Another month, another vegan adventure with Vegan Buddy! For my birthday, Vegan Buddy treated me to some delicious pizza at Vegan Pizza House. The name of the restaurant is as simple as it gets, and is also quite obvious at what they offer. However, they also offer non-pizza options such as vegan lasagna, donairs, salad, spaghetti, spanakopita, and more!
Vegan Pizza House is owned and operated by a friendly Vietnamese man, who has had over 20 years of Greek and Italian cooking experience in restaurants.
Vegan Pizza House is located on Kingsway, just off Victoria by the McDonalds and hotel. The interior has seen better days and looks like a hole in the wall joint, but don’t let that stop you from eating here. The tables and chairs were those reminiscent of Asian restaurants, with a table cloth and glass cover which allows for easy cleanup.
The restaurant is quite small with only three tables, but we did notice that there were a few delivery orders. Once you place your order and pay at the counter, they make the pizzas for you. I saw a few slices in their warming oven, but I guess because we ordered two whole pizzas. In total, we waited about 15-20 minutes for the pizzas. We were starting to wonder why it took so long, but after taking one bite, it was worth it!
Vegan meat lover, small $14.95: I really wanted to try how their vegan meat measured to regular meat! This pizza came with ham, chicken, capicollo, sausage, bacon, and ground beef.
My favourite part of the pizza was the DOUGH. The dough was so chewy and soft, the perfect consistency. It was so comforting and had that homemade quality to it. If my grandma (rest in peace poh poh) was still here with us and made pizza by scratch, this is what I would imagine her pizza dough to taste like. To be honest, I was so distracted by the amazing pizza dough that I forgot to make a mental note of how the vegan meats tasted, fail. All I could think and look at was the dough <3
The texture of the vegan meat was there and similar to real meat, but the taste was not really the same. The cheese was dry and crumbly as well, so if you’re a cheese lover, you will probably be disappointed. HOWEVER, THAT DOUGH THOUGH. <3
Vegan house special, small $14.95: Since we weren’t sure what to order for our second pizza, the house special is always a good option! This came with vegan ham, chicken, shrimp, mushrooms, green peppers, and olives.
Again, the pizza came with a very generous portion of toppings, topped to the brim! The dough was equally as amazing, while the comments about the cheese and meat remain the same as above.
Vegan Pizza House is a great option for vegans, and even those who aren’t full vegan like us! You know how you have those vegan food items that only taste good to vegans? Well, this place isn’t one of them! Even though the cheese does not compare to real cheese at all, come here for the freshly baked pizza dough. The quality really shows through and is really worth the $15! Also, much healthier than Dominoes and does not leave you thirsty and greasy feeling (although I do love my cheeseless Dominos pizza once in awhile too).
Yay!
Tofu Rancheros, $19.95: Since I can’t have dairy, we tried the vegan menu only. The tofu rancheros was a tofu scramble, with spicy chilli, served on grilled corn tortillas, topped with guacamole, pico de gallo, ranchero sauce, fresh cilantro and green onion.
Banana French Toast, $16.95: This sounded good on the menu, but it was really disappointing. The french toast was made with an almond milk and banana infused batter. It was very bland and we could only taste burnt toast that had a soft and moist texture.
Field Roast Sausage, $5.00: Vegan Buddy and I were both curious as to what the sausage would taste like, so we ordered this as a side. It was decent and resembled the texture of sausage, although it wasn’t as juicy.
Virtuous Pie is a new vegan pizza/ice cream parlour that opened up in Chinatown. One thing I’ve really missed is pizza, so I knew I had to come here!
After placing your order and paying, you can see the pizza being assembled in front of you. Each pizza is made fresh to order, and baked in the oven.
Fennel & sausage, $12: I really wanted to try this because of the faux sausage! I am a big meat lover, and other meat alternatives like seitan just do not cut it for me. With that said, the sausage tasted really legit and I was really impressed!
Stranger Wings, $12: Stranger Wings was the most raved about on Yelp, so we had to try it. It is a vegan take on buffalo chicken, where they use cauliflower as a substitute.
Superfunghi, $12: I really liked this pizza! It was a bit different than I was used to because they use a mashed potato sauce in place of your standard tomato sauce. The potato was nice and garlicky, and so delicious!
Nice Vice is located in Yaletown, a quick walk from the Canada Line station. It is pretty small, so it is easy to miss.
Vegan Buddy and I came on a Tuesday evening. It was cloudy, but not cold or rainy that day. Due to the weather and seeing how it was a weekday, the store was empty except for us! Luckily, this meant we could sample more flavours.
I wasn’t particularly in love with any of the flavours, but they weren’t bad either. In the end, I ordered strawberry fiends forever and mango. I ordered the one scoop for $5.00, but you can get two flavours for an additional price – I don’t remember exactly, but it was either 50 cents or $1.00 extra.
VB ordered one scoop of the matcha and vanilla strawberry swirl. The matcha had a medium matcha taste, not too strong or subtle. I didn’t really like the vanilla strawberry swirl because I found it a bit bland and just icy.
They also have a bunch of assorted salts that you can top off your dessert with! We tried a bunch of salt flavours. Some went well and brought the flavour out, while some did not pair well at all. I recommend you sprinkle a super, tiny bit of salt – I’m talking about like 4 or 5 grains tiny, because we found that even just a pinch was too much!
So, after an afternoon of exploring Central Park and The Met museum, we explored the Upper East Side and went to Candle 79!
We were still pretty full from our lunch at Blue Dog, but didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to try this place. Since we already had plans for the rest of the trip and wouldn’t be in this area of NYC again, we decided on just having a small snack to at least try something!
Housemade ice cream sampler, $9: The nachos were already really filling considering we weren’t hungry to begin with, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to have ICE CREAM. I was already sold when our server told us it was made with rich coconut milk. I’ve been deprived of ice cream for soooo long.