I was looking at Corbett's website yesterday (aside: yay! They finally got a website) and saw that they have all of their menus online including something called the Grande Tasting
Menu. There is no price listed with the Grande Tasting Menu. That of course means I can't afford it. Let's overlook that though because I want to tell you that there is not just one Grande Tasting Menu there are two including a, wait for it, wait for it, Vegetarian Grande Tasting Menu! Maybe instead of going to Havana Rumba for a festive birthday dinner in July I'll save up and hit Corbett's for the Vegetarian Grande Tasting Menu instead. Of course someone will need to tell me just exactly how much I need to save up.

Tuesday March 11, 2008 is the monthly raw potluck at Rainbow Blossom in St. Matthews. March's potluck will be extra special though. Immediately following the potluck Dr. Craig Sommers will be talking about the benefits of a raw foods diet. If you're interested in a raw food diet or even just curious about it this is a great opportunity to eat some good food and find out more information.

Raw  Potluck 6:00PM
Dr. Craig Sommers 7:15PM

Rainbow Blossom
3738 Lexington Rd.
Louisville, KY 40207
(502) 896-0189

Though I enjoy soy milk in my cereal I'm a dedicated flexitarian who drinks whole milk cappuccinos, really loves cheese and comes from a family full of dairy farmers. In other words, I'm not a vegan.

Consuming Louisville's referral logs tell me though that there are lots of people looking for information about vegan food in Louisville. Since I did the second post in the series Vegetarian Food in Louisville last week I thought now would be a good time to talk about vegan food. So I pooled my limited information in with knowledge gleaned from my very nice and helpful vegan friends. Hopefully this combined knowledge will be useful to the vegans amongst us.

First up we'll talk about vegan restaurant options: 

Back in October I mentioned a few of my favorite vegetarian meals in Louisville and I thought it was time for a sequel. Despite "falling off the wagon" as it were during the holiday season in terms of eating meat (my family, bless them, serves ham at every turn) I'm now firmly back to my flexitarian ways and eating meat only very rarely and constantly looking out for good, interesting vegetarian food.

In this edition of Vegetarian Food in Louisville I'm going to talk about four restaurant choices for the hungry vegetarian on the prowl.

Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church proudly presents the 17th annual WinterFair!, a festival of fine art and very fine crafts. WinterFair! is the perfect place to find unique fine art for your home and special gifts for special people. This year’s festival features over seventy (70) juried artists, who create jewelry, pottery, stained glass, photography, prints, paintings, textiles, wearable art, and more. It’s the perfect place to find uncommon gifts at all price points – just in time for the holiday giving season.

WinterFair! celebrates the ideals of community, diversity, and social responsibility.

• Artists donate original works to an on-site artists’ raffle, which supports a different charity each year. 2007 proceeds go to Creative Diversity Studio, a nonprofit organization for the training and advancement of differently-abled artists, and the inclusion of those artists in the cultural community. Over 70 fine art items will be raffled this year – for an incredible $1 per chance!
• The festival and the church are committed to green practices. New in 2007, we will recognize Green Artists who practice “Reduce-Reuse-Recycle.” either in their art or their business. They may create with items that would otherwise end up in a landfill, among other green recycling practices.

WinterFair! is NOT your mother’s Holiday/Christmas bazaar.

• It has developed a reputation for its hand-made, unique, high-quality art -- Jewelry, Pottery, Stained Glass, Photography, Painting, Wood, and Wearable Art + other media. No mass-produced or mass-marketed items.
• Very little of the art is Christmas- or Holiday-themed.

Festival hours: 3-9 PM on Friday, November 30 and 10-6 PM on Saturday, December 1, 2007.

The entire festival is free and family-friendly

Vegetarian food will be available, plus hearty soups, chili, and fabulous desserts!

Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church
4936 Brownsboro Road
Louisville, KY

On this the day after our meat and carbohydrate laden national feast I thought it would be nice to mention a cool regular event that offers a feast of an altogether different sort.

On the second Tuesday of every month Rainbow Blossom in St. Matthews throws a raw, vegan food potluck. Bring a raw, vegan dish and a recipe and then indulge in a delicious, healthy potluck meal. As I've mentioned I eat mostly vegetarian food but I haven't eaten a lot of raw, vegan food so I'm really curious about the variety of dishes that turn up at a raw, vegan potluck.

Second Tuesday of each month at 6PM

Rainbow Blossom
3738 Lexington Rd.
Louisville, KY 40207
(502) 896-0189

On Wednesday (yep, the day before Thanksgiving) Zen Garden is having a special customer appreciation day. On this day your meal is absolutely free. You do however have the option of making a donation, in the amount of your choice, to charity.

