Vegan Recipes, Ideas, and Living » Travel

Kumamoto Vegan: Bunzo, a Nice Italian-like Place Downtown

Benjamin Jones — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:35:10 +0000

Not exactly sure what Bunzo means, but it is a great place in downtown Kumamoto that calls itself Italian, though how authentic it is is, frankly, a little debatable. Some Italian, some French, and some uniquely Japanese things like potatoes on pizza.

The first time I went it was on the recommendation of a professor at the local college, the second time I returned with a traveller who was looking for good food in town. Though the place isn’t the most vegan-friendly, they have a few good items on the menu (just be sure to mention no cheese!).

Bunzo brings your food out on a few big communal dishes for sharing, which combined with the dark, comfortable atmosphere of the restaurant makes it a great place to go for conversation or friendship.

Anyway, on the menu last night was “mushroom tomato sauce pasta” and pizza. Though the name sounds a little weird in English, it is some of the best pasta I’ve ever had, made with delicious mushrooms of a generous amount and in a very light sauce.

The pizza, unlike any that I have had anywhere else, is a simple, yet delicious thing. Baked on delicious, slightly crispy crust, they are happy to make a cheeseless pizza topped with tomatoes and potatoes (which are the only topping options besides cheese). Unlike anything I’ve eaten before, it is quite good delicious.

Overall, Bunzo is a great, reasonably prices restaurant. For two main dishes, a pizza, and oolong tea for two, the price comes out to only 4,000 yen (40 dollars). And according to my Swiss companion, it was unexpectedly good.

Easy Vegetable Curry Cooking on the Go

Benjamin Jones — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:32:43 +0000

You don’t always have everything you need to make a recipe perfectly. Sometimes you don’t even have access to a recipe. So what do you do? Make some curry!

Staying in Japan like I am now, it is often hard to find the ingredients that you would hope to find for curry (like coconut milk, chickpeas, or cauliflower). So you have to improvise a little bit. Luckily, curry powder isn’t a problem.

Anyway, here’s what I came up with for a very simple curry recipe (I didn’t measure any of the ingredients):

Potatoes
Carrots
Broccoli
Onions
Curry Powder
Tomatoes (whole or pre-diced) for the base

The basic cooking instructions are similar to most curries. Sauté your onions, put in your tomato base and your dice veggies, bring to a boil, and leave covered for an hour or so (until the veggies are all thoroughly cooked). And there you have it, tasty curry without needing to know what you are doing.

Yakisoba: Quick, Easy, and Tasty

Benjamin Jones — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:51:17 +0000

Yakisoba is one of my favorite things to eat. The thin noodles fry up quickly in some olive oil and then you can add whatever you want in the way of vegetables, mushrooms, etc.

It is also pretty cheap, at about $1.50 for 3 servings. Anyway, to prepare, just fry up some yakisoba in a little olive oil in a skillet, add in whatever seasoning or veggies you want, fry a bit more, and eat.

Takes about 5 minutes from start to finish and tastes great.

Amakusa Vegan: Baobab Cafe, Indian Food and Reggae Music

Benjamin Jones — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:01:13 +0000

One day when I was rumbling around town visiting temples and shrines after I meeting I happened by an Indian place that wasn’t on the local map. What luck, I thought. I love Indian food and was wondering if there was any around.

So I decided to stop in. The place is small and has a good atmosphere. It is run by a husband and wife couple who are extremely interested in reggae music. The husband spent his youth travelling around Jamaica and India learning about music and food, which was where he became a cook.

The husband, like many Jamaicans and Indians, is a vegetarian as well and both of them are familiar with what “vegan” means, which is a very, very surprising thing to find in Japan.

When I asked for a recommendation, the husband said he would make me a special plate. Though it is not the curry you are probably used to, it was quite good. Amakusa is well known for having tasty vegetables, and the mushrooms especially were great.

I had this curry, rice, coffee, and tea all for a very nice 1000 yen (about 10 bucks), but I also got to stay and chat with the couple, who were pretty interesting people. The husband even took me over to a local historian’s place for tea to help with my research and showed me some of the more interesting local sites.

Though we spoke in Japanese, I got the impression that at least the husband knew English pretty well from his travels and the menu is partially in English, so I would call this a foreigner-friendly place.

They also have occasional events where they perform live music and have food and those sorts of things.

Curry: The Best Thing Ever Injected Into Bread

Benjamin Jones — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:57:33 +0000

It is called curry pan (curry bread), and while I can’t speak to its origins, it is good stuff. Although I’ve known of its existence for some time, I never asked what was in it. Today I finally stopped into the panya (a fresh bread store) and took a look.

Turns out they make curry pan with a tomato curry that does not have any meat ingredients: success! I got some to go and took it home with me.

It was as everyone else had said: the best thing since coconut milk ice cream. While the taste is something like a high collar hot pocket, this is probably a good thing since tasty foods stuffed inside of other tasty foods seems to be a pleasant theme.

I’m not yet sure on how easy it would be to make at home, probably a bit like making a calzone, but more Indian. With curry being an incredibly creative sort of dish, you can imagine the possibilities with curry pan.

