Shortly after moving to LA, I received the following text from a friend back in New York:

“A package is on your front door step. Sorry you missed the delivery person. Enjoy!!! Also, your house is VERY cute!”

I know, right? Less trusting minds might be a little freaked out at what was waiting for us back home and/or concerned our friend had turned transcontinental stalker. But, as it turned out, that package was a hand-made, crumb-top apple pie from our friend’s sister, Emily Cofrancesco, owner and baker extraordinaire at I Heart Pies, “a Los Angeles based pie company specializing in flaky, fresh, local, organic, simply out of this world delicious pies and custom desserts.”

Emily and her husband, Nick, who runs the business with her part-time, create sweet and savory pies using the freshest, highest quality ingredients possible, offering delivery for LA-area residents. Though their baked goods aren’t exclusively vegan, I Heart Pies does offer a pretty deep selection of vegan fruit pies. We liked the ones we tried so much, we wanted to find out more about the company. So we took a few minutes to talk with Emily about starting up a small business in Los Angeles,  what’s on the horizon for the company, and how Jon Hamm + a cute little bulldog totally dig her pies. Read on. Fair warning though—if you haven’t had lunch yet, you’re in for a world of hurt.

raven + crow studio: So, first off, tell us how you ended up in LA? I know you’re from…a farm in Jersey originally, right?

Emily Cofrancesco: I grew up in Allendale, NJ, located in northern New Jersey—a small suburb of NYC. I then went to Emerson College in Boston, MA. During my sophomore year, I traveled to the Netherlands for a semester abroad. It was in the Netherlands where I met Nick and we started our friendship when we returned to Boston. Both Nick and I graduated early (in 3 1/2 years), but our last semester at Emerson was located in Los Angeles for hands on experience working in Hollywood. Which is how I ended up in LA.

Ah, wow. So, do you have a background in the culinary arts or baking or has it always juts been a personal passion?

My Mom was always baking and cooking during my childhood. She would spoil me so much with different baked goods made from scratch practically every afternoon. I spent a lot of time hanging out in the kitchen with her.

I’ve actually been lucky enough to have met your mom a couple times now—she’s so nice. I could totally see her baking for you all every day. Count the rest of us jealous. How + when did I Heart Pies start then?

I decided to go back to pastry school in 2006, while working full time in the entertainment industry. I Heart Pies (IHP) started in 2007. I graduated from culinary school and was partially working in the TV industry. Nick and I thought ‘Why not sell pies for Thanksgiving to make money?’ So we did! We sold a total of 25 pies to friends, family, and coworkers, which at the time seemed like a lot!

I mean, making 25 pies certainly sounds like a lot. So was it something you’d always wanted to do then?

So, IHP was a side business at first and then it became full time. I was also making all different types of pastries. Anything people wanted, I would make it. Now we’re just focused on pies and cookies, mainly.

What is it about pies that sets them apart in your mind from other desserts? Why are pies…special to you? …if that’s not too Barbara Walters for you.

I love pies because they are so versatile. You can literally put anything in them—sweet or savory. They also were one of my favorite desserts growing up. My Mom made the best peach pie. I absolutely, hands-down, love peaches. So peach pie gets me every time.

I now realize I should have done this interview after eating, not before. Back when we lived in Brooklyn, we always joked that, after the whole cupcake trend, pies would be the next the wave to sweep over the nation. Turns out, it kinda was. Now we’re awash in a sea of bacon. Any thoughts on the whole food trend thing?

Food trends come and go. Pies will be here forever. They go back in history for thousands of years; pies have always been around.

Pie-making—the oldest profession. Onto the behind the scenes stuff—what’s it like making your life partner your business partner also? I mean, we do it, but I feel like the dynamic’s totally different based on the intricacies of the two relationships—personal + business. Is it tricky, you think?

I’m full-time at IHP, while Nick works our special events, and makes deliveries. His day job is a Production Supervisor on Family Guy. He’s worked on the Emmy nominated television show for 6 years.

Oh, wow. I know a lot of people who’d like to sit down with him and pick his brain on that show. Who did your logo‽ We totally love it!

Christopher Lee created our logo. He asked us to send him a list of emotions, characters, and words to describe our company. Our logo is his first attempt. He created Mr. Octopie and has made so many people happy and love our company. The sweetest part is he created this for our wedding gift. So much love.

