The Bruges Vegan

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#27 – Restaurant Vegaverso, Leuven ****

Published by trudi_bruges

Restaurant review #27 – Vegaverso is a new addition in Louvain. Louvain or Leuven is a university city about 30km from Belgium’s capital Brussels and 130 km from Bruges. Vegaverso opened in the Summer of 2014 and is an all vegan restaurant.
It is actually not a restaurant for elaborate wining and dining, but more a lunch/sandwich type bar with self-service (it also closes at 6PM, so not open for dinner). Vegaverso also offers take-away. But there’s plenty of space inside and outside to sit down and enjoy your lunch.
The Loving Hut (vegan restaurant part of a worldwide chain) is just across the street and newly open vegan shop SHAVT is just around the corner (blog to follow!). A small vegan hub in the city center of Leuven! Yeah! 🙂

Vegaverso, Leuven

Vegaverso offers a wide variety of vegan sandwiches. And we’re not used to having such an alaborate menu card to choose from! In traditional restaurants or sandwich bars, a quick glance at the menu cards tells there’s hardly anything available for vegans. So having so many items to choose from is a luxury! 🙂 And all breadspreads are homemade.
On Friday and Saturday, Vegaverso also offers warm main courses. And on selected Sundays an elaborate brunch (see their FB page for dates).

Menu @vegaverso Leuven

This was our lunch at Vegaverso: the southern cashew sandwich (5,5€) and the seitan curry sandwich with extra salad (5,49€). Both with a multigrain bread. Very tastefull and a more than enough portion! My seitan curry sandwich came with too much bread to my personal taste, (and I think I would go for a softer sandwich next time, maybe the white baguette), but with a partner that can eat for two, that was no problem.

Cashew Zuiders / Southern Cashew, 5,5€

Curry (4,5€) with extra vegetables (0,99€)

Seitan curry (4,50€) with extra vegetables (0,99€)

As there are so many vegan desserts on offer (see the photos below), we couldn’t resist trying some: a coconut cookie, chocolat chip cookie (1,25€), and pie with cherry and banana (5€). The desserts weren’t as lush or exuberant as some vegan desserts we’ve eaten before, but nice nonetheless. And really nice to get a vegan chocolate with your coffee, a detail often overlooked in traditional bars or restaurants!

vegan desserts

A very enjoyable experience, in a nice relaxing decor, with very friendly service.
Will definitly visit Vegaverso again next time I’m in Louvain. Eager to try out the other sandwiches on the menu!

Vegaverso, location
Tiensestraat 20
3000 Leuven
0471/87.04.06

Some more pics from vegaverso Leuven:

interior

vegan desserts

drinks

vegan desserts

alcoholfree wine @ vegaverso Leuven

interior

coffee with vegan chocolate

Vegaverso

See our lists of restaurants where vegans are welcome in the menu section of The Bruges vegan! List restaurants in Bruges and around Bruges

Veggieshop, Oostende

Published by trudi_bruges

Shop review #7 – Veggieshop is located in the city center of Ostend, near the seaside, a 2 minute walk from the Casino Kursaal.
On their website, Veggieshop says it’s a specialist dealer in vegan-eco-organic clothes, shoes and cosmetics. You can also buy their products through their onlineshop.

veggieshop, Oostende

The clothes available at veggieshop are mainly T-shirts and sweaters. I browsed through the T-shirts looking for one with a vegan message, but didn’t find one.
Shopping for vegan shoes is not so easy in Belgian shops. There are of course several online shops to buy vegan shoes, but since I find 8 out of 10 shoes not to be really comfortable after trying them out, I like to be able to fit shoes before buying them (and sending them back through postal mail is such a big hassle). So it’s nice to see vegan shoes on offer in Veggieshop in Ostend. But I was hoping to find a larger variety and selection of vegan shoes. I asked whether I could order my size of a certain type/brand through the shop, and then decide to buy it after it was delivered in the shop (and after I had been able to fit it), but unfortunately that was not possible.

