Where to Eat Vegan: Cafe Verde - Richmond, VA

By now everyone should know about RVA Vegan. Hell, even PETA knows about Ed's legendary cupcakes. But does everyone know about Cafe Verde - Ed's newest brainchild?

I spent a day with Ed touring the Capitol building, walking around the murals by the river walk and ended the day with some tacos and cupcakes at Cafe Verde. Cafe Verde sits in Shockoe Bottom across from the giant Never 2501 mural. My first thought on entering the cafe was - wait it's not neon pink?! A la the name, Ed chose to go neon green for his cafe with cheerful accents of pink.

For dinner I tried one of each taco: Beef, Fish, BBQ, Oyster, Mushroom and Carnitas. I skipped the Potato much to the contrary of one of the employees advice just so I would be assured to not run out of stomach room for the 6 tacos I was already committed to eating. This was my very first experience eating jackfruit and I have to say the hype is well deserved. At $3 a pop or 4 tacos for $10 you can easily sample the menu.

My only regrets - not having a big enough stomach to try the Po Boy Sandwich.

 My only complaint - no guacamole.

Ed explained that avocado would raise his price point on the tacos and he wants to keep these little guys affordable, but he might consider it as a side in the future.

***********Update************

Cafe Verde has added Guacamole Nachos as a special! Buy them up and insist on guacamole always!

Since my visit to Cafe Verde I have seen nachos, pupusas, tamales, breakfast scramble tacos and gluten free whoopie pies pop up on the Cafe Verde Facebook page. In other words, I have a lot more to try in my future.

1810 E Main Street

Thursday 5pm to 12am

Friday and Saturday 5pm to 2:30 am

Sunday 12pm to 8pm

Ed touristing me around his cool city.

Where to Treat Vegan: Ipanema - Richmond, VA

It seems that all roads lead to Richmond these days and I will most certainly be making a trip there soon. Last month when I was visiting Tangier Island I stopped by Richmond for dinner and a treat. You may remember last year's Somewhere New in Richmond when I went to Ipanema and split a piece of pie with my friend Compton.

This time around I wanted all the treat to myself! Ipanema has a daily list of their vegan dessert offerings and this time I went for the Mocha Chocolate Cake and a glass of wine - I was feeling particularly decadent.

After a day of touring and riding the ferry it was nice to curl into the booth at Ipanema under the soft yellow lights and eat a treat while doing a crossword. The icing was sweet but not overly dense and the cake was moist. I'll be real - I ate this cake and then bought another for the road. I STILL need to go back for dinner - expect an update of that in the next few weeks.

Ipenama

Location:

917 West Grace Street

Hours:

Mon - Fri 11am - 5:30pm
7 days a week 5:30pm - 11pm

Where to Eat Vegan: RVA Vegan - Richmond, VA

There are few people in the world who I respect more than Ed Edge. He's easygoing, compassionate, selfless and he makes some mean cupcakes. This post is actually a teaser for the upcoming post I will make of Ed's business RVA Vegan - a vegan food cart company he runs in Richmond, VA. As a teaser to get me to come down to shoot for a blog post, Ed brought me these cupcakes today in the delicious flavors of Caramel Maple, Mandarin Chocolate and Cinnamon Pumpkin Spice.

When I complimented Ed on the genius of the green and yellow flower-esque beauty of his Caramel Maple cupcake he replied "Oh we don't care how it looks, it just has to taste amazing." I can absolutely vouch that it tastes amazing, hands down the best cupcake I've had.

The real reason for the fancy colors - so that they can quickly and easily tell the flavors apart when they are frantically selling them off the cart. Brilliant and gorgeous!

Expect a full post soon full of jackfruit stuff tacos, vegan hot dogs and lots and lots of cupcakes.

Where To Eat Vegan: The Nile - Richmond, VA

You would think that a girl who has access to DC's thriving Little Ethiopia wouldn't need to go all the way to Richmond to get good Ethiopian food. But then I had dinner at The Nile. Unlike some of the uniformly mushy piles of spicy vegetables I had tried in the past at other restaurants, the vegetarian platter at The Nile was flavorful and fresh tasting.