We saw you provided a cherry pie for a shoot with John Hamm and a cute little bulldog. You didn’t get to attend the shoot, by chance, did you?

Our cherry pie was featured in a Vanity Fair photo shoot with Jon Hamm—he was their June cover story. I knew it was for a photo shoot, but found out that it was Jon Hamm only when they picked up the pies from our kitchen. I wish we could have been on set, but am very thankful for the handsome photo!

Handsome, indeed. Do you think you’d ever expand your vegan options? The fruit pies are AMAZING, but looking at your other sweet and savory pies, I know some of those could be done vegan with a few substitutions. Would you ever be into that? We’d TOTALLY love to help you with that if you’re open to it.

Right now we only have vegan fruit pies available on our website. We also make vegan savory pies, which you can special order, or we have them available at events. We would definitely be interested in expanding our vegan options.

Alright, well, get your suggestion box ready. Do you think you’d ever want to open up a storefront for I Heart Pies or do you prefer this model?

Having a storefront has always been in our minds. We’ve come really close to leasing, but didn’t work out in the end. It was a blessing in disguise because now we aren’t sure that is the best path for us right now. 

Well, we’ll keep an eye out. Do you have any plans for some new pies you hope to add to the rotation?

We are always thinking up new pie ideas. Right now we are working on a couple new flavors that are too top secret to mention!

Any advice to people thinking about starting their own small business?

Yes—you don’t know what you’re doing, but somehow have to figure it all out everyday. It’s a lot of work, so passion takes on a huge role. Love what you do and you will be happy.

Nice. How about favorite pie you’ve ever had that you didn’t make?

The Purple Forest pie, created by Nick! Purple Forest pie has a speculoos cookie crust, speculoos mousse on the bottom and a black currant mouse on top (brown and purple colors, creating the purple forest). He thought of the whole pie concept and made it for me to taste—it was amazing! I loved the unique flavors he combined. Nick creates a lot of pie flavors and he’s top chef in our family. His savory cooking is outstanding! Love when he cooks!

Awesome. Finally, favorite thing about LA?

There are so many things I love about LA. I’ve lived here for 11 years! The food, weather, beach, people, landscape, and diversity are really close to my heart. It’s been so fun getting to know this city and all it’s little beautiful pockets of beauty!

Well-put. Thanks for talking with us, Emily!

If you’re in the LA area, you can order I Heart Pies baked goods for delivery right to your door. Not in LA? You can also get pies + cookies shipped to you if you want to give them a try. Just be sure to note if you’d like your fruit pie to be made vegan.

Below, I Heart Pies’ excellent branding; Katie’s excited about pie note. Vanity Fair photo of Jon Hamm above by Sam Jones.

How cool is the design on this soy sauce packet? We picked up food from the always awesome, super vegan-friendly Jitlada the other night, and this came along with it.

Related question: When do you think Year of the Dog soy sauce goes bad?

I know I sound like a tool when I say this, but the summer is flying by, isn’t it? The next thing you know, we’re going to held tight in the death grip of another seemingly never-ending, soul-crippling snowstorm as we peer feebly reach back in our mind to try to recall a time when we weren’t chilled to the bone and literally going insane with cabin fever.

Oh, wait. We live in LA now. Never mind.

But good luck this go round, New York!

Now that I’ve succinctly burned all bridges back east, if are looking to dust off your warm-weather recipes while you can, we’ve got a new one you can add to the list. Katie came up with this one and it’s quickly become a staple around here for quick lunches and a nice dinner accompaniment you can prepare ahead of time for those steamy nights. Plus it’s super-easy to make and only take a few ingredients. Check it out.