I bought these two products: a shampoo (9,9€) and body lotion (15€) from Verdesativa, both with the vegan logo from the Vegan Society. I hadn’t seen this brand before, so I wanted to try these out. Both nice, although a tad expensive I think (being rather small volumes).

Veggieshop is open every afternoon, except on Tuesday. Although it is advisable to check in advance whether they are open (see their website or call). I wanted to visit Veggieshop twice before, and it was unexpectedly closed on those occasions.

Veggieshop, Oostende

Veggieshop, location
Van Iseghemlaan 115
8400 Oostende
+32 (0)59 44 27 40

See our list with shops, which may interest vegans

veggieshop, Oostende

#26 – Restaurant Water en Vuur, Diksmuide ****

Published by trudi_bruges

Restaurant review #26 – Water & Vuur is a restaurant at the foot of the IJzertoren (Flemish peace monument) in Diksmuide (48km from Bruges). The restaurant is situated in a renovated cargo boat, on the banks of the IJzer (Yser). During World War I, the front was mainly situated along the banks of the Yser. 2km from the restaurant, you can visit the ‘Dodengang‘ (Trenches of Death), with galleries and trenches in which soldiers fought during WWI (see photos below). Water & Vuur is 23km from Ypres.

Water en Vuur, Diksmuide

water & Vuur, Diksmuide, restaurant inside ship

Water & Vuur, Diksmuide, restaurant inside boat

The restaurant is well know among vegans in the area, because it is one of the few restaurants (or actually maybe the only restaurant) in the area that standardly has vegan options available. The menu also explicitly states that fries are baked in vegetable oil (beware, in Belgian restaurants and fast food stalls, fries are often baked in animal fat, see our page with general tips).

menu with vegen options, Water & Vuur, Diksmuide

It’s nice Water & Vuur offers a variety of fresh juices. On this visit, we ordered a Water & Vuur juice (6,5€), which is with apple, pear, red berrie, orange, elderberry syrup and cucumber, and a juice with apple, orange and red berry(4,5€).

Juices, Water en Vuur (6,5€) and Apple, red berrie and orange (4,5€)

Menu Fresh Juices, Water en Vuur Diksmuide

The soup of the day was vegan: zucchini with red orache (5€).

Soup of the day, 5€

As a main course, we ordered the seitan stew and the vol-au-veggie. On the menu card, the vol-au-veggie is not listed among the vegan dishes, but we inquired and the waitress confirmed that it is in fact vegan. We had the main dishes with fries on the side.

Seitan stew, 19€

Vol-au-veggie, 19€

with fries

We’ve been to Water & Vuur several times the last couple of years and always enjoyed the food! We’ve never fancied taking an appetizer, because the main dishes are quite large portions. As we have been here several times, we would have liked to see the menu vary somewhat over time (being always the same vegan dishes offered). But on the other hand, we have ordered the seitan stew on several occasions, and it’s always prepared in a different way, with vegetables of the season (as you can see in the photos below).

Although Water & Vuur has several vegan dishes standardly available, it’s a pity they don’t offer a selection of vegan desserts. On our last visit, we did specifically ask for vegan dessert and were offered soy-ice cream, but the waitress could not confirm that the chocolate sauce was vegan. As we didn’t fancy just a bowl of icecream, we just left it as it was.
We’ve expericenced that when the restaurant is busy, service can be a bit slow (waiting over an hour for food to be served). Chairs are quite comfortable and the decor – being in a renovated boat – is very nice. The stairs to the restaurant below inside the ship are a bit steep and may be difficult for people with mobility issues. But weather permitted, you can also dine on the lovely outside terrace on the deck, with view on the Yser and the Ysertower.

Attention: The restaurant has limited opening hours, so check their website or call in advance! In Summer, they are open on weekdays, but otherways just on Friday evening and in the weekend.

