I’m not a Vegan…….

I just play one on my blog (sometimes).

I enjoy eating vegetarian and vegan and can appreciate good veggie food. So when my two closest vegan buddies, Bonnie and Lauren (well, Lauren may not technically always eat vegan, she's pretty darn close) asked me if I wanted to try Brassica Supperclub, I enthusiastically told them to count me in!

Brassica Supperclub, “an underground dining experience” is a fairly new concept in dining (for me at least). For more information see their website here.

For a play by play account of our dining experience on Saturday…..read on.

So the day before Saturday Lauren (who kindly made our dinner reservation) received an e-mail containing top secret details for the evening. The e-mail disclosed the secret location, a password phrase we were to give at the door, and a tentative menu. The e-mail also informed us that they do not serve alcohol, but encouraged you to bring your own (BYOB). OK. Sounds interesting. So every time I hear BYOB, I either think of college potlucks or the time Jamie and I visited Martha's Vineyard and we had dinner at The Black Dog. When we got to The Black Dog we learned that they did not serve alcohol, but encouraged to BYOB. Jamie jetted out of the restaurant found the closest place that sold wine, which happened to be a gas station and picked up a bottle of wine. I got a kick out of that. So I'm thinking that this dinner could either turn out to be like a college potluck or a pretty cool dinner.

We arrived at our secret location and were welcomed with a wonderful aroma. We were seated at low tables and given pillows for our bums. This would be my one criticism of the evening, because after 3 hours of sitting on the floor it got to be a bit uncomfortable. I totally get the novelty they were trying to capture by having us sit on the floor and for a quick eat it would have worked for me, but for a 4 - course dinner, my back and legs would have liked a chair.

Now that I got that off my chest, let's talk about the fabulous food. Because that it was.

We started with - Thai Lettuce Cups with Seared Oyster Mushrooms and Grilled Corn, and a Sweet Peanut-Coconut Sauce. To add to your lettuce cups were limes, onions, grilled coconut, peanuts and some other wonderful items. Fantastic. Love me some lettuce cups! It would have taken me forever to prepare something so pretty and to have the patience to delinquently cut everything up.

Next was the soup, a Duo of Tomato Cream Soup and Corn Chowder served in mini-bread bowls. The corn chowder was awesome and I really liked the tomato as well. The bread was a fabulous rosemary bread.

Also, in case you are curious we opted to bring a bottle of Chianti as our choice BYOB beverage (and I'm just trying to see how many times I can use BYOB in a blog post).

Here are the lovely little soups.

To side track a little. I think one of the great things about having a dining experience like this, other than having a wonderful organic healthy meal, is the social interaction that goes along with the evening (I totally took that from Bonnie). But, I truly do look forward to my girl time and appreciate my girl friends. I luv you (wo)man!

Moving on......

As a small intermezzo we were given some wonderful fresh watermelon juice.
And here is the Entree. I labeled everything (click on image to enlarge, please). It's so pretty. This was my first time trying tempeh. It didn't knock my socks off, it was good, but I'm also thinking it may have contributed to some issues I had the next morning. And I'll just leave it at that.Last, but certainly not least was dessert - Almond Genoise Napoleon, with Amaretto Cream & Caramelized Nectarine Filling, and Nougatine, Caramel Sauce, and Nectarine - Cinnamon Granita. Wow! Incredible. Vegan desserts are a hard one to pull off (for me at least). I mean, how can you not use real butter and milk cream. Well, they pulled it off with this one.

Ta-da!

The night ended with a introduction of the chefs. Where we learned more about the food, their backgrounds, and their goals. It was neat evening. Something totally different. Gotta love S.F. I'm happy for the experience.