Back from vacation, unpacking and trying to get back into the groove of things at home.   Our vacation was very much needed and relaxing and an opportunity for me to go without any sort of attachment to a computer.   I took no laptop with me, used no public access and stayed Internet-free for a week, quite the accomplishment.  Most of the veggie blogs, or food blogs, post pictures of their eats along the way.  I am not a big food photographer while sitting in a restaurant.   I did manage one picture while in Atlanta, but I will get to that later.

We started our vacation in St. Augustine, Florida.  My wife went to college there and I/we have visited countless times.  There was one vegetarian restaurant in town that we knew of, Manatee Cafe, but we found another while driving around.  The Present Moment Cafe is a raw food restaurant with a small deli located next door.  We visited the deli and looked at the menu of the restaurant but decided to pass.  Prices seemed a little high and it was “pretty food”.   Not to take anything away from The Present Moment Cafe or anyone who enjoys eating artsy food, but I am not into trying to figure out why a chef used this color or that texture to accent my collard greens.   Make the food tasty, put it on a plate and make it enough so that I leave your restaurant full.   Putting a sliver of whatever on a plate, dancing some dribbley sauce around it and sprinkling some fluff about does not dinner make.

Our first eating out was The Manatee Cafe. This is a basic vegetarian restaurant with a menu of sandwiches, wraps and salads.  They have a great tofu reuben which I have had previously but this morning I wasn’t extremely hungry and went very basic with hash browns and grits.   The hash browns here are actually very chunky-cut potatoes fried crispy with Spike seasoning, nothing special but very tasty.  My wife had the veggie wrap (Tofutti, hummus, carrots, sprouts, mushrooms, sweet potatoes and avocados) with hash browns.   Everything was great and as expected.   No pictures,  it is the “Hey, I like to take a picture of my food so I can remember what I ate.” thing that I can’t get to.

If you ever visit St. Augustine you will go to St. George Street.  With it being the oldest permanently settled city in the US there are many old houses and buildings to be seen and many are along St. George Street, though they have been transformed into modern gift shops and trinket stores.  The oldest school house is on St. George Street but more importantly so is The Spanish Bakery.  No where else can you get some of the best soup a big loaf of fresh baked bread and three VEGAN lemon, cinnamon or almond cookies for $5.   The bakery is a small hut with just enough room for a row of cookies on display and three pots of soup.  Table are outside under large shade trees which are handy on hot, sunny days.  In the summer they have a very good gazpacho, however, they only had a vegetable soup on our visit which was still excellent.

View sitting outside of The Spanish Bakery on St. George Street.

Our fix for sweet stuff was found at Rita’s, an Italian Ice place on St. Augustine Beach.  Rita’s is a chain located mostly on the east coast but this is the only one we have ever visited, and we do each time we go to St. Augustine.  The have Gelati and custard ice but we always get the vegan Italian Ice option.  Flavors range from tropical punch, black cherry, vanilla, chocolate, pina colada, lemonade and mango.   I think of the three times we went there I had six or seven large ices, I lost count, but the best was the mango.   Cold, sweet and with little bits of mango.  I just looked at their website and noticed locations are coming to Hermitage and Mt. Juliet.

Most of our time in St. Augustine was planned to be spent on the beach and it was.  Six hours in one day allowed for plenty of digging in the sand and burning of our skin.  While walking around in a few places the smell of shrimp boil hit me.  Not the smell of the shrimp but the combination of spices used to boil the shrimp.   I love the smell and it instantly made me want to boil something in those spices to munch on.  Since getting back I have gotten together all of those spices along with some corn and potatoes that will be boiled and enjoyed on the patio one evening, a post about that will come later.

Mean people not allowed on St. George Street

Each trip to St. Augustine also gets us to go to a local nursery to pick out some plants that are a bit uncommon here.   I am a bit of a tropical plant enthusiast so you shouldn’t be surprised to see my fruit-bearing orange trees and palms.   I managed to find a Green Saw Palmetto and a Washingtonian Palm that were small enough to fit in the car for the ride back.  We also found a Madagascar Palm and a Longleaf Pine, both which are less uncommon here, for the ride back to be added to our plant family.

Washingtonian Palm and Green Saw Palmetto

So, to summarize, St. Augustine, good.  Pretty food, bad.  The Manatee Cafe, good.  The Spanish Bakery, good.  Beach, GOOD.