Water en Vuur, location
IJzerdijk 48
8600 Diksmuide
+32 498 56 55 55

Photos from our previous visits to Water en Vuur:

Water & Vuur, Diksmuide

Trenches of Death, Diksmuide, 2km from Water & Vuur

Trenches of Death, Diksmuide; 2km from Water & Vuur

view from Water & Vuur: IJzertoren/ Yser Tower, Diksmuide

See our lists of restaurants where vegans are welcome in the menu section of The Bruges vegan! List restaurants in Bruges and around Bruges

shop Biovita, Sint-Kruis, Bruges

Published by trudi_bruges

Shop review #6 – Biovita is an organic shop, just outside the city center of Bruges. They actually have two shops, one in Sint-Kruis (Maalsesteenweg) and one in Sint-Andries (Torhoutsesteenweg). They plan to open a third shop at the end of October 2014 in Roeselare (41km from Bruges).

Biovita, Organic Shop, Sint-Kruis, Bruges

This blog is about the shop in Sint-Kruis (Maalsesteenweg). It is the smaller one of the two in Bruges, but as it is the closest one for me, I mostly go to this one. To give you an idea about how far it is from the city center, it is 1,9km (a large mile) from the Kruispoortbrug at the Eastern side of Bruges, which would probably be a 25 minute walk. It is on a busy road, with many shops from larger chains (supermarkets, clothing shops, media shops). There’s easy parking in front of the shop.

shopping @Biovita, Bruges

Biovita in Bruges is not a vegan shop, but sells many vegan products which you won’t find so easily in ‘regular’ shops.
To give you and idea: special cereals, sweeteners (agave, maple syrup, rice syrup, etc), nutrionial yeast, vegan cheeses, bread spreads, fresh fruits and vegetables, vegan milks (almond, rice, so, ..), tofu and seitan, burgers, sausages, soy sauces, raw foods, supplements and herbal oils, body and care products, coffee and tee, pastas, vegan ice cream, nuts, dried berries and fruit, etc. And a selection of vegan wines too (see one of our previous blogposts about vegan wines @Biovita). They also sell freshly made cakes and bread spreads, but most of them are not vegan. And a daily supply of organic breads from De Trog, although Biovita staff doesn’t always know which bread is vegan and which is not (best is to check with De Trog).
Chances are, if you are looking for an obscure ingredient from a recipe in one of your vegan cookbooks, they will have it at Biovita. Or if not, they are certainly willing to look up whether they can get it from their suppliers. For example, they don’t have gluten powder standardly available (to make your own seitan), but you can order it, and a couple of days later it will be available.

Sometimes it is indicated on the price label whether a certain product is vegan (and gluten free). And although this mostly seems to be correct, I still tend to check the ingredients anyway, because sometimes a vegan labelled product turns out not to be vegan (sometimes the ingredients change over time), or many products with no vegan label are in fact vegan (see e.g. the soy whip and rice whip in the gallery below).

Bread spread, vegan label

Fridge with many vegan products, Biovita, Sint Kruis, Bruges

vegan ‘milk’ drinks, Biovita, Bruges

Some more pics from Biovita Sint-Kruis (as it is not a vegan shop, please note that not all items on these photos are necessarily vegan):

nuts

vegan cheese

vegan ice cream

sweeteners

body and care products

bread spreads, burgers, seitan, etc

fresh fruits and vegetables

soy and rice whip

syrup and juices

vegan pizza dough

bread spreads

vegan cheese

slices

Fresh counter

oils, canned vegetables, etc

tofu, bread spreads, burgers etc

pasta

fresh vegetables and herbs

TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein), Falafel

To give you an idea of the prices. This is what I bought on one of my recent visits, and it amounted to 79€.
Twice a year, Biovita holds “open days”, at which time everything is sold at 10% discount. And there are special stalls to taste products or workshops.
It’s ususally in October and in April. The first week is always in the oldest and biggest shop of Biovita (in Sint-Andries, 6-11 October 2014) and the second week in the shop at Sint-Kruis (13-18 October 2014)
So that would be NOW! 🙂 I will surely get some supplies later this week!

shopping @Biovita, Bruges, 79€

Biovita, Sint-Kruis, location
Maalsesteenweg 299
8310 Sint-Kruis, Brugge / Bruges
Tel. 050 54 54 20

See our other blogs about Biovita in Bruges.

