Vegan Food Out on the Town

I have been making mostly old recipes the last week (tonight was veggies and dumplings, which was even better than I remembered), but over the weekend we ate some good vegan food out and about that I thought I would share.

Neomonde has been in Raleigh for ages.  It's a Lebanese place down near NC State (i.e., far from my house) but we used to drive down there pretty often to get lunch and buy pita and other Middle Eastern items in the little grocery adjoining the restaurant.  Then last year, one opened about 2 miles away! I was VERY excited.  Now it's super convenient and I stop by sometimes after work to bring home Neomonde platters (hummus, baba ghanoush, pita, stuffed grape leaves, and tabbouleh) for dinner.  We went there Friday night before going out to the movies.

The baba ghanoush in particular is amazing, with a really deep smoky flavor.  Plus they gave me extra grape leaves for free.  Huzzah!

Then on Saturday we went to the Cooke Street Carnival, which was sort of underwhelming overall, but the main point of going for me was to sample The Fiction Kitchen's vegan barbecue.  They have been holding vegan brunches and serving their BBQ at events for the last few years but now they are about to open a restaurant. !!  This is completely amazing news, as Raleigh has precisely zero vegetarian restaurants, except for the odd Indian place or something like that.

We both got the BBQ sandwich, which was served with an apple cilantro cabbage slaw.  It was GOOD.  This picture is not good, but I am posting it anyway.  You can see some hipsters in the background.

I plan on spending a lot of time (and money) at Fiction Kitchen in the next few months so STAY TUNED.