USA 2013 - Part 3 (Portland to Seattle)

After stuffing ourselves full of amazing bakery goodness, we headed downtown for some shopping, and for some vegetables.



Prasad in the Pearl District is a fantastic wholefoods restaurant, and was the first place I ever ate in PDX back in 2011. We ordered the Urban Bowl that had greens, quinoa, kale, sea vegetables, carrots, and sesame with the garlic tahini sauce. So good! After spending some time in the magical book land of Powells, buying some vintage My Little Ponies at Billy Galaxies, stocking up on goodies at Whole Foods and finally buying some proper US-sized measuring spoons at Sur La Table, we were hungry for some dinner!

Besides the Mac and Cheese burger at White Owl Social Club, the other big thing to appear on the blogs post-VVC was the fancy downtown restaurant Departure, which is on the top floor of a building. Departure is not all vegan but has a great vegan menu. Of course Ashleigh and I ordered a number of great sounding dishes.








We had Salt and Pepper Tempeh (which included nooch!), Sweet Potato Tempura Sushi, BBQ Tempeh Buns, Wok Fired Brussels Sprouts and Vegetable Tempura. Dessert was a delicious Almond, Strawberry and Nashi Crisp with Almond Ice Cream. I cannot recommend Departure highly enough, I wish I could have eaten a million more things! If you are going to Portland, make yourself a reservation and enjoy.




The next day we headed to the now closed Dovetail for breakfast. I was hoping to try their famous biscuits and gravy, but it turned out that they only have those on weekends. Instead I had a lovely Blueberry Muffin and a Lavender Rose White Tea, and Ashleigh had a scone.



I was still a little peckish, so we headed back to Sweetpea to get some biscuits and gravy! I ordered the 'Hooten', which came with tempeh, and I also got a side of potatoes and the beloved Spicy Chai. The gravy was super salty, but the potatoes and the chai were perfect.




Then it was time to say goodbye to Portland and get on the train to head towards my beloved Seattle! For train snacks I had a yummy tempeh sandwich I had bought from the fridge section at Food Fight and a Lavender Snickerdoodle from Back to Eden.

Then we were in Seattle! Hurrah! After checking into the Executive Hotel Pacific we jumped on a bus out to the University District for dinner at Araya's Place. Though Google Maps still had them at the location where I visited them in 2011 (and had a lunch buffet on a day of insane eating), but it was closed! Eeep! Thankfully we happened to stumble across a 10 Billion Lives bus full of helpful vegans who directed us to their new location, which is right near Wayward Vegan Cafe, Vegan Haven and Pizza Pi (more on them later).






I love fresh coconut juice! We ordered starters of Spring Rolls and Tofu Satay. The spring rolls were meh (I really only ever want one... they get cold so fast), but the tofu satay was incredible. Best peanut sauce ever. For mains we ordered two of our favourite Thai dishes - I am crazy for Pad See Ew and Ashleigh loves Yellow Curry. The Pad See Ew was a bit different in flavour to what I am used to... it maybe felt like it had a lot of tamarind or something in it? But it was still good. Yum!