A Day in Red Bank

Over the weekend, Dennis and I decided to take a mini-trip to Red Bank. It's become quite vegan friendly lately, and we wanted to sample some of the local treats. 

We started with lunch at Good Karma Cafe. We ate there with our friends Jessica and Greg a few months ago and wanted to try more of their dishes.

We started out with raw nachos.

I had the Love Bowl with tempeh and spicy peanut sauce.

Look at how good that peanut sauce looks! The love bowl is available with either tofu or tempeh and with your choice of either Thai coconut, spicy peanut or sweet mustard sauce.

Dennis had the veggie burger with tempeh bacon and cheesy sauce.

After lunch we went over to NovelTeas, which is a really cute tea shop. Papa Ganache, a local vegan bakery, just opened a stand inside NovelTeas, and Jessica happened to be working there when we went in!

Look at all of those yummy vegan treats! There were quite a few gluten-free options.

I had a mini pumpkin cupcake.

Dennis had a cheesecake cookie.

We split a pot of Paris tea. It was really, really good! I wish we had bought some to take home with us.

Even their tea cups are cute!

They have special "man cups" for guys so they don't have to drink out of frilly flowery tea cups.

For dinner, we went to Pizza Fusion. They have vegan and gluten-free options. Our waitress was vegan, so we knew we didn't have to worry about the order getting messed up.

The gluten-free crust was a little chewy, but I didn't mind it because the pizza was really good. However, it was $6 extra for the gluten-free crust, and $2 for each additional topping. We added spinach and olives, and as you can see from the photo, that's definitely not $2 worth of spinach. I don't think the pizza was really worth the extra $10.

We brought some goodies home with us too. A giant chocolate chip cookie, a mini pumpkin cupcake and two cheesecake cookies from Papa Ganache.

Gluten-free cookies, pumpkin cheesecake, a tiramisu cup, raw crackers and raw Dr. Cow's cheese from Good Karma Cafe. None of these goodies lasted very long in our house!


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Good Karma Cafe

There used to be a really great vegan restaurant in Red Bank, NJ called Down To Earth. Red Bank is about an hour south of here, so sometimes Dennis and I would drive down and spend the day there. We would have lunch at Down To Earth, walk around town, spend some time in antique shops, visit the water front, and then go back to Down To Earth for dinner. Sadly, they closed about three years ago and left both of us heartbroken and hungry. The owners put out a cookbook called You Won't Believe It's Vegan with many of the Down To Earth recipes, but making them myself in my own kitchen just isn't the same.

I was quite excited when I found out that Red Bank has a new vegan restaurant called Good Karma Cafe a few weeks ago. I was even more excited when my friend Jessica told me that it was the same owners as Down To Earth!

So on Friday evening, Dennis and I drove to Jessica's house and then headed over to Red Bank with her and her boyfriend Greg. They live close by and have eaten there several times already. The restaurant is tiny and we had to wait about 15 minutes for a table, but it was worth it!

To start, we had two orders of nachos - raw and "cooked". The waiter put the Queso and Nacho Chips in front of Greg and Dennis and the Live Nachos in front of Jessica and I, so the boys ate most of the Queso nachos and we ate most of the Live ones. The Queso dip tasted like nutritional yeast, which is good, because I love nutritional yeast!

The Live nachos were delicious. There was cashew sour cream, sunflower seed taco "meat", guacamole, lettuce and tomatoes. My only problem with this dish was that it wasn't larger!

I ordered a raw dish called Whole Lot of Love. I think they named it that to make ordering awkward. "What can I get you?" "Um, I'd like a Whole Lot of Love, please." I was a little disappointed in the size of the dish, but it was really good. It consisted of buckwheat flax bread, kale chips, sunflower cheese and shredded veggies. I just wish it had been bigger!

Dennis had the Barbeque Tempeh Wrap.

Greg had Live Lasagna.

Jessica had the Indian Plate. I had a piece of the tofu, which was soooo good!

Since I was still a little hungry, I decided I should have dessert too. I had the raw Mint Cacao cup. It was really filling and I wasn't able to finish it. Jessica and Greg had one too.

Dennis had the Tiramisu cup.

The food at Good Karma Cafe was delicious and it was well worth the drive. We had a great time and ate good food with amazing friends! Who can ask for more?


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