their special peanut-tamari sauce, roasted coconut, scallions, shredded carrots, peanuts, tofu and cilantro is quite talked about among my friends.

After a couple unwanted cheddar and nacho soy cheese substitutions on pizzas over a year ago, I recently went back after an extended absence. Perhaps it’s matured, perhaps it’s because I went with a large group of vegans all ordering soy cheeze and keeping the cooks on their game, but the medium pizza with olives, marinara and soy cheese I shared with my partner was alright. Very alright. Not great, and doughier than I’d like, but literally loaded with olives and soy cheese so I felt like I was getting flavor and my money’s worth with all the toppings. The pies was also promptly delivered to our table within 20 minutes.

Although this is not all vegan establishment, the marinara and dough are always vegan. The staff knows what vegan means, and even the fantastically cheap ($1) breadstick deluxe and marinara sauce are vegan. There are typical salads, tofu can be subbed for chicken, and vegan soy cheese can be added to any pizza for the price of adding an extra topping ($1-2, depending on pie size). One can only assume their tasty toppings are local and even organic, as a large pizza with three toppings will exceed $20 bucks.

What’s not beautiful? The crusts and the consistency. I’ve seen Follow Your Heart appear to melt before, but it doesn’t quite happen here. Consistency wise, some of my fellow soy-cheeze-consuming friends remarked that they have had tastier pies there before. I’ve heard talk of vegan single slices, but never actually seen them. The marinara sauce is sometimes really zesty, and sometimes not. The bottom line is that it’s Portland pizza, and it’s vegan with bonus soy cheeze available for dine in or local SE delivery. It’s the only pizzeria in Portland with vegan soy cheeze (Kalga also has soy cheese but it’s not a pizzeria), and it’s located in the adorable, albeit condo-ing up Belmont neighborhood. I usually prefer my pizza soy cheeze-less, but when the mood hits, it’s cool to have the option. It’s a Beautiful Pizza also feature average priced microbrews on tap and live music weekly.

Medium sized pizza with soy cheeze, marinara and olives on half.

Rating: 3 out of 5
Address: 3342 SE Belmont Portland, OR
Sunday-Thursday 11am-10pm, Friday & Saturday 11am-11pm
Delivery available 6pm till closing, $15 minimum, limited area

Date: November 14, 2007
Times Visited: 3

Every time I pass by 15th and Alberta, the Tin Shed is packed.The neighborhood, and their dogs, seem to love this place. I’ve been planning a visit for awhile but the long line deterred me. Once I actually stopped, I realized that people just like to hang out outside, it’s not always a line! But weekend brunch is another story. One day I will face the crowd and have a full report on their tofu scrambles for you.

The Tin Shed is a perfect restaurant for Alberta - it’s cute, small inside but has a lot of heated outdoor seating, interesting menu items and names, and even has a menu for the dogs. Did I mention it’s vegan-friendly? It is, very much so.

My first time I ordered the Baby Beluga. I don’t know what the name means, but to me it now means full of flavor, healthy, and hearty. Back lentils, rice, curried summer squash, mushrooms, onions and garlic, served over fresh spinach, roasted sweet potatoes, raisins, avocado, and peanuts! Most vegans will agree that vegetables, lentils, and rice are easy to cook, but we’ve all eaten at places that just don’t know how to cook them - The Tin Shed is NOT one of those place. Everything was cooked perfectly! Not too mushy, not too crunchy - perfect.

So the texture was great, but the flavors were even better. The curry was slightly hot, but the rice quickly cooled the tongue down just when you eat a great bite of sweet currents, crunchy peanuts, sweet potato and then again with the spicy vegetables. It all comes together so well. It’s like a symphony in your mouth, it was beautiful, and a lot beautiful with the size!

The Fungus Among Us was a veganizable sandwich with, you guessed it, portabella mushrooms. I’m not normally a fan of sliced mushrooms in a sandwich, I much prefer a thick cap with condiments. However, these mushrooms were marinated and the sandwich was served toasted and with caramelized onions. YUM. One thing I thought was really awesome was the side of potato salad - it was vegan, and it tasted great. That’s right, their house-made potato salad is automatically vegan! Though I prefer my food served without an ice cream scoop, I was able to look past it because of the taste - just enough simple spices, crunch and softness I enjoy in potato salad. The Tin Shed knows how to cook their vegetables.