See our list with shops, which may interest vegans

Bioviota, Sint-Kruis, Bruges

#25 Restaurant Erawan, Haarlem (NL) **

Published by trudi_bruges

Restaurant review #25 – Erawan is a Thai restaurant in the center of Haarlem (the Netherlands). We were there early on a Saturday evening. We didn’t make a reservation, but as the evening progressed the place soon filled up, so it is advisable to make a reservation if you want to be sure.

The menu card lists several vegetarian dishes seperately, of which most appear to be vegan. We specifically checked whether the dishes didn’t contain any egg, and asked which sauce was used to prepare the dishes, and specifically mentioned that we didn’t want anything prepared with oyster sauce. The waitress replied she would give our message to the kitchen.

The soup, Tom Kha Tahoe phak (coconut mushroom soup, 6,95€) was quite nice. As main dishes, we ordered tofu with ginger and black mushrooms & tofu with cashew nuts and mushrooms (12,95€ each). The dishes were served with plain white rice, and crisps that conspicuously looked like kroepoek (prawn crackers). I asked the lady serving us what they were, and she did (with an ‘of course’ tone) confirm they were indeed prawn kroepoek. I mentioned to her that prawns are not vegetarian, but she didn’t seem to grasp what we were trying to tell her (not in Dutch nor in English). As the crisps didn’t touch the food on the plate, we left it for what it was.
When paying the bill, I mentioned to the waitress that the dishes had come with prawn crisps, and that prawns are not vegetarian. She seemed surprised, and only replied ‘but all our dishes are served with kroepoek’.

We left the restaurant with an uneasy feeling. The food was nice, reasonably priced, but the misunderstanding about the kroepoek left us wandering how much the kitchen staff actually understand what vegetarian/vegan stands for (and if they make the same mix up about oyster sauce for example). Maybe the dishes were vegan, but the experience sure left doubt in our minds.
Don’t think we would go here for a second time if we ever visit Haarlem again.

Tom Kha Tahoe phak (coconut mushroom soup), 6,95€

Tahoe Phad king (tofu with ginger and black mushrooms), 12,95€ & Tahoe phad medmamuang (tofu with cashew nuts and mushrooms), 12,95€

Erawan, Haarlem, the Netherlands

Erawan Thai restaurant, location
Schagchelstraat 13
Haarlem
The Netherlands
+31 (0)23 534 29 23

See our lists of restaurants where vegans are welcome in the menu section of The Bruges vegan! List restaurants in Bruges and around Bruges

50 posts and a new profile pic!

Published by trudi_bruges

Wow. Time flies. We’ve posted 50 blogposts on The Bruges Vegan already!
So decided it was time for a new profile pic.

It’s the back of a T-shirt, from this shop: Freeandwild. I bought it at the vegan music festival Ieperfest (15€) some weeks ago, see our blog.
I hope I still will get a chance to show it live this Summer! If only the sun would come out of hiding!

Summer abundance in our vegetable garden!

Published by trudi_bruges

We’ve tried to put more variety into our vegetable garden this year. Different sorts of cabbages, a wide variety of lettuce, five different sorts of haricots… Not everything has been evenly succesfull (cauliflower the size of an orange 😉 ), but we are pretty happy with what we have harvested so far! And the pumpkin plants, zucchini, cabbages are not store bought, but are all home grown from organic seeds! We buy most of it through the ecological gardening association VELT.

romanesco, red cabbage and a photobombing cat 🙂

The vegetable garden:

zucchini

pumkins in our garden

bay leaf

haricots

variety of lettuce

fennel

fennel and parsnip

Purslane

nasturtium

Vegetable garden

sweet corn

red beet

peas

Insect net cabbages – vegetable garden

Parsley

Pics of the Summer harvest. Some of them are too pretty to eat, don’t you think?