The total donations collected will be shared by three charities, one of which has been chosen already by Zen Garden. The other two will be chosen by popular vote.

So on the day before most of us stuff ourselves to the gills with turkey and all the trimmings enjoy a fantastic vegetarian meal, donate some money and cast your ballot for which deserving charities reap those donations.

Zen Garden Customer Appreciation Day
Wednesday November 21, 2007
11AM-10PM

Zen Garden
2240 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, KY

(The dish in the photograph is the very, very highly recommended orange tofu)

I eat vegetarian food about 95% of the time. When I do eat meat I try very hard to make sure it comes from local farms and farmers who engage in sustainable agricultural practices. That makes me a flexitarian. I also love eating out. That makes me poor but that's a subject for a different day. Louisville of course has a great dining scene including some really wonderful vegetarian options. I thought I'd highlight a few vegetarian meal favorites for other flexitarians and vegetarians.

1. Zen Garden, to my knowledge, is Louisville's only completely vegetarian restaurant. The pan-Asian menu offers many vegetable main dishes as well as dishes built around tofu or meat substitutes. For my money the best meal at Zen Garden begins with an appetizer of steamed dumplings followed by orange tofu. This lightly fried tofu dish is accentuated with a nice vegetable mix and topped with an amazing citrus sauce.

2. The Black Bean Burger at Third Avenue Cafe is the best non-meat burger I've ever had. It's got a great texture, spicy but not overly so flavor and it's served on amazing focaccia bread. Everything else I've tried at Third Avenue has been equally delicious. I've never had really bad service at Third Avenue but I've never had really good service there either. The kindest and best way I could describe the service would be to call it laid back. The food is so good though I don't really care about the service, and that's really saying something for me.

3. El Mundo has the most fantastic veggie burrito you're ever going to taste and really outstanding guacamole (I say that as a person who doesn't even like guacamole but craves El Mundo's guac on a regular basis). The atmosphere is beyond festive and the staff is insanely nice and friendly.

4. I very much enjoy grilled portobello sandwiches. My two favorite versions of this sandwich come from City Cafe and the Deli at Douglass Loop. I've heard that Meridian Cafe has an excellent one as well but I've yet to try it.

5. The Irish Rover is one of my favorite places on the planet. It's a neighborhood pub that feels like home. So naturally I'm biased to thinking everything they serve is wonderful. I'll also confess that I eat fish or meat most of the time I visit the Rover. That being said here are two really wonderful vegetarian options that I love. The first is the Farmers Plate which is "a marinated, grilled portabella mushroom cap stacked on grilled zucchini, squash, red peppers and eggplant, and sauced with a roasted red pepper vinaigrette." It's light and lovely. The second is the "grown up's grilled cheese" known as Welsh Rabbit. Cheddar and mustard on the Rover's dreamy sourdough bread. It's heavenly on a cool, rainy afternoon.

These great vegetarian meals being praised I'd like to encourage the fine dining restaurants in Louisville to increase both the quantity and the creativity of their vegetarian options. As evidenced by this list there are tons of great sandwiches, burritos and other casual food staples to be found in Louisville but I find vegetarian options at more upscale restaurants to be somewhat lacking. In my experience these restaurants tend to have one and only one vegetarian entrée on the dinner menu. That entrée tends to consist of a rather heavy pasta dish or a mixed vegetable plate. Heavy pasta dishes can be awesome and mixed vegetable plates are wonderful but there is more to vegetarian cuisine. I promise you two things about vegetarian food: 1) It does not have to be boring and 2) a vegetarian meal does not necessarily need lots of cheese and butter to make it taste good.

It would probably be fair to label Louisville a "meat and potatoes" kind of town but there is an ever rising population of vegetarians and flexitarians who enjoy a fine meal out just as much as the meat eaters. Speaking for myself, someone who eats out regularly including at expensive restaurants, I'll say that I'm just waiting to give my money and frequent patronage to the fine dining restaurant that steps up to the plate and starts including more innovative and interesting vegetarian options on their menu. I've had two occasions this past month that I wanted to celebrate with a nice dinner but ended up being disappointed by menus that offered 6 different kinds of meat slabs prepared 12 different ways and the only vegetarian offering was pasta and spring vegetables (in September and October) smothered in cheese.

If there are veggie treasures that I'm missing please do email or comment to share them with me. I'd very much appreciate it.

Update: In her comment Brittany reminded me that I had left a Ramsi's meal off my list. Ramsi's has a real wealth of vegetarian options. My favorite? 1001 Arabian Lentils. It's a massive serving of cumin and cinnamon spiced lentils and rice. It's one of my favorite meals period.