Reviewin' shit, vol. 1: Cafe Natasha's Tuesday night hummus bar

Cost: $8 (Lisa says it's $8 -- I thought it was $10)

Where: Cafe Natasha's at 3200 S. Grand Blvd in south city.

Review: This is one of the better regular vegan friendly eating extravaganzas in the city. (Okay, I was having trouble coming up with that right noun, and extravaganza might be a little, well, extravagant, but I'm too lazy to use a thesaurus right now. So deal.)

There is a bit of irony here though. The hummus on this hummus bar kind of sucks. It's bland; nothing but empty calories. But everything else on this buffet does not suck. Not only that, but each time I have gone there everything on it was vegan!

Natasha's has the best falafel in the city. Al-Tarboush on the Delmar Loop is good, but Natasha's is slightly better (not to mention a much cleaner establishment; not even the cute Lebanese chicks in Al-Tarboush make up for the roaches you share your table with). The falafel here is seriously amazing. It's a little spicy though -- I like that but some of you don't. It's not super spicy but it is noticeable. Fair warning.

There are also some awesome sides. They have a sauted mushroom side that is really impressive. It's hard to describe what it tastes like -- sort of like a curry I guess -- but it's really good. They also have seared garlic chucks (I've never seen garlic cooked like this before, but it works), sauted peppers, and as many thin pita pieces as you want.

I've had this three times, and my impressive is overall quite favorable. The service is a little slow at times, but really friendly and overall not bad. The atmosphere is busy, but not rushed -- pretty much quintessential South Grand.

My suggestion for improvement (this is where I come off as the complaining asshole who is compensating for his small penis) would be (if anyone actually read this blog) to either change the name to a falafel bar or make the hummus good. They seriously need a new hummus recipe. And the music they occasionally have in there is not entertaining or contributing to the ambiance; it's annoying and makes it where you can't even talk to the person next to you.

All in all though, I don't have much in the way of complaints. I like this place, the staff and the owner (named, oddly enough, Natasha) are great, the atmosphere is awesome, and the food is, on the whole, quite good.

Overall grade: B+

TLDR version: it's pretty good and you should probably try it. The falafel is awesome, as are some of the other sides; the hummus, not so much.

This week in stuff (linkz)

Okay, I should probably do a regular weekly segment of some sort, where I link you, the unwashed masses (and in some cases I mean that literally), to cool stuff, both veggie and not veggie related.

Here is a cool article on the cultural change possibly coming about in this country regarding people going veggie. I hope this keeps up.

Here's an article I found about McDonald's food not being biodegradable. I'm fucking serious; it's literally not biodegradable. Okay, now I'm not one of those health nut vegans (here's proof: I love these things), but Sweet Baby Jesus, I like what I put in my body to at least be able to return to the Earth!

I should try to promote the St. Louis Vegetarian Meetup page; there's been a lot of cool stuff going on there lately. Recently, I've met some really cool people there. If you have not checked it out then you probably should.

And in the shameless self-promotion department, here is a somewhat pathetic attempt at comedy writing by your's truly. If you know anything about college football hopefully you can appreciate this. If not, perhaps you will find it amusing anyway. Or pathetic. Whichever doesn't get me laid.

I miss Vegifide

Two years ago, or there about, marked the beginning of the end of the greatest online vegetarian community there ever was. That place was Vegifide.com. Vegifide exemplified everything that was good and bad about vegetarians – from selfless compassion and logically-derived moral positions, to smug self-righteousness and espousals of batshit insane conspiracy theories. People didn’t always get along on that site. We argued, and sometimes things got heated. We also shared ideas, recipes, offered support to each other, and fostered true, genuine friendships. It was a true community. Now people don’t always get along in a community, but in a way that’s what makes it good – that freedom of interaction allows for conflict, but also allows for genuine and honest interaction.

If it weren’t for Vegifide, I very likely never would have gone vegan. Communicating with so many vegetarians made it impossible for me to continue to ignore the truths of animal cruelty endemic in the dairy and egg industries. Several aspiring vegetarians also joined that site and participated to get information and support. This is one reason that the community was so great – we shared information that allowed people to take steps forward on the path of vegetarianism at all different levels. Vegifide, on the whole, influenced a lot of people for the better.

Vegifide also had a HUGE St. Louis presence. I have met some of my best friends from there, people who I hang out with drinking, eating meals, watching football, etc, to this day. (I also met the person who ripped my heart out from there. Can’t win ‘em all I guess!) I don’t want to give the impression that this was only a St. Louis thing – it just so happens that a disproportionate amount of people were from here. Users from all over, from the Pacific Northwest to the UK, were active members of this community.

Vegifide still exists. Technically. I don’t have an account there; I was kicked off, along with several other prominent members in an incident that I won’t get in to too much, other than to say that some users, including me, took exception to some actions taken by the owner. We (the banished members) have our side of the story, and I’m sure the guy that runs (ran?) Vegifide has his. I feel pretty strongly that I was not in the wrong in this situation, and to the owner’s credit, he did offer a full, unconditional and (what I took to be) sincere apology for his actions regarding the mass banning. He welcomed us all back; none of us took him up on it. And it was too late anyway; the damage had been done.

From then on, Vegifide died a very slow, very ugly death. In the following months users steadily stopped coming to the site. The banned users made their “home” on another site (that’s now pretty much dead as well). It was never the same. No vegetarian site that I know of, before or since, has compared to Vegifide. There’s Volentia, and VeggieBoards, but neither are even in the same league.

As I said, Vegifide still exists, but only technically. There was a “hiatus” that lasted several months, and a few months ago the site came back online. I went there today. The last five posts on that site were all trying to sell term papers. That right, the most active current members of Vegifide are spammers for online papermills catering to stupid and unethical college kids. Yeah, the house is still standing, but the yard is completely overgrown, most of the windows have been busted out by kids throwing rocks, and the only people living there are squatters with a heroin addiction. This isn’t the kind of dignified death Vegifide deserves.

My friend Carl has flirted with the idea of helping create a new site, but he has these silly little trivial distractions like a wife, kids, and a mortgage that apparently are more important to him. (Some people just can’t get their priorities straight!) I would love to be involved with something new like that, recruit the old members of Vegifide (the ones I liked at least), and “get the band back together.” I want to recapture what probably can never be recaptured. So I will keep looking. And hoping. But I’m not really expecting anything.

I won’t lie: in the months that passed aftervthe mass banning, watching Vegifide die gave me a certain sense of cruel satisfaction. “Yeah, that motherfucker deserves it,” was my attitude. That was petty of me; again, if it weren’t for Vegifide I might not be vegan right now. I truly believe that Vegifide made the world a better place, as it helped lots of people transition to vegetarianism or veganism. Therefore, considering this, in my opinion the creation of Vegifide was an act of animal rights activism much greater than anything I have ever done. That place was special. And I miss it.

When the schadenfreude wears off, all that’s left is regret.