There's one vegan restaurant we've found, though they offer cheese as an addition to many of the dishes, but everything on the menu is vegan (if you don't add the cheese). It's one of our favorite places, up on the third floor with an amazing view of the valley and lake in the distance. There is hardly ever anyone there, so there's always enough room for large groups, and even though they're never busy, it always takes at least an hour for anything you order. But it's worth the wait. Pema, the manager, is an amazing, friendly man with an infectious smile and an awesome attitude and funny stories about chickens in Goa, though his English is a little spotty, so maybe the stories aren't as funny as we think. The place, Khana Nirvana (Food Heaven), is actually a non-profit with environmental goals, though I'm not sure what they do other than run an empty vegan-ish cafe. They offer volunteer opportunities, such as conversation with the workers and baking desserts. They almost never have desserts, though they're listed on the menu. Pema doesn't like sweets, so I think he just never makes them. We volunteered one day and made some interesting cookies. It was fun, and after tasting them, we weren't so sad the next time we came in and there were no cookies made. Their motto is “Liberation through mastication.”
I thought being vegan in the East Village was easy... Then I came to Mcleodganj, where most restaurants advertise their “veg” status alongside their name – either “veg” or “pure veg,” meaning no meat served at all. (Though sometimes places have no name, and you have to inquire within and hope someone speaks English. One of the best places we found is literally a hole in the wall, so small that there is really only room for making food or eating food, not both at once. Cleanliness is something you have to put out of your mind when you are there - it's not a place for germophobes. It's not that it's dirty, exactly. When we went for the first time (the nice Indian restaurant across the street was only serving breakfast, and we were so hungry for lunch, so we poked our heads in and asked, “Veg?” Two men looked at each other and then at the third, who responded, “Yeh, veg, dal.” They seemed a little surprised that we seemed interested in them (don't want to jump to conclusions, but I think it's because we're white...). So we squeeze in past the three men (well, one was still a boy) and looked around for a place to sit. There were benches, maybe enough room for five comfortable, average-sized tushes (India average, not American average), and along the wall there was a little ledge instead of tables. There was a couple and their child there, and another man, so there wasn't much room left, and the ledge above that spot of open bench was covered in dirty dishes and shmutz. The boy came and started passing the dishes past us to the other two men, but there was so little room to move and maneuver that the pile of dishes soon crashed to the floor... When the area was cleared enough that we could sit and get out of their way, they ran a wet rag over the ledge and started making our food. The parantha (bread) was whole wheat, stuffed with shredded potatoes and chili peppers, then cooked on the stove top. Then we had dal, yellow lentils with some larger beans, some pickled something (mango, I think – sour and sweet and very mildly spicy) and a potato curry. It was all delicious (though I don't like the pickled mysteries, I prefer kosher dill). There were spoons, but mostly you ate with your hands, using the bread to scoop up the beans and potato, and my hands got pretty messy. I asked for a napkin, and they said they had none. They weren't out of napkins, they just don't have them, ever. But, they had a small sink in the corner, so I used that, and they even offered me a rag for drying my hands. We ordered another round of dal and aloo parantha and ate happily. When we finished, we asked how much we owed them. “Sixty rupee.” Sixty rupees is equivalent to about $1.20 in the US. We also did not get sick from that meal, and have been back since. Charlie got what we think was all-you-can-eat thali for thirty-five rupees (about $0.70 US). He ate a whole plate of food, asked for more, they brought him round two, and then round three, and at the end, the bill was the same as for one plate. All veg, no ghee or butter or cream or meat, and delicious. We never got a picture of the place, but it was smaller and much less fancy than this one: All “pure veg” places offer lots of cheese, butter, curd (yogurt) and other dairy, and are often very confused when we ask for the dish without those things. We ordered a veg pizza one day and everyone in the restaurant, from the busboy/waiter to the cook to the owners, all came to try to understand what we really meant – because a pizza without cheese is... well, there are not even words for that. They use vegetable oil here a lot, instead of ghee, though ghee and butter are still very present. One