Chilled Sweet Pea Soup
2 10 oz. bags of frozen peas (we usually use Cascadian Farm organic sweet peas, but you can use any nice frozen peas)
1 yellow onion, peeled + diced
3 cloves of garlic, smashed + peeled
olive oil
salt + pepper to taste
4 cups water

In a large stock pot, sauté the onion in a tablespoon or so of olive oil over medium heat until it becomes translucent (about five minutes). Add the garlic and cook for another two minutes, adding the peas once the garlic softens and becomes fragrant. Sauté all of that for about 10 minutes, stirring often and being careful not to burn the mixture, then add water and raise the heat to high to bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and let simmer for 10 or so minutes to allow the flavors to mingle. Remove from heat and carefully use an immersion blender to blend the mixture into a puree. If you’re worried about splash-back feel free to let the soup cool first, but you should be good if you’re using a deep stockpot. Blend until smooth. If it’s too thick for your taste, add a cup or so of water and blend some more. Season with salt + pepper to taste and then simmer for a final 10 minutes.

If you’d prefer to have the soup warm, go for it. But we usually like to make this the day before and let it chill overnight. Then we usually serve topped with some chili pepper flakes. We recently gave it a go with some wasabi paste blended in though and mixed together a little olive oil and wasabi for a quick wasabi oil topper (pictured below), and that was great too, so feel free to get creative.

Enjoy!

And no hard feelings, New York. I’m sure this winter’ll be better than last. If not, come to sunny California!

We’ve all been there, ammiright? Your friend suggests a book club and everyone gets all excited and then, a month later, at best, half of you have read the book and the club gradually, if not rapidly, degenerates into either monthly drinking parties or total nonexistence.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the idea of monthly drinking parties, but, at a certain point, the only honest thing you can do is stop calling it a book club. And ‘Drinking Club’ just doesn’t have that impressive, ‘I totally read New Yorker articles all the way through’ feel, does it?

But what can you do? These days, it’s so tough for most of us to be able to say with any certainty a month in advance that we’ll be able to prioritize reading the hot new summer novel over, say, running your business or feeding your kids or catching up on Game of Thrones?

Enter the Cookbook Club—a book club of a different color, where participants are merely required to pick out a single recipe from a cookbook, make it, meet up in a months time for a kind of curated pot luck, complete with merriment and social camaraderie. It’s like a book club where you don’t have to read as much but you still get to hang out and drink. Add a wide variety of awesome food you and your friends made and you’ve got a cookbook club.

I certainly can’t claim to have originated this wonderful idea, though we did hit upon it before the ever-in-the-know Gweneth Paltrow, it’d seem. Our cookbook club actually owes its existence to another, much more intense and strictly run predecessor that our friend, Ali, is a part of still. That cookbook club, started a while back some LA foodies unknown to us, involves rigorous membership rules—no couples, balanced genders among the group, one-time guests allowed as invited by the hosts. That last rule lent directly to our club’s creation. Our other friends, Maureen + Ilene, were guests of Alie’s when she hosted and immediately fell in love with the idea of a cookbook club. But when the time came around to plan the next cookbook and hosting date, Maureen + Ilene had a kind of ‘No Homers Allowed’ moment when they realized, as they checked their date books, that they weren’t invited. Guests are only allowed to attend when invited by hosts in order to control the size of the club and monthly get-togethers. And with that realization, poor Maureen + Ilene saw their cornucopic dreams of cookbook clubs to come dissolve before their very eyes.

So they did what any enterprising young Americans would do—they started their own damn cookbook club, one with much looser attendance policies and a more casual atmosphere overall. As we’ve been told, that original cookbook club trended towards the extremely culinarily ambitious, choosing cookbooks that had participants doing things like fermenting cheeses, using only implements that were available to pre-settlement Native Americans, and roasted animals whole. Our cookbook club is nigh so aspiring (or gross—whole animals‽). Don’t get me wrong—we go all out, but we’re also dealing with a humorously era-appropriate range of dietary restrictions, from vegan (woo!), to vegetarian, to paleo, to gluten-free.

But the results are great—we highly recommend starting a cookbook club to any and all. And it seems to be sweeping the nation…or LA, at least. Just the other day, we were touring the studios of local, beloved public radio station, KCRW and the producer of their Good Food segment told me they had their own cookbook club at the station.

All you need to do is find a willing group of participants—our group’s pretty small right now, around 10 people at its base—pick out a cookbook to cook from, and set a date + host. It’s on the host of the coming cookbook club to pick out a range of recipes, but it’s a good idea to pick more than you need, so everyone’s got plenty to choose from, and then do your best to think out the end menu, making sure there’s a good variety of appetizers + entrées and balancing the savory + sweet, greens/starch/protein/grain, et cetera. It’s also nice, as host, to hold off on choosing until most everyone has. That way, you give your guests first dibs and it opens you up to be able to chose something to balance out the menu, whether you initially shared the recipe or not.

