Showing posts with label Vegeterian Friendly Restos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vegeterian Friendly Restos. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Go Vegetarian with Daily Veggie N Café


Sizzling Tao Pao Roll


For the determined, there’s nothing hard or impossible. Whether it’s taking vegetarianism for a permanent diet or just swearing off meat, all you need is encouragement and perhaps the right set of friends.
It’s not that hard to be a vegetarian especially if you have a friendly café around your neighborhood.
After my move out of Katipunan and in to Timog, the only restaurant I know I can eat without murdering animals would be a Chinese restaurant near a church. Of course I get tired of eating at the same place so I really need some varieties.
A friend of mine has been meaning to take us to this quaint vegetarian café in Banawe, Quezon City. It was a long day and my friends have decided to eat at a vegetarian café for dinner nearby after our event with Greenpeace.
The horrendous traffic along Quezon Ave was terrible and we were stuck for more than 30 minutes since the cars won’t even budge. One of the rarest times I take the car to the Metro and I was immediately faced with traffic jams. Eventually we arrived at this café in the corner of the street that sort of emanates the feel of a foreign mini-mart.

Daily Veggie n Café is located at 540 Banawe St cor Calamba St Quezon City.
 The place was a combination of café and mini-mart for all your vegetarian supply needs. There were vegetarian barbeque sauce, soy sauce and other health products that are of course vegetarian and vegan friendly displayed on the wall. Amazingly, they have vegetarian oyster sauce – a solution that I’ve been looking for in a very long time.

Yummy Vegetarian Dumplings
There are enough vegetarian supplies in Daily Veggie n Café that could keep you stocked until the end of the world or the near apocalyptic year of 2012. A stock you must have in your fridge is their vegetarian Siopao and vegetarian oyster sauce!

The extensive menu mostly offers Chinese vegetarian meals but there are also vegetarian tocino and tapa so you won't be missing out on your favorite filipino morning meals. Meal prices are very affordable.


We had coffee and dinner however, they do not serve desserts but thankfully there were cake shops nearby where we bought desserts and ate them at the café.
A friend of mine was a friend of the owner so when the owner went to the café by chance before closing time, we had a lovely and interesting conversation.
I asked the owner if she was Buddhist but she said she only follows the path. It doesn’t matter, Buddhist teaching is wonderful and it would be better to follow the teaching instead of saying you’re a Buddhist but stuff your mouth with meat.

According to scientific studies, eating vegetables and sparing animal meat helps the environment even more than not taking the car for work. This is because the green-house gas emitted by producing meat products is more earth threatening than what your gas-guzzling SUVs might produce.

Lessening your meat intake can definitely save the world. It can slow down the progression of Climate Change and perhaps even prevent another Sendong to visit the Philippines. Just a small change in your diet can save the earth.
If you don’t know where to start on your vegetarian diet, visiting cafes and restaurants like Daily Veggie n café is a good start. You can even buy vegetarian products there so you can have vegetarian meals in your own home. 

The restaurant has a cozy and quiet feel though it was weird to be listening  to 2ne1 in the background. The place was clean and the staff were nice and attentive to our needs. It's a good restaurant where I will definitely keep on coming back to for decent vegetarian meals and for my vegetarian supplies.
For more information you can contact the cafe through: (632)711-8209

Monday, August 1, 2011

Happy Corner Tree Cafe Friends

Corner Tree Cafe
150 Jupiter St. Bel-Air
Makati City, Metro Manila
Philippines
(02) 897-0295


Remember Happy Tree Friends? That cartoon animation on MTV where furry animals die in ridiculous and always horrible way? Apparently, people have this sort of obsession with murdering animals and true enough, millions of animals die on the face of the earth daily. A large portion of animal death is dedicated to feeding humans while a not so big part would go for clothing, biological research and a rather smaller part which seems to be the rage in the Philippines – entertainment.
Horrible isn’t it?
Cut the crap if you’re an omnivore and for vegetarians who have bleeding hearts for these poor creatures: REJOICE!
Scouring Metro Manila for a decent restaurant who feels for animals won’t be as daunting as it was years ago.

Bowl of Chili
At Corner Tree Café, you will be served with animal free meals.
The nightmare of your date not knowing where to take you for dinner had somehow diminished. How many times have you gone out with someone for dinner and couldn’t eat anything on the menu aside from fried Kang Kong – unless it’s your idea of a wonderful evening dinner then ignore what I said.

This restaurant offers Vegan and Vegetarian cuisines (if you’re a vegetarian who has no idea what’s the difference then please go down on your knees and pray, hopefully the knowledge will be bestowed upon you by the gods and goddesses)
So Vegans! You can now leave your homemade ‘baons’ or lunch boxes! In this restaurant, you can actually dare to look at the menu and get to order. It brings tears to my eyes really… Sigh.

A must try and something I keep coming back for is their Bowl of Chili that can either be served with bread or couscous, I have forgotten if they offer it with rice as well but you can always order rice on the side.
Another great order would be the vegan lasagna, a treat for those vegans who has forgotten exactly how lasagna tastes like.
From vegetarian main courses to salads and great desserts - offering vegan chocolate cake. Vegetarians and vegans can now enjoy dining out instead of doing all the trouble of preparing mouth watering dishes all by themselves.

One thing though…
Please avoid ordering the Walnut Tofu burger since as a vegetarian, I always crave for burgers and sadly their tofu burger couldn’t quite make the pass. There are better vegetarian burgers out there, less expensive too. It’s not the greatest burger I’ve tasted, but it’s filling.

The service isn’t something that great but it’s not bad. It’s not like the waiters would serve your meals Cirque Du Soleil style but it’s alright.

As for selections of wine, you can ask their waiter for what they have available. Otherwise there’s a wine store nearby and you can buy wine there and simply pay for the corkage fee. Your call, order here or outside. Ask them to chill the wine you bought outside if you did made the choice of purchasing outside the café.

Corner Tree Cafe is always full especially in the evening. When dining here, make sure you have made reservations by calling them.

The ambiance is great, illuminating the interior with warm light making your date and friends look prettier. Their skin, almost radiant despite the lack of moisturizers and their eyes would sometimes have the reflection of the candles on the table. Maybe they're getting teary because of the amount they would have to pay when the bill comes in.
It has a quiet feel to it unlike in other restaurants where talking seem to require higher decibels as what Anna Kournikova would use when she’s hitting a tennis ball.

Usually, the music played is jazz or bossa nova I forgot and as for the furniture inside the café - well as a daughter of a carpenter who has a legacy in Laguna - they’re not stunning but they are decent and one can sit comfortably.

Conclusion *
Great restaurant for Vegans and Vegetarians and omnivores should also try it here as they really make tasty dishes that are often better than those with meat products.
Try to save an animal life occasionally and try tasting what vegetarians are having, it’s healthy and can accommodate everyone.

Though as much as I want to dine here every day, the life of a starving writer is harsh and quite unforgiving. Prepare to cash out around P400 for your meals here. As for me, I would probably have to save up and eat Tofu for a week in order to dine here again.

RATE: **** (4 Stars out of 5)
(This review is posted on munchpunch.com)