Merry Listmas 2016: The Food

Before the calendar turns to 2017, let’s reminisce about the finer things that food in 2016 had to offer (click on the picture for recipes and blog posts).

Favorite Sandwiches:



Main Attractions:




Desserts:




Some Other Favorites of the Year:

Favorite Place to Fill a Growler of Kombucha
Jug and Bottle. Not only can you fill their growlers with Mother Kombucha from the tap but you can also buy bottled kombucha, local ice cream, local snack foods, Seminole Heights clothing, nitro brewed coffee (also on tap) and some cheeses and salsas that are slightly harder to find. Oh, did I mention beer and wine? No? You can buy those too.

Best Vegan Lentil Soup in a Bread Bowl:
BJ's Brewhouse. I am enamored with BJ's vegan lentil soup. I've eaten it both as a bread bowl (hold the butter) and regular bowl. The soup is filling, slightly spicy and flavorful. Rare is it to find a chain restaurant in Tampa offering a vegan soup. Even rarer is the restaurant that offers a really good vegan soup. BJ's also does some beautiful Brussels Sprouts (nicely charred and crispy and tossed in oil).

Best "Fancy" Vegan Pizza:
Double Zero. From farro sausage to artisanal vegan cheese plates to sweet potato bruschetta, this place is all vegan all the time. It definitely isn't cheap but if you are in New York and looking for a fancy vegan dinner you can't get in Tampa, check this place out.

Best Artisanal Tofu in Tampa:
Thinh An Kitchen and Tofu.

Best Vegan Hot Dog:
The Holiday Dog from the Vegan Hot Dog Cart. The Holiday Dog includes Florida orange-cran chutney, Carolina BBQ mustard sauce and fried onions. It was ranked back in 2014 by PETA as the number one vegan hot dog in America. I can see why. This dog was amazing. Texture wise, it wasn't as chewy as the prepackaged versions you can get at the store. The dog (and bun) basically melted in your mouth. The orange-cran chutney, bbq mustard and fried onions flowed nicely with the dog. None of the flavors stood out, instead they morphed into one giant swirl of sweet, sour and crispy.

Best Seaweed Salad Served in a Martini Glass:
Samurai Blue Ybor

Best Vegan Cupcake Caught on Camera:
Georgetown Cupcakes. This place does live up to the hype, although I don't recommend checking out the cupcake camera. You don't want to lose too many hours of your life...

Best Veggie Burger:
Chickpea & Olive. A beet burger topped with vegan cheese and avocado and served on thick toasted bread. That's the kind of food porn my wife catches me watching late at night. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can even get her to join in. It really keeps the relationship fresh.

But seriously, if you go to Smorgasburg and are a vegan, eat this burger!

Best Vegan Banana Bread (aside from my own, of course):
Buttermilk Provisions

Best Bagels:
Bagel Pub. I rolled around my tiny little high school with the hottest girl on my arm. I thought I was something special. Then I went off to college in the city and I realized that there wasn't anything special about high school me. That girl on my arm, she was small potatoes compared to the city girls. I broke up with her via AOL instant messenger and never looked back.

So what does this have to do with Bagel Pub? Well, in similar fashion, I rolled around Tampa thinking that I knew what a good bagel was. It took me four hours in New York to realize that those "bagels" I was eating were nothing more than tiny little crust rocks. They were small grains of wheat compared to the Bagel Pub bagels.

Vegan Dessert of the Year:
Vegan Donuts. From Buttermilk Provisions to Alevri Marketplace to Valhalla Bakery to Dun-Well Doughnuts, I had my fair share of vegan donuts this year. Moreso than any other vegan dessert. That's why I am proclaiming that the Chinese calendar makers make 2016 forever known as the year of the vegan donut. I know it isn't an animal and all, but if I bite a doughnut in just the right places, I can easily shape it into a squirrel. That's good enough right?

Best Place to Purchase my Vegan Dessert of the Year:
Dun-Well Doughnuts. Dun-Well doesn't play the whole regular donuts with one vegan option game. Everything at Dun-Well is vegan. This includes the lattes, ice cream, milkshakes, sundaes, donuts, horchata and egg type things. Tough choices. During my first visit, I went with the most recommended doughnut according to Yelp, the Peanut Butter and Jelly doughnut. As I mentioned here, the peanutty glaze of the donut was not super sugary, like I feared it would. It had a strong peanut taste. The doughnut was fluffy, sort of like a dough pillow for the rich peanut topping to rest it's weary head. The jelly inside the doughnut was a nice sweet contrast to the rich peanut glaze and doughy doughnut. Later in the year I returned and ordered a doughnut sundae. The ice cream, courtesy of 3 Little Birds, was creamy and amazing. The doughy donut underneath matched nicely.