Then the hosts just need to scan or copy the recipes and upload them to a common space. We use Google’s Drive to create + share spreadsheets that lists the chosen recipes so that members can then claim a dish (so you’re not doubling up on anything). Then you can link next to the recipe a scan and/or write-up of the recipe. We use the app TinyScan—which creates Zerox-esque scans with your phone’s camera, adjusting for page curve—and then photograph any enticing photographs of the dish that the recipes might be paired with in the cookbook (thanks for the recommendation, Ilene). Just be sure to take a quick look at the recipe to make sure there aren’t any ‘See page so-and-so’ recipes within recipes before sharing.

Then eat, drink, and be merry! We like to go through at the beginning to explain exactly what can be eaten by whom and most of tend to try to make dishes as vegan-/paleo-/GF-friendly as possible, putting cheese topping on the side, for instance. Then we go around the table and talk about making each dish—the perils of the recipe; how it could have been better, maybe; what we’d do next go ’round; what we think of the cookbook in general; how we felt when we were making the food…. But, if that’s not your bag, you can just dig in and high-five in silence.

Katie + I hosted the most recent cookbook club, choosing to cook from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s most recent book, Isa Does It, which went over great. Isa graciously gave me permission to reprint the recipe I chose. Well, I mean, kind of graciously. She sent the text + picture to the right. To be fair, that’s pretty gracious for her.

Korean BBQ Portobello Burgers
(pictured above)

For the marinade:
1 cup water
1/4 cup light molasses (not blackstrap)
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons liquid smoke
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
2 teaspoons sriracha
1 teaspoon onion powder
2 cloves garlic, smashed
4 average-size portobello mushroom caps, stems removed
Olive oil, for spraying or brushing the grill

For serving:
4 large white hamburger buns
Vegan mayo
1 cup kimchi

Prepare the Marinade:
Combine all of the marinade ingredients in a large shallow bowl or pan with enough room to hold the mushroom caps in a single layer. Mix well.

Marinate the mushrooms gill side up for at least 15 minutes and up to 1 hour. Make sure that each mushroom is slathered in marinade.

Stovetop Grilling Instriations:
Preheat a grill pan over high heat. Spray or brush with oil. Place each mushroom gill side up in the pan and partially cover with a large lid. Cook for about 5 minutes; spoon a little more marinade  on about halfway through. Flip each mushroom and cook for another 5 minutes, or until the center where the center was seems tender and juicy and the mushroom is nicely charred. 

Broiling Instructions:
Preheat the broiler to high. Spray a rimmed baking sheet with oil and arrange on the oven rack about 6 inches from the heat. Place each mushroom gill side up on the baking sheet and broil for about 5 minutes per side. Spoon some marinade over the mushrooms while they are cooking. 

To Assemble:
Spread each bun with a little mayo. Place burger on bun and top with kimchi. I like to cut my burger with a steak knife and dig in!

Notes:
Don’t remove the gills from the portobellos, even if you’ve seen them do that on cooking shows. They are loaded with flavor and texture, not to mention that the gills soak up marinade beautifully. Gently wash your caps before marinating them and you are A-OK.

Portobellos vary in size pretty drastically. They can be anywhere from the size of a hockey puck to the size of a small Frisbee. For burgers, I like mushrooms that are somewhere in between about 5 inches in circumference. Try to grab nice firm ones that are uniform in size and not limp or wrinkled. If you’re going to keep them stored in the fridge for a few days, wrap them in a clean kitchen towel instead of plastic. They need a little air to stay fresh.

Since I was making these for a larger crowd, I subbed in a cut up loaf of farmers market bread for the burger buns, multiplied the size of the recipe by 1.5, and cut the sandwiches into smaller sizes.

Pictured below, friends enjoying food + company at our last cookbook club; the excellent and highly recommended Isa Does It; vegan Chai Spice Snickerdoodles from Isa Does It, made by Martha; and the spread from the previous cookbook club, when we all cooked from Hugh Acheson‘s A New Turn in the South: Southern Flavors Reinvented for Your Kitchen. If you’re interested, you can read our write-up on the bread + butter pickles we made from that cookbook too. They’re awesome.

