We on a food tour #2

Salt Lake City Utah

Vertical Diner

So...the exploratory committee first wave occupational unit (the 3/4th of Seas Will Rise currently out posted somewhere between Salt Lake City and Idaho Falls Idaho) took this food tour blog to a level worthy of a zagats reviewer. If that zagats reviewer was a 30 something unwashed dude fueled by coffee and the call of the wild. What I am getting at here is the level of food that was dispatched to the western front was ridiculous

Incredibly quick pre amble, Vertical Diner got a top ten faux chicken on 2009 from PETA magazine. The restaurant is 100 percent vegetarian and buys local and organic ingredients whenever possible. I can get on board with all of this. And a quick once over of the menu, place looks priced about right. Lets see the goods:

Eric had a jerk Chicken burrito

I am assuming its tasty, the potato's look good. Quick tangent about vegetarian faux meat dishes. At least in my experience, eating faux meat entrees is like a 3 times a month ordeal, vegetarians aren't sitting around wishing they can eat a chicken sandwich everyday. So, like when you have a coca cola (Mexican, cane sugar uber alles) once a month, so when you do drink it, it is amazingly good as opposed to a steady diet of modified high fructose corn syrup all day every day. Same with faux meat, its breaks up the monotony and adds some spice to life, but is not an essential diet staple.

Another quick tangent, look at the cultures that have the "best" vegetarian foods: Hispanic, Asian: Indian/Thai/Chinese. These cultures diets are not focused around the plentifulness of meat. Look at Mexico, traditionally, beef was not available, ever. Sometimes pork was, but mostly chicken, if there was any meat at all. Thus the need to develop making "boring" fruits and veggies taste great. If your diet is mostly corn, beans and tomato, then you best make those ingredients taste amazing. Same flys for the asian cultures only add religious sentiments.

David had the american dinner

According to the menu: Choice of hand cut fries, mashed potatoes or hashbrowns smothered with gravy topped with fried chicken. As a person who never really thought about making gravy, it was always a meat eaters thing, until I recently started making gravy based dishes, I am shitting My pants while simultaneous high fiving the air. This shit sounds tasty and patriotic.

Davey topped it off with this gem. A chocolate peanut butter brownie with homemade chocolate syrup and extra peanut butter. I think that description sums this up.

This is what Chad got, he didn't say what it was but he did say "nom" being he isn't a 13 year old girl or asian anime character I am going to just post a picture and end it at that.

So...moral of the story is, make good food, eat good food, if your an omnivore who choose to eat the meat side of the omni, try some of these type of restaurants out, if your a veggie, frequent places like this, keep them around, especially once that buy local and organic as much as humanly possible, the fate of the world is on your shoulders.

See you in Idaho Falls.