apples

haricots: Helios – Cupidon – Cantare – Proton – Argus

potatoes

yellow carrots

peas

Ox heart cabbage

broccoli – Groene calabrese

plumps

spinach

cauliflower

Savoy cabbage

chard

fennel

snow peas

orange carrots

red beet

Kohlrabi

Most of the lettuce varieties we have in our vegetable garden are ‘grow and pick’ lettuce. You just pick as much as you need, and have fresh lettuce every day! Wheras a head of lettuce has to be harvested fully when it’s grown, and can be too much at once. The flowers in the pic are edible too: nasturtium (Tropaeolum).

a bowl of freshly picked lettuce

PS: does spitskool really translate as ‘ox heart cabbage’? Maybe that’s why I don’t like it very much (luckily, the other half of the Bruges vegan does, since we now have plenty in the freezer!).

#24 Restaurant De lachende Javaan, Haarlem (NL) ***

Published by trudi_bruges

Restaurant review #24 – De lachende Javaan translates as ‘the laughing Javanese’, and is – obviously – an Indonesian restaurant in the city center of Haarlem (close to Amsterdam, the Netherlands).

We went dining at De lachende Javaan on a Sunday evening in June 2014. Being a Sunday evening, we really didn’t think a reservation would be necessary. Wrong! Whereas restaurants in Belgium are usually fully booked for lunch on Sundays and rather quiet on Sunday evening, it’s the other way around in the Netherlands. Many restaurants are not even open for lunch! So the waiter proposed us to come back in an hour or two, near 9PM.

Which we did. By that time we were starving (and cold!) and didn’t fancy having a look at the menucard. We just ordered a vegetarian rice table for the two of us (which is normally always available at Indonesian restaurants), checked whether they didn’t use dairy in any of the dishes (they normally don’t in Indonesian dishes), and asked for any items with egg to be left out. The waiter was friendly, promptly took our order and noted ‘lactose and egg free’.

This is what we got:

rice table – De lachende Javaan, Haarlem (the Netherlands), 16,75 pp

The food was really nice and varied, although we didn’t get as many seperate dishes, as we have been served in other Indonesian restaurants (see for example Bali in Wommelgem or Bunga Melati in Alphen). On the other hand, we were only charged 16,75€ per person, which is much cheaper than prices for rice tables we have paid in other restaurants (around 20-25€) . 16,75 is also the price for their vegetarian dishes mentioned on their menu card: Sarirasa and Nusantara)
We were served quickly and friendly, but everything was in kind of a rush! rush! atmosphere. Serve as many possible! Out you go! Next table please! Together with a rather loud atmosphere (bad room acoustics in a full house), it wasn’t really a relaxed dining experience, although we sure did enjoy the food.

De lachende Javaan, location (250km from Bruges)
Frankestraat 27
2011 HT Haarlem
The Netherlands
+31 23 532 8792

See our lists of restaurants where vegans are welcome in the menu section of The Bruges vegan! List restaurants in Bruges and around Bruges

Pumpkin and apricot tajine

Published by trudi_bruges

We have several pumpkinplants in our veg allotment and harvested the first pumpkin (squash)! And there are plenty to follow, in different shapes and sizes. We also have zucchinis, carrots, green beans (haricots), potatoes, parsley and cilantro in our garden. Perfect match for a North African stew or tajine!

pumkins in our garden – still ripening

Ingredients pumpkin and apricot tajine – vegan

A tajine, or large (wok)pan with lid (see below)

one small zucchini, chopped coursely
4 tbs olive oil
1 onion, chopped finely
2 cloves minced garlic
2,5cm (1inch) grated ginger
1/2 ts cumin
1/2 ts turmeric
1 ts powdered paprika
1/2 ts cayenne pepper
1 ts cinnamon
1 medium sized squash, chopped in pieces
2 potatoes, chopped in pieces
2 to 4 carrots
125g haricots
175g dried apricots, chopped
3,5dl veg bouillon
2 ts tomato purée
1 can (400g) chick peas, drained
2 ts grated lemon zest
2 tbs chopped parsley
2 tbs chopped cilantro
salt & pepper
fresh cilantro, for garnish

vegetables from our garden (we only used about half of this zucchini) (potatoes, cilantro and parsley also from our garden, but not on photo)