We’d like to announce and invite everyone to PETA‘s first ever Vegan Fashion Pop-Up this summer. The event will be held Saturday, August 23 from 11AM to 6PM on the spacious rooftop deck of PETA’s west coast headquarters, the Bob Barker Building at 2154 Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. They’ll be touting wares by NYC’s Vaute Couture, LA-based Nicora Johns, Sydney Brown, Cri de Coeur, and many more. Plus, tacos by Plant Food for People + sweets from Courtesan Cupcakes. So, that. From PETA: “This fancy group includes our headliners, PETA’s 2014 Most Influential Designer, Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart—the first all-vegan designer to show at New York Fashion Week—and Stephanie Nicora, PETA’s 2014 Most Talented Designer, among other favorites who are steadfastly changing the course of fashion as we know it. Don’t miss your chance to rub elbows with these visionaries! Add raffle giveaways, vegan cupcakes, and jackfruit tacos to this mix, and you have yourself a magical afternoon.” I don’t know if I’d call us visionaries per se (pause for obligatory compliment), but we’ll be there too repping MooShoes LA, which is coming along very well, thanks for asking, and scheduled to open this fall just down the street from PETA. Check the Pop-Up’s Facebook page for updates on participants and to RSVP. And hope to see you there!

Hey, LA—did you know laid-back southern California pizza chain, Fresh Brothers, does vegan? Well, they do. And they’re really  fuckin’ good at it.

Not only do they carry Daiya vegan cheese, they also now offer Gardein vegan sausage as a topping and the brand’s Crispy Tenders as an appetizer. And they’re really knowledgable and nice from our experience. Just the other night, after ordering through they’re mobile app (which actually works really well), we promptly got a call to make sure we were cool with gluten in the vegan sausage on our gluten-free crust. The gluten-free crust is vegan for anyone wondering—ingredients: rice flour, tapioca flour, water, potato starch, potato flakes, olive oil, sugar, yeast, salt, Italian seasoning, garlic powder.

They also reached out to let us know that they’re in the process of vetting a vegan pepperoni.

So, next time you can’t make it by Cruzer—LA’s 100% vegan pizzeria—give these guys a go. We’re betting you’ll like ’em.

This message brought to you by a dude who likes pizza.

Much against the advice of friend and author, Tamar Aniati, who wrote a piece for Tue/Night last year entitled ‘On Greens: Can We Please Stop Talking About Kale Now?’, we currently feel the strong need to talk about kale.

We have no intention of addressing the social implications of the prevalence of kale on our society as Tamar did so eloquently and exasperatedly. Instead, we feel we must address how this common food staple—in both homes and restaurants—is still so inadequately prepared in this day and age.

Far too often have we dined out and ordered a kale salad only to receive a bland plate of barely touched, uncooked, raw kale with a random assortment of vegetables, dressings, and other haphazard salad accoutrements atop it. Far too often have we fielded the question of how we prepare our kale not quite wanting to end up with a stove-top cooked-down side dish, but also wanting to end up with something…edible.

So, we’re out to put an end to it all…hopefully without sounding like assholes. Here’s all you need to do with your kale.

1. Thoroughly wash your kale—be it ‘dinosaur’ kale or black kale or ‘KALE no’ kale—slice off the bottom inch or so of each leaf, and then carefully chop the leaves and remaining tender stems into roughly two-inch segments. I write ‘carefully’ because it’s easy, when pulling the leaves into a compressed bunch on the cutting board, to get a finger caught in there. I’ve certainly done it a couple times.

2. Set aside in a bowl that’s large enough to hold the kale and then some.

3. Now you need your acid, salt, and/or oil. Essentially, the idea is to add a pleasing flavor that also chemically helps break down the cell walls of the kale, rendering it more enjoyable to eat and more able to play well with others on the plate. You can use a number of things here—mix juice from one lemon and a tablespoon of good olive oil in a small bowl; or you can salt the leaves, allow the salt to break down the kale like it would when making a pickle, then rinse the kale to rid it of most of the salty taste; or you can mix equal parts toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice vinegar in a bowl; or you can mix a tablespoon of miso with apple cider vinegar and a little olive oil. Point being—experiment. Just do so in a smaller bowl and taste it before adding it to the bowl. But, basically, you just need an acid (citrus or vinegar) and/or quality oil and/or salt. All of it works, so get creative.

