Die Leiden der jungen V

A little further away from the city center of Sendai, but conveniently set super close to Arai station, you can visit this gorgeous restaurant during a beach day.

I am not exactly sure if there is always a vegetarian or vegan food option available, but it seems so... (I can just kindly recommend you to check out the menu on the website http://www.moroya-farm.com/, or asking through the internet/a phone call) But as this is a restaurant focusing on healthy, locally farmed food, veggies can be found in plenty of dishes as well as the small shopping space at the entrance. I had this set menu with rice topped with a super nice leek miso paste, salad and pink raddish, pickles, simmered tofu and veggies, tempura, and a miso soup with tofu.

I loved this miso paste so much that I bought a small cup to take home. That one I can confirm as completely vegan.

A close up of the romanesco and herby tempura that I loved the most. Note that it is being held by a ring that I suspect was a piece of fish cake.... it's always safe to ask the staff I guess.

Sorry for the long absence, university life just got really busy. I had my first round of farewell parties and can write this now in the un-hungover next morning.

So as soon as the rainy season ended, a hellish summer temperature paired with very high humidty hit Sendai, around one week before the end of July. What a perfect time to skip lab, sit around the ice cream machines at campus and eat ice cream. Since my reviews will be very short, I recommend this page (https://isitveganjapan.com/food-products-f-l/frozen-confectionery/) for a very in-depth list of vegan ice cream and popsicle types. Fortunately there seem to be a lot of options. The only problem might be where to find those...

Gari Gari kun ice popsicles can be found in every supermarket and convenience stores. But be careful, not all flavours are vegan. I had the chocolate mint one recently, which most likely contains milk chocolate. (It was still very good.) The very first picture is how the blue soda flavour popsicles looks like half-eaten. I remember that at first, I though ‘hmm, interesting taste, but probably not my cup of tea...’ but then half-way through I suddenly changed my mind and really enjoyed the flavour. This one doesn’t contain dairy products.

This is Kyushu tangerine flavour, which was super nice and not too sweet. I’m always amazed about how natural these fruit flavours in Japan taste. And if they are very strong and you think they are kinda artificial (like some grape and apple sweets or juices), you’ll find out that real Japanese fruits really taste like that. It’s a miracle. This one is vegan, too.

Pictured above is one of my favourite stores in Sendai called Mamemaru ( 豆〇), which is specialised in all things soy and tofu. The soy milk soft serve is definetely vegan, I’m not so sure about the donuts and dorayaki-pancakes... please ask the staff there. (Location: https://goo.gl/maps/aPGTxR6Xv5G36soH7)

Yahata-ya (八幡家), Ishinomaki

(https://goo.gl/maps/TpWzF4zVYLQ79wp3A)

When you travel to Ishinomaki, there is exactly one place that I can recommend for vegetarians: It’s called Yahata-ya and it’s a fancy, huge and traditional Japanese restaurant. This gorgeous set meal comes for 2000 Yen with rice, simmered vegetables, tasty mushy eggplants, veggies, tempura, a piece of abura age (deep fried tofu), pickles and a leeky miso soup. Oh, and tea as well. You might think that all these little bowls might not get you full, but trust me, it does. Eating with a slower speed since you need to apprieciate, taste and discover every single dish and item is probably the most enjoyable quality of Japanese cuisine.

(Matcha appreciation... this dipping salt for the shiitake and fuki no tou buds :Q_______)

(https://goo.gl/maps/orJvhTfVV4iBMekH7）

(https://goo.gl/maps/ffKAGNQmzED4nU5k6)

I’m so sorry, yet again another post from a place that can not be confirmed 100 % vegetarian-friendly. I’m writing this as I noticed the orange oil on the bamboo shoots...

But I love this place. A bowl of abura soba here costs only 690 Yen, in every available three sizes, and the abura soba here is the best in Sendai (that’s what I was told, I don’t even bother to go to other places anymore). Abura soba are noodles (although not the classic brownish soba noodles made from buckwheat) that are eaten with a spicy oil and vinegar. You can optionally add mayonnaise as well, or anything you like. Other toppings that you can order here (at the vending machine, a little bit of Japanese skills required) are a soft-boiled egg, quail eggs, several veggies, pickles, etc. 

Featuring four snacks this week, three of them are even vegan!

Let’s start out with the first one:

These are waffles with black sesame and peanuts, without dairy and eggs. The waffles are pretty dense, very crispy and super addicting. I love the black sesame ones, but the peanuts give the waffles a slight sweetnees, which I love as well. These are available at Seiyu and Don Quihote (or Mega Donki at least).

These are きりんとう, or kirintou, or karintou, crispy dough pieces that are vegan as well. They are available at Gyoumu in this packaging, but you can find them in any convenience store as well. The above pictured have peanuts in them, but there are also varieties with chocolate, kinako etc.

