Vegan Dining Out @ Cootie Brown's

Well, I ended up going out to eat for lunch today because I wanted to share a new delicious vegan meal that I just discovered with you all. Well, I wanted to eat it too, of course. But I ended up going to Cootie Brown's again. They're probably the most vegan-friendly place I can think of to eat in either Kingsport (where I work) or in Johnson City (where I live). I actually used to work there for a little while as a part-time second job a loooooooong time ago, so I'm at least a little familiar with what goes into their food. I know the manager of the one in Kingsport too, so I don't have any trouble going up and asking him about food ingredients, and he actually knows what veganism is, so that's extremely helpful. Their menu contains several different types of veggie burgers, all of which can be made vegan by leaving off any cheese, mayo or butter, and several different types of pizza, which can all be made vegan by leaving off any cheese or meat. I opted for the pizza today because it's so easily veganized and honestly, their toppings are so varied and so delicious that putting cheese on them (even if you aren't vegan) would, in my opinion, just drown out the tastes of the really good stuff.

I ended up ordering a half of a Carribean Pizza. You can order either a whole pizza, or just a half of one, and they have both regular crust and whole wheat crust. I got the whole wheat. Their pizza crusts are really tasty too because they actually grill them on a grill. Sometimes there's grill marks and everything and they taste all nice & smoky. So much better than just a plain old pizza crust. They're very thin and crispy also, which is just how I like my pizza crust. And this particular pizza, once you get them to leave the cheese & chicken off, comes topped with olive oil (just lightly brushed on the crust, not too much at all), baby spinach, artichokes, portobello mushrooms, pica-dillo (mangos, pineapple and mandarin oranges), and a reduced Jamaican Jerk Sauce drizzled all over the top. This is VERY delicious, and I couldn't even imagine drowning out the flavor of the Jerk Sauce and all those yummy fruits & veggies with a bunch of cheese. Eating it without it actually made me glad that I was a vegan so that I could enjoy all those flavors. P.S. If you click on the picture then you can view the large version in a new window which really lets you see everything on the pizza a lot better. :o)

This will probably be one of my favorite things to eat for a while and I'll probably end up ordering it at home all the time until I get tired of it. If I do though, there are several other easily veganized pizzas there that I want to try at some point, especially that Mexican one. You'll probably see me go through all of them eventually here in the blog because I'll probably be eating there quite a bit now that the weather is turning nice. The walls of the entire restaurant open up and turn the whole place into one big outdoor dining space, which is really cool, and a really nice place to eat in the middle of the day when you're at work. Kinda' like a mini-vacation.

So there you have it, my latest vegan discovery, and a yummy one at that. Proving once again that it's not too difficult to eat vegan out at restaurants if you just choose carefully and ask a few questions and make a few requests. Yeah, I had to work a little bit asking about dough ingredients and sauce ingredients, but it really wasn't THAT much trouble. And getting something as yummy as this pizza to eat, while still eating vegan, makes it worth it.

Thanks for reading my blog today. See you tomorrow!