4. Once you’ve settled on a flavor/kale-buster, add gradually to the larger bowl of kale and them get your hands in there, turning and crunching up the kale with the marinade, allowing it to seep into the leafy vegetable and stems. Don’t worry about being rough with the stuff—you can’t really hurt it at this point. Carefully turn over as you do this (don’t douse your shirt in marinade) and watch as it begins to lose volume and soften up. Once it seems pretty thoroughly covered, taste to make sure you don’t need more marinade, set aside and get on to the rest of your meal. Return just before plating and give it another quick touching up.

Now you’re pretty much good to go. Pair with rice and a protein, make a nice kale salad with complimentary toppings, add a s nice side to a meal, or top your favorite sandwich—it’s great with some seasoned tempeh, roasted yam, and Veganaise on good bread.

Pictured below, last night’s kale atop brown rice with grilled tofu, kimchi, wasabi oil, and picked vegetables.

If you follow us on any of the social media we put to use—the big three (for us) Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—we’d like to go ahead and make a public apology for last week. We’ll readily admit, we used and abused our social media outlets—especially the latter  photo-sharing service—posting shots of the massive, massive amounts of food we ate at all of the great, vegan-friendly establishments we found along the way as we made our way up the Pacific northwest coast. It’s a problem, one that we hope to address in a healthy, sustainable manner, with the help of our friends and family.

Seriously—one of our friends back in New York has even created a #TakeThatTroyAndKatie hashtag on Instagram in competitive retaliation of our somewhat embarrassedly non-stop stream of amazing west coast vegan food.

It’s an issue. We’re working on it.

…but in the meantime we thought we recap our week in food last week as we traveled with friends up from Portland, Oregon, making our way to the quiet little town of Chehalis, Washington just south of Olympia for our friend, Patricks’s wedding.

Clearly a hipster capital like Portland’s got you covered with the vegan thing, but we thought we’d share some other, less known finds along with our favorites in PDX. We’ve obviously got a lot more exploring to do, but here’s what we’ve got so far.

Click on the map below to skip down to each of the four sections.

Portland, OR

Though Portland shares a lot of the meat fetishization with its spiritual sister city and our former home, Brooklyn, it’s also largely populated by a densely packed, forward-thinking, young demographic, which is usually a green light for some good vegan hotspots. We didn’t even come close to scratching the surface of what this lovely city has to offer the kinder eaters out there (there’s evidently a great Pan-Asian place with a stellar vegan menu that’s housed on the top floor of a high-rise and looks like very clean spaceship…but that seemed less than baby friendly and we wanted to hang with our tiniest traveling companion, Winston), but here’s what we did get to:

Really superb, really enormous vegan pizzas downtown at Sizzle Pie, a very NYC-feeling joint offering freshly made full vegan pies and pre-made vegan slices that are regularly available (there were three out when we arrived). Below, our cilantro pesto, ‘not-feta’ cheese pizza with jalapeños, red onion, and roasted garlic; the Vegan Angel of Doom, with pineapple and shaved almonds; and the Green Reaper, a vegan breakfast pizza (genius!).

Next up, Deschutes Brewery, a locally minded craft brewery founded in 1988 in Bend, Oregon, with a gigantic brew pub in the Pear District. The brewery’s totally vegan-freindly in the beer department—as they state via Barnivore, “We stay away from any animal bi-products and all of our ingredients are natural. We primarily use water, hops, yeast & malted barley in our brews.” We were actually introduced to them at this past Vegan Beer Fest earlier this year. Besides the stellar beer, they’ve also got some nice vegan snacks on their menu, like the brown sugar beer roasted nuts and fire-roasted fava beans with black truffle salt, both pictured below. Beer-wise, I’d recommend any IPA lovers try the Inversion IPA (6.7% ABV), a piney American Northwest-style India pale ale, also pictured below.

