Van Food

I wish life was all Vegan Yachts and Spiral Diners. But alas, time on the road in the van is filled more so with unpleasant options, especially when I’m too lazy or hungover to hit up a grocery store before we’re back on the road. Here’s a few examples.

The old reliable. Canned beans, canned corn, and canned tomatoes (if I’m lucky its Rotel brand) spread on a flour tortilla. There's an added bonus of some avocado. This meal’s a bit tricky sometimes. First you need to get the juice out of the cans or else it’ll be too messy and you’ll drip juices all over your pants and look like you have serious jizz stains…more so than normal even. In this instance I drained it all into a Tupperware container and proceeded to drink the mixed juices with a fellow band member. Much to the horror of our van mates, we were passing the bowl of “Fart Broth” back and forth. I should have taken a picture of that instead. This was eaten somewhere around the Oklahoma panhandle.

Here’s one of the times where I was pissed off at food. I tried to hit up this Mexican spot inside a truck stop in the middle of nowhere outside Beaver Utah (they sold I heart Beaver shirts…classy) en route to Las Vegas and felt a bit optimistic when I saw they had a vegetarian burrito on the menu.

“Is there lard in the beans?” I ask.
“You don’t want beans on your burrito?”
“Uhhh No. Esta Manteca en las frijoles?”
“Ummmm”

Finally the manager says that there’s lard in the beans. I turn into a big bitch and say “Well then I guess it’s not a vegetarian burrito then is it” and walk away. I sure fixed that guys wagon. Score one for the vegans.

All pissy now, I march around the truck stop looking for something to eat. Honestly I was lucky to find this veggie plate. Normally I’d be stuck with chips, a banana, or some overly salted nuts. I tried to ignore my hippy brain telling me carrots and celery absorb a ton of pesticides while I ate this. And the Kettle Salt and Pepper chips are too damn tasty to turn down this time. Still super unsatisfying meal. Wahhhh.

Spiral Diner - Dallas

So my band tour continues. As we roll into Fort Worth and stop at a coffee shop near the venue to escape the heat (no AC in the tour van, + 40 punk points), when what do I see right across from the coffee shop? The Spiral Diner. I didn’t remember this being the location of The Spiral Diner last time I was in Dallas. Well it seems that it isn’t. The Spiral Diner is so good and badass that they have two locations, one in Dallas and one in Fort Worth. I guess they’re two different cities…although it seems like one big city to me. Now I didn’t want to say that though, because those Texans get mighty feisty. It’s probably because of the balls summers. Where scrotum and labia alike are batwinged to various underwares for months on end. But I remember what they did to that guy who offered them salsa from New York City. Momma Chee Chee didn’t raise a dumbass.

I digress. The vegan gods had opened up the sky and shined their love down upon me by placing me unbeknownst right next to the sister location of Dallas’s finest vegan food eatery. I beamed with joy as I walked towards the Diner with a blossoming food boner. All was good and great with the world. All of a sudden the fact I had been sweating for 5 days straight didn’t bother me. The tangy stank from my tour shorts didn’t bother me. The world is good, oh wait, fuck me, they’re closed on Mondays.

That night I ate a small bag of Fritos and some French Fries for dinner. Since I’m getting older a meal like that made me feel like garbage. Lucky for me the place we crashed at that night was in Dallas and we had time to hit up the Dallas Spiral Diner for breakfast.

Spiral Diner has a HUGE menu. And everything looks awesome on it. Fucking food heaven. As much as I wanted to order a big heavy meal, I needed raw veggies. I scanned the menu and saw what I needed…the chef salad. I also had to get a side of their Mexican quinoa because it just plain rules. I have tried to recreate it at home but so far have only succeeded in making inferior clones. One day dammit.

Look at this salad! Loaded with awesome veggies, daiya, bacon bits, and a bunch of great grilled tofu. The spicy ranch dressing didn’t taste necessarily “ranchy”, but I didn’t give a shit because it was delicious. Now let me mention the coffee. Its bottomless. Big plus right there. Also they have soy creamer for it, which I don’t think I have ever seen at a restaurant before. I like soy and rice milk and all…but its inferior in coffee. I have to put so much in my coffee to get it how I like, it really just becomes coffee flavored soy/rice milk instead of coffee. And finally, the coffee was totally amazing! Fair trade Ethiopian that was light and flavorful. I’d go back just for the coffee….I had 3 cups.

Spiral Diner rules very much. It’s probably the most extensive menu I have seen at a vegan restaurant. They have containers of nooch on the table for fucks sake. You can cover all your food in nooch and they don’t give a fuck. That’s how rad they are. 

http://www.spiraldiner.com

Austin Texas - The Vegan Yacht

I was in Austin for Chaos in Tejas. My band was lucky enough to play. Unfortunately we had an early slot at 1215pm, and thats not enough time for a hungover piece of shit like myself to cram some food in his maw and shower the gross off himself from the night before. So after we played, Grandpa had to hunt down some food to fuel the rest of the days booze/music mayhem. I'd been told about The Vegan Yacht by someone online and when I saw vegan frito pie on their menu I thought, "Holy shit! I need to put that in me."

The walk there was rough in the miserable heat of Texas in June. It was also as swampy as John Goodman's balls must be...well, all the time. But the idea of Frito Pie stirred my soul...and my wiener. I was totally not disappointed.

The Vegan Yacht has an awesome menu. Look at all that good shit! I almost thought twice about getting the frito pie. Almost. My friend got the TLT (Tempeh Lettuce Tomato) and I had a bite and it was pretty great. I would get that next time. Along with an order of frito pie. I mean look at this shit! Blue Corn fritos? Where the fuck do you get that??? I'll tell you where. From the badass store, that's where. Squares not allowed. This mofo has diaya cheese on it...and look at those giant ass slices of avocado. Fuck.

So I pounded this bad boy along with a smoothie. If it wasn't so balls hot out I might have considered ordering another one or a sandwich. But I needed to get my sweaty ass air conditioned. It was also a bonus that one of the dudes working at the yacht had caught my band play and said we rocked. Later on on the old facebook they posted that we had a free band meal next time we were in Austin. Fuck yeah. The vegan yacht loves hardcore. Go there if you're in Austin.

http://theveganyacht.com