If you have read this blog for a while now, you might have stumbled upon the fact that I love weird food. When I saw these pickled garlic with plum flavour in the snacks section at Daiso, I had to buy these. My Japanese friends all refused to eat them, but the taste is not strong at all, very gentle and subtle garlic flavour accompanied with a nice sourness and a hint of plum. These are vegan as well.

(https://goo.gl/maps/gU7PMRxYiyxdacNdA)

An incredibly adorable café and lunch place located near Hachimangu shrine, very convenient if you live near Sanjo-machi.

I stumbled accross the cute store front, pictured above, when I was on my way to Seiyu on my bike last winter. If you see a very adorable looking food place that offers healthy, macrobiotic and vegetable-oozing dishes, chances are high that there is vegetarian, or even vegan food, available. Ask inside the shop or through the restaurant’s website, their facebook or instagram, or through google maps, if there is meat- and fishless food available. You can say or write すみません、質問があります。ベジタリアンですから、肉と魚なしの食べ物がありますか？(which means: ‘Excuse me, I have a question. I am a vegetarian, so is there food without meat and fish available?’)

ビーガン食べ物がありますか? means ‘Is there vegan food available? (Please feel free to copy and paste.)

The interior as well as the girl working there were so super adorable and cute. There was no English menu available, but the lunch menu for 1280 Yen is vegetarian. (The incredible mille-feu-gratin contains red onions (I know, it looks like ham in the pictures), omelette and cheese, so unfortunately not vegan.) The menu items and ingredients change seasonally, but I am quite certain that the vegetarian plate is always available.

The food was very very good, loads of salad and a very nice variety of different items. The flavours were very gentle and I could taste the great care and love that was put on this plate. There even was a dessert at the end, and we ended up being so full that we couldn’t eat an anmitsu dessert or cake anymore. Maybe next time then. :D

The ‘market’ in this place is a few counters near the door, where super cute handmade trinkets, special candy and snacks, teas and coffees are displayed. They always sell some fresh veggies as well.

Ok, this is the beginning of my introduction to my snack oddisee. This series will provide information about savoury and sweet snacks that seem to be permanent items, featuring what I assume to be staples available in all kinds of super markets, small local grocery shops, and convenience stores. This series will not deal with omiyage, which are local souvenir snacks, as the variety is too big to handle. 

We will kick it off with this pile of goodies that I bought from a new year's lucky bag from Seiyu at the beginning of 2019. Of 12 items, 3 are non-vegetarian and 2 were vegan. 

Vegan snacks in this picture:

▪ ぱりんこ せんべい / Palinko rice crackers and

▪ Calbee うすしお potato chips.

When buying rice crackers, be aware that some might contain fish flavouring. Even the crossed out one on the right had gelatin listed, which was used for the sugar coating of these rice crackers. As for Calbee potato chips, snacks and crisps: some are vegan, but watch our for milk powder and honey as well! A more detailed list of Calbee products will soon follow!)

Here is a fun website full of vegan and vegetarian recipes using seasonal vegetables! A great way to learn about home cooking and Japanese seasoning, in my humble opinion. Just click around and you will find a surprisingly big range of vegan dishes! (No, this post was not sponsored by Kikkoman. I stumbled over this while researching soy milks, and the おいしい one in brown/yellow packaging seems to only contain soy beans as the sole ingredient.)

https://www.kikkoman.com/jp/memory/advertisement/ryouriiro/index.html

(https://goo.gl/maps/iJuPdcHGVKkJ1eCY7)

Another month, another buffet place 😅. This time I'd like to introduce to you Coco Mi Tei (https://prisert-psc.shopinfo.jp/), a restaurant that is specialised in home-cooked-style Japanese dishes. This place is not really hidden, yet not very well known either, I think. I passed the front so many times and finally managed to have dinner here. It's just about 5 min from Kokubuncho: If you're at the sign/gate with the green LED letters, cross the street towards Cafe Veloce, keep walking straight, and you will find this place on the right hand side (a huge sign written in romaji will prevent you from overseeing it).

There is a lunch buffet option (I don't know the fee, unfortunately), but for dinner it's a pay per weight system. The above portion I had was 750 Yen!!! Tea and Miso soup refills are included as well. Like Hinano (https://faketarianlife.tumblr.com/post/184635918245/%E3%81%B2%E3%81%AA%E9%87%8E-hinano-buffet), there is a lot of vegetarian options, such as braised veggies, tofu items and salads, but all signs are in Japanese, so kanji knowledge is required to stay safe from making mistakes. I accidently picked the omlette, which had sausage inside, but my date gladly helped me out.

(https://goo.gl/maps/AgzXPnPwxAsDwFju7)

Just a very quick post about this cheap yet amazingly delicious udon place inside Bivi, which is located right next to Sendai Station. It’s in that corner next to Baskin Robbins. The soups and sauces are probably not veg*n-friendly, so if you want to be strict, I recommend you bring your own bottle of tare/dipping sauce, and order a brothless udon dish... 

There is a great range of reasonably priced side dishes as well, like tempura vegetable nests, sweet potato tempura, or inari sushi (maybe not veg*n as well...).