Then, the first hotel we stayed at in Portland, the very awesome Kennedy School—an old 1915 elementary school and community center that was converted into a super-quirky hotel by the McMenamins empire—was walking distance to the highly recommended Vita Cafe, where we enjoyed breakfast two days in a row. The place has a nice, laid-back hippie vibe that reminded us of our favorite college diner, The Little Grill. We got Country Comfort (a gigantic plate of biscuits, gravy, spiced potatoes, tofu, and tempeh bacon); Huevos Rancheros (tofu, corn tortillas, spiced beans, salsa, guacamole, and vegan sour cream); and then corn cakes done two different ways—one day Thai-style, with sliced bananas, ginger, cilantro, and coconut syrup, one day Mexican-style with corn, roasted peppers, salsa, guar, and vegan sour cream. We were then promptly rolled back to the hotel after eating.

Lastly, we hit up ‘vegan row’ in Buckman—home to Food Fight! Vegan Grocery, cruelty-free clothing house Herbivore, and Sweetpea Baking Company, a 100% vegan bakery, where we enjoyed our first bagels since leaving New York (everything with plain spread for Katie; onion with chipotle spread for me), devoured a peanut butter + chocolate Charlie Brown, and  admired a vegan cinnamon roll from afar, all pictured below.

So, give us a few months to recover and burn all of that off and we’ll check out the rest of what Portland has to offer.

Astoria, OR

A couple hours north and west of Portland is the impossibly charming port town of Astoria, OR, which we wrote up in detail yesterday.

The town definitely has some nice, vegan-friendly coffee shops (like über-cute Street 14 Coffee) and likely more to offer vegans, but we immediately zeroed in on, yes, another brewery. What can I say? They like their coffee + beer up there. When in Rome….

Fort George Brewery is another pretty vegan-friendly (they do a milk stout and their Nut Red Ale evidently isn’t vegan) and they serve a really amazing house-made veggie burger that’s vegan if you get it on the focaccia (made at the bakery right next door), pictured below topped with a roasted Anaheim pepper and served with their veggie chili and superb Cavatica Stout (8.8% ABV). The chips and salsa are actually really nice too.

Again, we highly recommend visiting Astoria. Were it not for the lack of sun and supposedly constant rain, we’d have packed the car and dog and cat and been headed north already.

Long Beach, WA

Just over the Colombia River and up the shore from Astoria, Oregon stands Long Beach, Washington. We didn’t explore the town that much, but we did really enjoy the restaurant atop our hotel, Adrift, The Pickled Fish. They did a great job with ultra-local fare, serving some great salads, like the already vegan Kale Salad with fresh strawberries, shaved fennel, radishes, sunflowers, and a dijon-cider dressing and a Roasted Beet salad that’s great and vegan sans the cheese (both below).  One of their wood-fired pizzas, the mushroom, can be down without the dairy too and is absolutely loaded with local mushrooms, including some of the best chanterelles I’ve ever had (picture below, with a pizza-loving Winston). They also did a really great flour-less vegan chocolate cake  topped with cashew cheese when we were there served in a ‘lil Mason jar and it was totally ta die fah, as they say.

Centralia, WA

Finally, Centralia—a cute small town just north of the farm where our friends held their wedding totally surprised us with some of the best-tasting, most authentic Thai food any of us had had in a long time. We stopped in at aptly named Thai Dish for what we expected to be a quick, mediocre meal just before the wedding; unfortunately/fortunately, it was neither quick nor mediocre.

When we lunched there, the staff topped out at one very kind, very overworked server/chef who prepared each dish one at a time, but the authenticity and delectability of each dish was jaw-dropping. We’re seriously still talking about the food after getting back to LA. What’s more, they’re really vegan-freindly, asking if you want egg in dishes that normally come with and knowing not to include fish sauce or shrimp paste in dishes made vegan (that can get tricky sometimes with Thai food). Final tip besides giving yourself plenty of time for the meal—they’re not kidding when they say ‘spicy’, man. Something to keep in mind.

Below, a massive plate of their vegan pad thai.

We also heard that the tiny noodle shop, South Pacific Bistro, in nearby Chehalis and the little taqueria up the street from the park to the west are both good and vegan-friendly. So, if you ever find yourself in Chehalis….

Again, we’ve clearly got a ton more exploring to do in the Pacific northwest, but, after last week’s finds, we welcome the challenge.