Best Vegan Ice Cream Not in My Grocer's Freezer:
3 Little Birds

Best Vegan Ice Cream From My Grocer's Freezer:
Ben and Jerry's PB & Cookies. More than twice the calories of my former go to vegan ice cream, probably because it is oh-so-good!


Vegan Restaurant of the Year
Champs Diner. While I ate better dishes this year, Champs takes the cake because it is a completely vegan diner that offers a ton of different options to choose from. While I liked Dun-Well Donuts more, they are limited by being a bakery. And while the burger I ate at Chickpea & Olive was hands down the best thing I ate this year, they suffer from a lack of options. I guess I am defining a restaurant as having multiple options and not just desserts.

I had only one shot at Champs Diner. Because of that, I wanted to eat everything on the menu. I wanted the mozzarella sticks and the buffalo wings and the seitan asada fries and a grinder and reuben and Philly Cheesesteak. Eventually I settled on a buffalo chick'n hero for me. J-Fur ordered an Awesome Bowl and Z-Bot the mac and cheese.

The Buffalo Chick'n Hero, which was made up of spicy buffalo chick'n, greens, tomatoes, sautéed onions and ranch dressing, was slightly salty. I loved the creamy, spicy combo. What made Champs stand out to me was the mac and cheese. This dish was perfection. It was cheesy and creamy without the weird texture that a lot of vegan cheeses seem to suffer from. The Awesome Bowl has quinoa, tofu scramble, bell peppers, garlic sautéed kale, home fries and hollandaise sauce. With that list of ingredients, it sounds like it should be one of the greatest things I've ever tasted. It pretty much was.

The City of Tampa According to Tofu: Thinh An Kitchen & Tofu

Five spring breaks ago my wife and I spent a few days in Asheville. We were spending two nights in a hostel before moving to a bed and breakfast for a night before coming back to the hostel for one more night (if you didn't catch that the first time, you have my permission to reread the line until it makes sense). When we arrived at the hostel the owner took us on an abbreviated tour. As he showed us the kitchen he said "Some local commune gave us a bunch of homemade tofu. Feel free to take as much as you want while you are here. Hell, you can even take some with you when you go." A solitary tear rolled down my face as I thought about homemade tofu and why Tampa can't seem to get nice things.

Hey, it may have taken until 2016 but thanks to Thinh An Kitchen & Tofu, Tampa finally has gotten nice things (at least in the world of artisanal tofu making). Thinh An Kitchen & Tofu is a unique place. When you walk in half of the business is a restaurant that serves boba tea, Vietnamese desserts, Pho and other traditional Vietnamese dishes. The other half of the building is a grab and go with coolers of homemade tofu, soy milk and various meats that might be necessary for cooking Vietnamese at home. There are also a number of metal trays that hold freshly made items. It was here, in these metal trays, that I found the artisanal tofu I was looking to take home.

According to Laura Reiley, food critic for the Tampa Bay Times Thinh An Kitchen & Tofu churns out seven different flavors of tofu. When I visited they had only four (ha, only four, like four flavors of tofu is a normal thing around here). These four were original, lemongrass and chili, onion and mushroom. The mushroom and onion were sliced into large rectangles. They were priced at four for a dollar. I filled a miniature plastic baggie (yep, that's how you take things to go here) with eight of each. The lemongrass and chili came in two forms, large rectangles (like the onion and mushroom) and a block similar to how traditional tofu in a grocery store is sold. I grabbed four of the rectangles and a big block. I was absolutely astounded when they lady rang me up for the block of tofu and it only came out to two dollars. The only place that I have found tofu that cheap in this city is Whole Foods (organic, $1.99) and MD Market (full of GMO's, $1.29). The lady at the register asked if I wanted any sauces with my tofu (options include chili paste, soy sauce, fish sauce and another one  that I don't remember). I settled on some chili paste.

My Plate of Different Flavored Tofu from Thinh An Kitchen & Tofu

I would love to say that I waited until I got home and ate that tofu properly but I didn't. I ripped into the rectangles as soon as I got to the car. Each tofu flavoring was subtle, it wasn't going to overwhelm you with whatever it was covered with. I liked that because it gave you the option of eating it with a dipping sauce or using it in a recipe. The different tofus had a nice chewy shell on the outside of them. Inside they were soft and creamy, almost like a custard. It was absolutely and without a doubt the best tofu I've ever eaten. J-Fur wasn't as instantaneously taken in as I was. She would not go on record as saying that it was the best tofu she has ever eaten. But when I pressed her to name a place that had better tofu, she couldn't. I took that as a motion seconded.

I used the lemongrass and chili block to make Thug Kitchen's Spring Veggie Bowl with Red Curry Lime Sauce.  I adore this recipe but hate the time it takes for the tofu to finish baking and marinating. Already marinated and baked tofu made this a total win scenario. I was very pleased with how the tofu held up when I put it in Red Curry Lime Sauce to warm. There was no crumbling or falling apart and it kept its chewy shell and creamy interior.