With 10 different vegan dishes to choose from, it is impossible that you won't be impressed with at least one of them. As usual I had the discerning taste-buds of an omnivore present to validate my claims of deliciousness. Omnivore's verdict = no meat necessary!

On this trip we tried the Yemisir Wat (red lentils), Gomen (collard greens), Dinich Wat (potatoes), Inguday (mushrooms) and the Ater Kik Alicha (yellow split peas) served over the traditional Injera bread. Also of note - all of their food is gluten free. And did I already say delicious?

Richmond is a cool little city with a thriving vegan scene, cool street art, and tons of cute little used book stores and vintage shops. I'll be back for more Nile for sure.

Somewhere New: Richmond VA

Ok so technically I've been to Richmond. But not really. I've been to Richmond for two different shows and pretty much just went there for the show and then came home. So with the end of the month only days away and knowing that I still needed to fulfill my December Somewhere New, I enlisted the company of my friend Rachel and we spent a really lovely, delicious day in Richmond.




One of the things we noticed quite quickly was all of the abandoned, boarded up, and empty store fronts. This is common in pretty much any city but the area we walked through first had a staggering number of them. Rather than finding this deterring though I really enjoyed the remnants of old signs and we speculated about all the new businesses that could one day fill these buildings.

We found out later that many of the neighborhoods within Richmond are doing quite well, such as Carytown's Mile of Style where I got some delicious vegan chocolate covered hazelnuts, blueberries and apricots and seemed to be chock full of independent antique, vintage and boutique stores.

Throughout the day we walked by lots of places with quirky little attic windows, TONS of balconies and porches and tiny little yards and I kept thinking to myself "oh I could plant beets there" or "I could see myself living in that little attic with no air conditioning, sprawling out on the wood floor with Hibou trying to stay cool in the summer." Turns out rent is really inexpensive in Richmond! I'm not looking to move but it did put my rent into perspective a bit.




For lunch we met up with Ed and Compton at Ipanema. Don't be fooled by their bare-bones website people. This place has good food. I'm told their forte is dinner so I'll have to try that before writing a full Where to Eat Vegan post.

Compton's no vegan but he talked me into (I never need talking into food) splitting a piece of the strawberry apple pie and as soon as I tasted it I regretted not ordering an entire pie to myself. No picture. As usual I ate it all before thinking about photographing it. Prior to that slice of amazing dessert I had the Tofu Sandwich, which again, don't be fooled. Grilled tofu with ovendried tomato, hummus, caramelized onions, and spinach. Sounds simple but the tofu was prepared so well and the bun was dense, flavorful and right on point. Oh and yes...I put ketchup on my sweet potato fries. It's not a crime.





We visited the Edgar Allen Poe Museum, said to be the largest Poe museum in the world. Well...it's cute. For someone who only lived to be 40 and died mysteriously in Baltimore I suppose there isn't much one could put in a museum to commemorate this world renowned poet. Our favorite part of the short self-guided tour was the Enchanted Garden. Now, again, the word I would use to describe this would be cute. The dangling christmas balls and the mistletoe did lend to the "enchanted" feel but all together it was just a well kept, nicely laid out garden that houses a bust of Poe looking rather melancholy.




This is not to say we didn't enjoy ourselves there. We most certainly did.

Later in the evening we went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, home to a giant, felt, sperm whale and, at the moment, an exhibit of Egyptian mummies (which you have to pay to see of course).





To round out our evening we ate dinner at Nile where we sampled all 10 of their vegetarian (they're all vegan too) dishes. I apologize for not taking pictures but my fingers were rather busy stuffing my face. I will for sure be going back there and although it was only my second time eating Ethiopian food I would give it a glowing review.

Thanks to Rachel, Ed and Compton for a lovely time!