The cultural window between something being cool and something being a clichéd commodification of cool is very, very brief. And, of course, it’s all a matter of opinion.

In this age of über-quick, Internet-powered popular culture, the window’s only gotten smaller, to the point that trends hardly even matter any more in many senses and contexts. Remember how long cupcakes were the cool new culinary trend that no one could get enough of? The pie trend came after but couldn’t enjoy nearly as much time basking in the warm glow of near-universal, Hey-Ya-esque societal approval before being deemed too cool to be cool (ice cold?). The internet—admittedly a beacon of light in many ways for a world seeking to open up communication and, hopefully, through that opening, understanding—makes us all jaded bastards.

But it’s nice, every now and then, to open one’s self up to the merits of coolness, even when we all know full well we’re boarding a hipster boat that’s long been sinking. Who says we can’t strike up the band and enjoy the ride all the same? They did it on the Titanic!

Case in point, our recent stay at Ace Hotel Portland. Yes, it unabashedly hits all the primary hipster notes; yes, it’s leaning heavily on a bygone era for its visual cues; yes, it was directly parodied in a Portlandia sketch, during which ultra-hipster staff hands out complimentary turntables and antique typewriters to guests.

But I like old typewriters and turntables; I like fashionably dressed, friendly staff; I like a hotel that doesn’t lift its visual aesthetic from some faux-granite-covered version of ancient Greece or a cheaply made Victorian era England; I like harkening back to a time when things were built to last. If I just decided that I don’t like that stuff simply because the overall artisan hipster Gestalt is made fun of or just more pervasive than it used to be, wouldn’t that be disingenuous? Any trend or genre or…anything, really, can go over the top and some would argue that the whole creative culture has gone there and then some, but that doesn’t mean we like the things we like for bad reasons.

Also, I guarantee Fred Armisen + Carrie Brownstein have stayed at the Ace and I bet they totally liked it. We certainly did.

The Portland hotel was the second to open, after the inaugural Ace in Seattle, opened in old Salvation Army halfway house in 1999 by friends Alex Calderwood, Wade Weigel, and Doug Herrick. The Portland hotel—opened second in 2007 with the help of Jack Barron—now serves as headquarters for Ace, who has outposts in Palm Springs, New York, Panama, London, and LA, the latter of which opened at the start of this year.

I’d describe the overall aesthetic as WWII military-industrial-speakeasy. Which, correct, makes very little sense. But, if a post-humous idea board were made for the Ace Portland, it’d definitely include heavy wooden sliding doors and window guards; accents of industrial hardware; army blankets and army green upholstery; dog tags; colonial libraries with roller ladders; witty signage wrought in old world fanciful fonts; random nautical nods; and yes—turntables and typewriters.

Below, all that stuff.

When we first came out to LA for our trial run last summer, we left our cold brew coffee toddy back in Brooklyn along with most of our other non-essential possessions. But a couple of weeks into our stay and many dollars poorer from our dependency on the store-bought stuff, we realized that was a pretty big mistake.

For anyone not familiar with a cold brew toddy, it’s essentially a plastic tub with a hole in the bottom of it, which you cork up while the coffee’s steeping, then uncork and filter when it’s done—usually 12 hours later.

So what were two poor, caffeine-adicted, Brooklyn transplants to do?

Luckily, the Internet rushed to drowsy-eyed aid in the form of New York-based writer Rebecca Orchant of the Huffington Post. She penned an article serendipitously not that long before our trip west outlining a simple, cheap method for making your own cold brew at home, sans big plastic tub. All you need is coffee beans, a grinder, water, and a french press.

Feel free to head over to HuffPo to read the full piece. For the less motivated, we’ve pasted Orchant’s instructions below:

Grind your coffee beans to a medium grind (you’ll want to use a little less than double the amount of beans you’d use for hot coffee) and put them in your French press.

Fill the press with water (we use filtered in our house because I like the way it tastes), and give everything a stir to incorporate. It doesn’t matter whether this water is cold or room temperature, it just shouldn’t be hot.

Cover your French press with either foil or the top of the press (just don’t plunge it yet), and leave it on the counter overnight.

In the morning, plunge your press to strain your coffee.

Pour over ice.

Enjoy. Feel awesome. Sit in the sun.

Below, more gratuitous coffee shots.