Amakusa Vegan: Sun Gourmet Pizza

Benjamin Jones — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:50:12 +0000

Sun Gourmet is a pizza delivery place in downtown Hondo, Amakusa City. Though I never ordered delivery, their pizza is quite great and if you order in the shop you get a 10% discount.

In the US it can be difficult to get a pizza place to make an order like you want it, but in Japan it is a bit easier. Japanese pizza places aren’t used to the same norms and will often do wild things like put potatoes on as toppings and such, so you can imagine they might be more open to accommodation.

Well, Sun Gourmet was the first place I tried and they are definitely willing to do things however you like it. While they had the normal shock over a person unable to eat meat or cheese, there was no problem for them making a cheeseless pizza with whatever veggie toppings I wanted.

For 1,080 yen (about 11 bucks these days) I got myself an L-size pizza with mushrooms and black olives that was quite good. I felt the pizza itself was modest in its goals and that suited me well. The crust was just right and the toppings good. Overall, a good pizza.

I ended up ordering all three nights I was in town. Besides the good pizza, the owners are nice people and they have a cute son who hangs out with them after school doing child things.

Anyway, certainly one of the better places I have eaten since being in Japan, even if it is something as mundane as a simple pizza.

Japan Vegan: Trials and Tribulations

Benjamin Jones — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:08:40 +0000

Before coming to Japan this time around I knew I would have to make compromises. Compromises about what I would eat in order to keep myself healthy and be able to ride my bike around and enjoy the place.

I didn’t think too much about it before coming because I knew it would be practically impossible to predict what I would have to do before I actually got here.

I knew there was a special style of Japanese cooking practiced mainly by Buddhist monks and things, but I didn’t know if it would be accessible. I knew they were lots of naturally vegan things in Japan, but I also knew there would be less options away from the big cities.

Well, it turns out the monks that don’t eat meat and such are part of an older sect that really only hangs out around Kyoto, quite far from here. Furthermore, I was right about having less choice.

I am also burdened by knowing more about things.

For example, the last time I was in Japan I didn’t know that pretty much every soup base for everything had a fish base or used dashi, which is a little bit fish.

I also didn’t know that eggs were in the batter for tenpura or that even the most vegetable-type curries would have something like chicken or pork consume.

I also knew that if I ate nothing but rice I would quickly suffer from it and not be able to do much. So, I had to make compromises. Compromises like:
- Vegetable udon may have some tiny amount of fish in it, but oh well,
- This pasta may have a small amount of parmesan on it, but oh well,
- XYZ might not be exactly like I would want it, but I would rather not starve.

Most of these compromises are things that you can’t do much about. If you ask for a recommendation for what udon doesn’t have fish in it, you will end up with udon with a fish base and a chunk of naruto (which is fish) anyway. If you ask for something without cheese, you’ll get parmesan. If you ask for vegetable curry they’ll think you mean just with more vegetables and not with just vegetables.

This is probably because cooks don’t really get it, and you can’t expect them to. Especially in Japan, where cheese and milk is sort of a foreign idea, “cheese” isn’t really the same thing as we might normally think of it. Cheese might just be swiss cheese or something, and if you ask them about the parmesan you’ll get a “O RLY, you meant that, too?” sort of answer.

So, while I tend to play safe on veganism in the U.S., while I am here I am playing safe on keeping my body functioning healthily so I can do my research and ride my bike. Veganism is considerably easier when cooking for myself, and I’ll have more on that in the next few days, .

Japan Vegan: Putting Ajipon on Everything

Benjamin Jones — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:58:34 +0000

The most difficult part of being vegan in Japan is that even the most innocent, vegan things you can think of are topping with, friend in, or souped (for lack of a better word) in something that is not vegan.

However, when you are cooking for yourself you have the option of putting your udon or salad or whatever in whatever you like. In this case, it is ajipon.

Don’t ask me what Ajipon means, something like “flavour pon” but it is vegan and it’s pretty good. It takes a bit of getting used to but not in the “this tastes so bad you’ll eventually kill your taste buds way,” more in the “Western cooking doesn’t use these sorts of flavours so it tastes different” way.

Anyway, ajipon is meant as a sort of all purpose flavouring, so you can use it on anything from yasai itame (something like stripped, stir-fried veggies) to udon, soba, chanpon, or salad.

Tasty Vegan Food on ANA

Benjamin Jones — Sun, 17 May 2009 01:26:20 +0000

The last place you expect to get something that tastes good (or even to get something at all) is on a plane flight. Luckily for me, they can’t really put you on a 13 hour flight without feeding you.

ANA is a pretty great airline. Unlike United (which grifted me out of 175 for luggage fees) ANA doesn’t charge you for oversized luggage and such things. They also offer a huge amount of special meals which you can reserve by calling in or placing a reservation online.

Luckily for us vegans, one of the online options is the vegan meal, which is actually pretty tasty. I couldn’t tell you what it is since it’s some Japanese food I’ve never eaten before, but you can expect the usual as you would with Japanese food: variety, pickled things, and rice.

Overall, pretty good. Given that their price is actually less than the American companies, I wouldn’t want to take another chance with an American airline. Last time they delayed me for a full day in Chicago, even though their Indian food was pretty decent. Also, the $175 I had to pay to check my bicycle one way to Chicago was more than the ticket.

In summary: ANA is vegan-friendly. More to come from Japan sooner or later.