Tomorrow starts the first day of our trip to St. Augustine.  This isn’t our first trip there, in fact it is where my wife was going to college when we met.   Our last trip there was two years ago and so much had changed then from the time we went before that the year before.  We’ll be packing food for the trip as there is only one or two veggie restaurants in town.  I’m looking forward to taking a needed break from the work here and the other usual goings on.   I’ll also get some time to visit my favorite “thinking spot“.

The trip back will include a stop over in Atlanta for a couple days.  Visits to Trader Joe’s, Ikea and some of our favorite Atlanta veggie joints are in the plans.  Veggieland, Eats and maybe Harmony Chinese.

This means I will be postless here for the next week.   I know, no one will even miss me but I’ll bring back pictures and food stories when I return.

There’s a lot of talk recently with Whole Foods opening its first location in Nashville with wanting a Trader Joe’s to come here. For those who have never been to a Trader Joe’s you will find a plethora of goodies not easily found at other groceries at very low prices. There frozen and prepared foods are outstanding and they have a wide selection of cooking condiments, pastas, breads and snacks. Each trip I make I stock up on their super-cheap super-good organic ketchup, organic peanut butter and Joe’s Os for my daughter.

We love to travel and we love finding new places to eat, so eating out while traveling fits right in.   Our regular trips to Atlanta are scheduled around visits to Veggieland, Harmony Chinese, Sweet Tomatoes, Cafe Sunflower and Eats (mmm…collard greens).    We were told about a place we had never tried while on this trip and decided to see how it was.   My mother called and said she read on Citysearch about a restaurant called The Power Plant that had an entirely vegan menu.   At the same time my mother-in-law was researching the same place.  They both said it had great reviews for the food, but the service had horrible reviews.  I thought I could deal with having to get up to get someone to refill my drink a couple times in trade for an entirely vegan menu so we decided to give it a try.   My mother-in-law and my 2-year old daughter arrived ahead of us and got a table and waited as we found the place.  Once we arrived I saw “The Best Vegan Restaurant In the World” on the window and a huge banner hanging on the outside of the building advertising a $10 All-You-Can-Eat Vegan Brunch at which point I begin to loosen my belt and ready myself for the feedbag.  A brunch isn’t really something I strive to have every Sunday, and as far as I understand it’s for those people who want to sip a mimosa and eat croissants , not descriptive of me, but hey…this is FOOD!  When we entered and sat down in a small uncomfortable booth near the back of what is a very small dining  room I noticed that no one had any food on their table and I sturggled to keep my balance in a chair that seemed to want to sway to one side.   A smoothie was ordered for my daughter about 20 minutes prior to our walking in and at that point still nothing had been brought for her.   The menu was a copied paper which listed many great sounding items, all of which were faux-meat, BBQ ribs, “Shicken”, the obligatory veggie burgers, Philly Cheese Steak and many others I can remember now all for about $10 – $14 each  The brunch menu had “Shicken and Waffles”, French Toast, Sausage and Gravy and still other items not recalled.  Everything sounded good and I was debating between the BBQ and the brunch, if only someone would take our order.  I only saw two people working the floor while there and finally one lady came over.  She told us the had just become extremely busy (the restaurant was full, all 8 tables) and she promised excellent service if we were patient.  OK, I can wait a bit.  At one point a lady dropped a bottle of water off at our table, I don’t know why, but didn’t stop to ask if we were ready to order.  Still, no smoothie and at this point it has been about 15 minutes since we arrived and nearly and hour since my mother-in-law arrived.   This first plate of food I saw come out of the kitchen did so at this point, a “Sesame Shicken” plate for the table next to us.  It looked tasty with asparagus and a nice pile of “Shicken” (?) but the lady bringing it still did not stop to ask us about ordering.  When she left the person at the table next to us who had just received their sesame shicken tried to get her attention but to no avail.   A couple walked in and waited to be seated and we considered leaving at this point, something that always embarrasses me, I don’t know why.   When we left no one said anything to us, but then the two people who would were nowhere to be seen.  When we drove back by the restaurant after walking to our car about 15 minutes later I noticed to people who had just walked in were still waiting.

I have checked the reviews on Citysearch and found that, of course, we are not the only ones to get the same “service”.   Happy Cow reports the same.   I find it hard to believe this place has been open for more than a year!  I would try again but I just don’t think it is worth it.