of the Tibetan staples is yak butter tea, a cup of tea with a big scoop of salted yak butter in it, and even as I type this I am trying not to wretch. But it works for the Tibetans, so that's nice... (And even though it's veggie oil, don't eat the stuff that's fried in it. Yogi says they brought that oil all the way from Tibet and just keep using it in the big deep-fry wok. ;) Toxic.) There's one vegan restaurant we've found, though they offer cheese as an addition to many of the dishes, but everything on the menu is vegan (if you don't add the cheese). It's one of our favorite places, up on the third floor with an amazing view of the valley and lake in the distance. There is hardly ever anyone there, so there's always enough room for large groups, and even though they're never busy, it always takes at least an hour for anything you order. But it's worth the wait. Pema, the manager, is an amazing, friendly man with an infectious smile and an awesome attitude and funny stories about chickens in Goa, though his English is a little spotty, so maybe the stories aren't as funny as we think. The place, Khana Nirvana (Food Heaven), is actually a non-profit with environmental goals, though I'm not sure what they do other than run an empty vegan-ish cafe. They offer volunteer opportunities, such as conversation with the workers and baking desserts. They almost never have desserts, though they're listed on the menu. Pema doesn't like sweets, so I think he just never makes them. We volunteered one day and made some interesting cookies. It was fun, and after tasting them, we weren't so sad the next time we came in and there were no cookies made. Their motto is “Liberation through mastication.” Another favorite place is JJI Exile Brothers Cafe, very close to our guesthouse. They seem to be the only place in town for whole wheat momos (Tibetan dumplings), and the steamed spinach momos are the best. They also have (good) vegan chocolate cake, a rooftop garden with an awesome view, dogs and Johnny Cash playing on the sound system. There's a man who works there, he may be part of the family. There's something not quite right about him, but with the language barrier, we're not sure what it is. But he loves Mac. LOOOOOOOOOVES him. Tenzin will come up behind Mac and hug him, squeeze him, pretty much molest him, and even once gave Mac a zrbtt on the arm. (Zrbtt= putting your mouth on someone's skin and blowing until a farty noise comes out; spelling courtesy of Rudy Huxtable.) They use a lot of green vegetables here. Spinach, bok choi, something like chard (but better) and a few others make it into the regular rotation, and getting a plate of crunchy, stir-fried bok choi alone is easy to do. They also have carrots, daikon, green cabbage, mild red onions, green peppers, potatoes, zucchini, cucumber, napa cabbage, beets, bitter melon, green beans, okra, English peas, eggplant and fruit – apples, bananas, watermelon, canteloupe, mangoes, papayas, peaches and the occasional kiwis, pears and apricots. We've made some pretty incredible meals here - gazpacho with cilatro-cashew cream sauce, papaya and brined English pea salad with apricot balsamic dressing, chocolate-covered bananas with homemade coconut-honey muesli... There are also wild stinging nettles and mint growing everywhere here, so I got new scissors and went out to harvest them one day to make delicious tea with Ceylon cinnamon. Our best Tibetan meal here may have been with Yeshi. He walked to McLeodganj from Tibet with nothing when he was eighteen. He didn't know anyone in India, had no prospects. It's a pretty common story here. He ended up going to art school and learned traditional Tibetan painting and is now starting to branch out into tattoos. He's very talented, and one of the sweetest people I have ever met. He's a struggling artist, sharing a tiny apartment with two friends, but they always bring us tea when we come over and consistently go out of their way to help us or show us generosity. He's trying to get to the States or Canada to study art, so if anyone knows of a good scholarship out there... Anyway, he invited us to his little home for dinner before we left, and so Lori, Dia, Carla, Mac and I happily accepted. We brought homemade sushi made of brown rice, nori, cucumber, carrots and lentil sprouts with a sesame-peanut-lime-chilli dipping sauce. Unfortunately, Yeshi and his friends don't like sushi, but we ate the whole plateful. Yeshi made thukpa (a traditional vegetable soup) for dinner with fresh, whole wheat dumplings, and taught us how to make it, too. It was so delicious and so simple... Working on a raw version...
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AuthorAmanda has been teaching yoga, making (and eating) delicious raw/vegan food and coaching people for almost ten years. All that experience has taught her just how much there is still to learn, explore and discover. Archives
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