Vegan Dining Out @ Crazy Tomato

Well, I ended up going out for lunch today with the whole crowd from work to celebrate a member of our group's retirement. Today was his last day so he got to pick the restaurant. Lucky for me, he picked a place that I really like. Crazy Tomato has two locations in the Tri-Cities, one in Johnson City, where I live, and one in Kingsport, where I work. The one in Kingsport is fairly new, and I actually hadn't been to it yet. I had been meaning to go soon, so this was the perfect opportunity. I like to frequent the one in Johnson City a lot when it's nice and warm outside because they have this cool outdoor dining area in the back. I just love eating outside.

The new one in Kingsport was very nice. You could tell that they had spent some money and put a lot of effort into decorating the place. Being an Italian restaurant, there are, of course, lots of things on the menu that are off-limits for vegans. But just by making careful selections, and asking for a couple of ingredient omissions, I was able to enjoy a delicious lunch and come out of there absolutely stuffed to the gills.

I started out by just ordering a Garden Salad. There were several other salad options, but all of those contained cheese and/or meat. So it was definitely the Garden Salad for me. I did ask if it had bacon bits on it, it didn't. And I did ask if it had cheese on it. My server said that they sprinkle some parmesan cheese on it, so I asked for that to be left off. That left me with just all veggies, exactly what I wanted. For the dressing I selected the Oil & Vinegar. I guess this particular one was made with Red Wine Vinegar and it was really good. I guess it's been a while since I ordered a salad in a restaurant, but this one was very delicious. And I was actually pretty full when I finished it. I probably should have stopped there, but I didn't.

For my entree I ordered an individual slice (which is really more like two slices) of their Crazy Garden Pizza. It had the usual veggie pizza ingredients; onion, green pepper, mushrooms and black olives. There was just some Olive Oil brushed on the crust and I, of course, asked them to leave the cheese off. It was very delicious, as usual. And a couple of my omnivore coworkers even commented that it looked good. It did look good, and it WAS good. I had forgotten how much I liked their pizza crust.

So that was my lunch experience for Wednesday. Demonstrating once again that being vegan doesn't mean that you have to starve when you go out to a restaurant. Of course, a little starving might have done me good since I'm trying to lose weight right now, but now that I look back on it, my entire meal was basically just vegetables except for that pizza crust and the oil in the salad dressing. So while it was a lot of food, it definitely could have been a whole lot more unhealthy, especially if it hadn't been vegan.

I may have to be extra good with the lunchbox tomorrow to make up for eating so much today. I guess we'll see...

Thanks for checking in today and I'll see everybody on Thursday.