Preparation

Boil the zucchini 10 min. Drain, let cool and mash. Set aside
Heat the olive oil, bake the onions for 5-7 min
Add garlic and ginger, bake another minute
Add spices and bake another minute
Mix in the pumpkin, potato, carrots, haricots and apricots. Mingle well
Add bouillon & tomato purée and boil. Cover the pan. Simmer for about 20min, till the pumpkin is ok
Add chickpeas, lemon zest, parsley, cilantro and zucchini mash
Add pepper and salt to your own liking
Decorate with fresh cilantro to serve

squash apricot tajine, served with quinoa

Loved it!

Recipe is based on ‘pompoen abrikozen tajine’ in the little cookbook by Deborah Gray: “500 Vega gerechten“. A translation from the English cookbook “500 vegan dishes“.

500 Vega gerechten – 500 Vegan Dishes – Deborah Gray

I love this little cookbook! I’ve only prepared a handfull of recipes from it so far, but it’s very user friendly (a handy pocket size format) and the recipes don’t call for too obscure ingredients (not often anyway).

Regarding the pumpkin/squash apricot tajine recipe

The recipe calls for a bottle shaped pumkin (like a butternut), but my butternut pumpkins in the garden weren’t ripe yet, so I used a Red Kuri. Red Kuri also has firm, dark coloured pumpkin flesh and tastes just as good imo.
In the cookbook, it says this recipe is for 4 persons. But it was way too much for 4 persons. The remaining portion was enough for two of us to eat again. So this recipe will serve 6 persons.
We do have a tajine (a normal sized one), but when prepping the ingredients, I could already tell they wouldn’t fit into the tajine. Too much! So I used a large wok pan, and put a lid on it. It was just as tasty!
Will definitely be making this dish again. Really nice, sweet (bc of the apricots) and good combination of herbs.

#23 Restaurant Flamboyant, Haarlem (NL) ***

Published by trudi_bruges

Restaurant review #23 – Flamboyant is an Indonesian restaurant in the city center of Haarlem (the Netherlands), not far from the market place. There are several vegetarian dishes standardly available, of which most seem to be vegan. We were there a couple of weeks ago, and made a reservation. We were asked to come early in the evening (at 6PM), since the restaurant was going to close at 8PM because of the football World Cup (The Netherlands were playing that night).

And so we did. Because of the early hour, there was just one other table occupied in the restaurant. We ordered the vegetarian rice table (19,5€) and asked not to include any dishes with egg or dairy. This is what we got:

Service was swift and very friendly (with some minor hickups from the student boy serving us). The food was nice, although the side dishes (eg the sweet and sour vegs) were not as tasty and varied as in other Indonesian restaurants that we have visited over the years. Comfortable and relaxed seating.
All in all a nice restaurant experience, and pretty cheap too.

Flamboyant, location
Kleine Houtstraat 3
2011 DD Haarlem
The Netherlands
+31 023 5421503

See our lists of restaurants where vegans are welcome in the menu section of The Bruges vegan! List restaurants in Bruges and around Bruges

The Bruges Vegan

more than waffles and chocolate

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Veggieshop, Oostende

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#26 – Restaurant Water en Vuur, Diksmuide ****

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shop Biovita, Sint-Kruis, Bruges

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#25 Restaurant Erawan, Haarlem (NL) **

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50 posts and a new profile pic!

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Summer abundance in our vegetable garden!

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#24 Restaurant De lachende Javaan, Haarlem (NL) ***

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Pumpkin and apricot tajine

Ingredients pumpkin and apricot tajine – vegan

Preparation

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#23 Restaurant Flamboyant, Haarlem (NL) ***

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Ingredients pumpkin and apricot tajine – vegan

Preparation

Loved it!

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