Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City was where we began and ended our trip. Since my last visit there thirteen years ago, vegetarian restaurants have bloomed. We only got a chance to try two of the new ones, plus a visit to one a veg-friendly establishment that we had enjoyed on our last trip there. My favorite was the entirely plant-based Vertical Diner. Our GPS led us to this little building which popped up unexpectedly in what otherwise seemed to be a warehouse district. I had the jalepeno burger, made with black beans, grains, and spices, topped with guacamole and jalepeno peppers on a delicious whole grain roll. We looked longingly at the dessert list (including a root beer float, peanut butter brownie sundae, and a Shoofly cake) but I ultimately had to yield to my rule of not having dessert until after dinner (kind of like Mark Bittman's Vegan Before Six). We also tried the sister restaurant Sage's Cafe, again all vegan, , and there I did get dessert, a luscious raspberry brownie sundae, which was the high point there.

At Oasis Cafe, the vegan options were more limited. I chose the eggplant steak over risotto, and realized once again that risotto is far too creamy for my taste. And it was another dish that would have tasted better with the cheese left on:



When will plant-based cheeses become as widely available as nondairy milks?

The tomato fennel soup was wonderful, carroty and creamy without dairy. But the real reason we chose Oasis for dinner was the vegan chocolate cake served with soy ice cream. Yuuummmm. Dessert is entirely not worth it unless it's chocolate, and chocolate cake is not worth it without ice cream.

Bryce Canyon

Traveling to our second national park of the week, I've discovered a happy trend. National Park lodge restaurants seem to be planning for vegans. At the Bryce Canyon Lodge restaurant, I enjoyed the Vernal Vegetable plate for dinner, a lovely platter of roasted zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers with a side of rice:




Bruce got the quinoa plate which seemed to have cheese scattered only on top, so might have been veganizable. On Day Two for lunch I had the first BLT I've had in many years the, with a veggi e bacon product that I'm sure was out of a commercially-available box, but nonetheless welcome. The cole slaw was made with mayonnaise, unfortunately, and Bruce said it was nothing special (where were the cactus jelly and pine nuts that were supposed to be in it?), so I got the side salad, just some iceberg lettuce with a few shreds red cabbage and carrots, but dressed up a little with balsamic vinagrette.

Outside the park was a little dicier. They clearly had never heard of quinoa in the nearby town. We drove all the way to Panguitch, 11 miles away, and I wandered into a 'homestyle' restaurant to find nothing at all on the menu for vegetarians, much less vegans. Coming back to the national park vicinity, about to give up and either go back to the lodge for dinner, or the nearby Subway, I found the Canyon Ranch restaurant which seemed to have taken a page from the Lodge restaurant - amongst the burgers, they had one vegan item on the menu, roasted veggies served with pita, hummus, and unflavored white rice. Could have used twice as many vegetables and half as much pita bread, but I felt victorious. I can survive as a vegan in southern Utah -- in the tourist areas anyway. Here it is:

Zion National Park

Today is our last day in Zion, and so far so good. Dinner on our first evening here was a McDougall's dried black bean soup cup, rehydrated with boiling water, but things have gone up from there. The Zion Park Lodge has had some decent vegan options, including a soup and salad bar with a vegan vegetable soup. The vegetables tasted like they had been trucked at least 1000 miles, anmd probably had, with some obviously canned options, such s the beets and mandarin oranges. For dinner, the quinoa stuffed pepper on the dinner menu turned out to be vegan without any modifications, and came on bed of veggies with a delicious marinara sauce. There was also other options that probaby would have been vegan with the cheese onitted: rotini with sautéed vegetables, and an entree spinach salad with goat cheese.

In the surrounding towns we found several options, including, in Springdale a Thai place which had vegan options marked on the menu, and the Whiptail Grill, a Mexican/American place which had sesame encrusted tofu on the menu. Nevertheless, we chose the Bit and Spur for dinner. Unfortunately, neither the polenta stack nor the sweet potato tamales so I was left with a veggie burrito stuffed with butternut squash, corn, and black beans, minus the cheese:




Not bad, but wish they'd double up on some of the veggies when they take out the cheese.


In Saint George, I can recommend Mad Pita Express for a quick meal. The Greek salad was fabulous even without feta, and included chickpeas, red cabbage, and fresh mint, along with the usual cucumbers and tomato slices.

On to Bryce Canyon, where the nearest vegan-friendly restaurant may be 80 miles away.

Starting Out

I've been eating nearly vegan since 2011, after almost 20 years of a whole-foods vegetarian (and sometimes pescatarian) existence. For many years, I've been eating different. Back in medical school, I brought Tupperware full of bean soups with me for lunch, so I didn't have to consume the pizza and cookies served every day for lunch. I ate big salads and toast with Chickpea Cheese (from Joanne Stepaniak's Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook) for dinner. When I moved back to Pittsburgh for fellowship I read Peter Singer's book The Ethics of Eating and decided that, although I wasn't ready to become completely vegan, we now had the income to buy non-dairy milk (twice the cost of cows' milk). And for the past year and half I've been intermittently calling myself vegan, usually just in time to inconvenience my family for Thanksgiving dinner ("No, I won't eat the lentil loaf if it's made with eggs, or the mushroom gravy that contains butter, or the pumpkin pie"). Then I spend a few days in Rome, or attend a conference in Indiana, and the ubiquity of cheese and butter, as well as the twin fears of starvation and of causing other people trouble make me go back to eating dairy and even eggs hidden in baked goods. Oh, and there's also the fear of missing out on desserts .....


Now, shored up by a few Pittsburgh Vegan Meetups, particularly the monthly book group, and a number of vegan podcasts (Victoria Moran, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, among others), I'm ready for an experiment. Can I confront those fears and travel through the world eating only plants? I decided to make this trip to Utah a test. I packed oatmeal packets, peanut butter, and Clif Bars in our suitcase. We stopped at the Whole Foods in Salt Lake City to pick up trail mix, little containers of dried black bean and minestrone soup that we can just pour boiling water (from our portable hot water heater) into for dinner in a pinch, as well as mini cartons of soy milk that don't need refrigeration. I'm ready!