I found the dinner prices to be a little high, $8-10, but the serving size makes up for it. I went back for happy hour and it was a very happy hour with the house made burger and spicy, house-made vegan aioli. You can see the burger has color in it so it was made with more than grains and beans. For $4 I left very happy.

I’ve only visited The Tin Shed with humans and never thought of trying the dog menu items, like the “Ham Barker Helper” which might be vegan since their house made burger is. So take your vegan dog and vegan humans and enjoy eating outside in the winter under their covered and heated patio. Have a few drinks and enjoy the street life on Alberta.

Fungus Among Us:


Baby Beluga:


Vegan Burger:

Rating: 4 out 5
Address: 1438 NE Alberta St Portland, OR 97211
Hours: Mon-Tue 7am-3pm, Wed-Sat 7am-12am, Sun 7am-10pm

Date: October 3, 2007
Times Visited: 1

Cha Ya Vegetarian Japanese Restaurant offered the most gush-worthy meal I had in San Francisco. Granted, I didn’t have the opportunity to dine at the acclaimed Millenium, but Cha Ya wooed me. My party of three dined on four courses of soup, salad, sushi and a side as well as sake. It was the type of experience that deserves more of an ode, and less of a critique. I’ll get the negative assessment out the way first: service was disjointed, servers didn’t always appear to know where to bring dishes and we lingered for the bill. The restaurant is also cash only, though an ATM (with fee, of course) is available inside.

While my experience in vegan Japanese food is generally limited to sushi and tempura, I found the menu absorbing and full of such possibilities. Our table ordered the signature Cha-Ya rolls, Kinoki Noodles, Hangestu and Shira Ae. The stand outs were the Cha-Ya rolls and the Hangestu - both featured deep-fried tempura insanity, I mean, awesomeness. I was hesitant to order sushi since there was was so much more to offer, but I’m practically thrilled I went with it. The rolls are basically sushi filled with avocado, yam and carrots, lightly battered and deep fried, and then sliced. Take the second half of the sentence quite literally, because although fried, these did not taste heavy at all. One could still spot, and enjoy, the vivid, enticing filling. Oh, and then there’s the citrusy house glaze that almost wanted to lick. What an absolutely perfect combination of lightly fried roll/filling/glaze. I think my eyes just rolled back into my head thinking about it.

The other battered star, the Hangestu, was a portabella mushroom on top of a thin layer of tofu, cut into triangles. This was also lightly battered and deep fried. This was a tad greasy in comparison to the rolls; but split between three people who also shared salad and soup, there was balance. I remember my dining companion’s eyes lighting up when she ordered it. The name might not fly, but this dish could be the vegan ‘munchies’ options at every stupid chain with their mozzarella sticks and wings. I took my first bite and already started making a checklist of friends in my head I intended to gush to. Oh, and top that, it came with a tasty edamame kiwi sauce - green, flecked with black and somehow working with the mushroom.

We ordered the noodle dish, Kinoko - with buckwheat soba noodles and mushrooms immersed in a savory broth. If I lived in town, I could see this becoming the soup I just had to have when sick. While I stand by this, it didn’t have a chance at being my favorite next to the previous two dishes. Next up with the Shira Ae salad, consisting of blanched spinach, lotus root, carrots, shiitake mushrooms, green beans, tofu pouch, yam cake and a tahini tofu dressing. Maybe it was because it was the last thing to the table, maybe it’s because the vegetables were slightly cooked and served cold, perhaps it was twang in the dressing - but it just wasn’t something I would try again. I appreciated the fact that it wasn’t fried, but it just wasn’t for me. The salty and chewy touch pouch sticks out favorably, but I could have left the rest.

Price-wise, nothing made me cringe, although my first night of sake did give me a headache afterwards. In recent memory, I don’t think I’ve ever had an entire meal ordered for me, particularly in a cuisine I was inexperienced with - and yet still enjoyed it across the board.  It would be rad to see something like this in Portland, but for now I’ll keep it on the must-go list for my next visit.

Shira Ae (Vegetables with Tofu Dressing)

Kinoko ( Mushrooms) Soba Noodles

Cha Ya Rolls

Hangetsu ( Portobello Mushroom)

Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Address: 762 Valencia St - Btwn 18th & 19th St
San Francisco, CA 94110

Mon-Thu, Sun 5:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
Wed-Sun 12:00 p.m.-2:30 p.m.
Fri-Sat 5:30 p.m.-10:00 p.m.