(https://goo.gl/maps/ouBQHojnAphuX9Xa8)

Very close to Ichibancho, hidden at the backside on some upper floor of a house/shop you can find this little gorgeous gem. They have loads of fancy teas, amazing looking cakes and drinks, and a few items for lunch, which are vegetarian-friendly. (https://hampstead-tea-room.com/)

We enjoyed this set of salad, soup, scone, tea and amazing handmade cookies for 1050 ¥. Next time I will try the carrot sandwich menu.

Have you heard of Taiyaki ( 鯛焼き) before? It’s a carp-shaped waffle filled with sweet red bean paste (anko) or custard, or even savoury stuff, like curry and stews. I’ve had Taiyaki in Tokyo, Kyoto and Naha, and I found them nowhere to be as delicious as in Sendai. There are four stores of the famous chain called ‘Taikichi’( 鯛きち ), three around the arcades and near Sendai station, and one near Seiryo Hospital, very convenient for those who live nearby :p

The anko filling is very smooth and not too sweet, it’s just pure perfection. I also love the mushroom cream and camembert, which are seasonal fillings and not always available. Kinako and Zunda mochi fillings are also worth to give a try, and my friend claims the chocolate one is the best. I would like to assert that the caramel cream (pictured above) is the supreme, but you probably have to see for yourself. You can tell that I’ve had them quite often, I get a Taiyaki at least once every two weeks or so. These are hands down my absolute favourite street food/snack in Sendai. After having one of these, better stay away from the ones available in the fridges of convenience stores, as they can never make you as happy as a real Taikichi Taiyaki.

Remember my rant a while ago where I complained about how hard and frustrating it is to find certain items in Japan?

I found the tofu noodles. The packaging is different!!!!! The Family Mart version is white and has the brands tiny logo in the front. Also only the pack with tare sauce/sesame flavour is vegan, the other (two?) flavours have fish inside the sauce. (It even has 'katsuobushi' written in English on the packaging, which I just discovered now on the picture)

I also saw these noodles at Seiyu (but not the vegan one unfortunately). 

See, there is still hope for us. You feel down and sad after a bad experience, but months later you suddenly find the things that you searched for....

Not available in Sendai and thus a reason for heartbreak, but you can sometimes catch a cheap flight from Sendai to Taiwan, a country that has loads of veg*n friendly foods to offer. 

I sometimes dream about this noodle soup from vege creek, where you can enjoy a very reasonably priced bowl full of veggies you can pick out by yourself. Super vegan friendly, just a little bothered by all the plastic wrapping of the veggies...

A little update to part 1 because there is one more place in Sendai that I need to share:

(https://goo.gl/maps/v8qJUhMuU1QdKHrGA)

Pizza&cafe Bird is an 8 min walk from Sendai station and has a huge menu with pretty affordable pizze (if it’s not Tuesday, respectively... read my former pizza post ;P). The genovese (if I remember right) was really good (but the one in Ueno I liked more haha). They have several vegetarian pizze, like marinara, mozarella and funghi bianco as well, for less than 1000 Yen each. Some special items include black pizza (with squid ink, so not veg*n friendly), wasabi pizza (lower left-hand side pic) and sweet dessert pizza. 

The two Italians I went with equally lost their minds over the triple chocolate pizza like me, which was covered in brownies, chocolate sauce and chocolate ice cream. This is the main reason I want to go back to that place. The interior is gorgeously stylish and laid-back as well.

Another place I went to (one day after BIRD) was this restaurant in Akiu called  Pizza＆Cafe 森のオーブン Dottore. Since we couldn’t find any other restaurant nearby where one could have eaten lunch without reservation, we ended up here, waiting for 40 min (it was golden week back then) just to have these fluffy yet hearty, but nevertheless quite small pizze. They were around 800-900 soemthing yen, but the taste was pretty good.

Bonus tip: If you stumble upon a pizzaria called ‘The ‘A’ pizza’ (there is none in Sendai though), you will find affordable, pretty and instagrammable pizza which is still not really worth the price and queuing time... Those places appear to be crowded with young women, probably high school girls, who must seem to really like soft, almost mushy pizza... 

I have been terribly busy the last weeks, and on top of that broke and planning a post with a list of snacks so big that I lost motivation and left this blog to die for a while... I'm sorry! I'm back now, got money and ran to Seiyu because not only my fridge was starving. What I found today was these tiny snack bars that appear on a lot of vegan Japanese food pages. 

These gorgeous skinny bars cost 93 Yen (without tax) at Seiyu, but I saw them at Donki before as well. I researched and the CRISPY ones appear to be vegan...

I looked up the ingredient list from the homepage for the crispy white macadamia soyjoy because I had my doubts about the white chocolate... I'm not really sure if 'other' ingredients actually contain milk powder or not...

I haven't tried them yet, either, but as for most of Japanese foods, there is seldomly something that tastes bad, honestly.

Update: