Vegginini’s

^_^

I’m just gonna run like some manic and wild-eyed bull right into this thing…

Geez la-gawd-dang-weez do I hate useless shyt!

I mean…

Yuck, man….

Or yuck, lady…

Or w/e…

Useless shyt just makes me feel physically ill.

To look at it for too long or even only to imagine it for a while makes a sort of ornery bile burble up in my solar plexus and burn in the bottom of my chest…

I start to sweat and my mind thrashes around like a drugged banshee caught in spiritual duress.

I can’t help it.

Looking at all that kind of shyt just gets me down.

It always brings to my mind this little image of our end-times — an infinite steaming coastline of trash shoring in fluorescent plastic swells endlessly under a hot sun.

Maybe your imagined view of the endtimes of this little planet are different from mine — but I bet there’s some fuggin’ trash and smog lolling around somewhere in the scene.

There always is.

Like we all just inherently know that our psychotic desire to accumulate thangs, or shyt if you will, is what’ll do us in.

^_^

I’m sry.

Listen to me…

Ugh!

I can be such a dang downer!

I gotta remind myself all the time…

That it’s important to recognize, understand and appreciate the horrific implications of our senseless human actions and greed, but not to wallow too long in despair about those sour fruits ripening.

In the end, you can either give up or keep trying.

Those are the options.

So fugg it! Let’s give it a shot!

…Gawd, where has my addled mind led me?? I was talking about my hatred of useless shyt!

Yet even as I say all this, a wild silver-thread-embroidered turkish vest made from old green wool hangs in my closet.

It is one of my few possessions. 

And it is completely useless.

I also have an old resin mold of a painted bull charging.

I have Magic: The Gathering cards.

I have books that I never plan to re-read, candy-red ankle boots, a three-foot tall white plaster statue of Venus De Milo wearing jewelry, a purple-framed holographic picture of some old wizard shooting psychic rays at a dragon, and an autographed Wade Boggs card in a thick plastic case. How that Wade Boggs card made it into my possession, I couldn’t really say, yet there it is. 

I can see it from here while I’m sitting and typing.

And in a strange way, it makes me happy.

All of those things do.

And I only bring this up because I guess that I’ve got to relent that I have got a bit of the hypocrite that lives in me.

We all do.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s just important to understand that that hypocrite lives there in our minds and that we must quell the urges of that slick and menacing specter whenever and as often as possible.

And now for the question that we’re all wondering together by this point in our conversations; what’s this got to do with today’s VegHedz write-up?

Well frands, I gotta admit, it’s pretty loose…

I just kinda wanted to say a few thangs about useless shyt, and so I did.

But the tie-in that I was imagining was about all of these useless things being the unnecessary frills of life…

And that it was really refreshing to visit a totally no-frills vegan restaurant like Vegginini’s.

There it is; the tie-in.

On the outside, Vegginini’s looks like some strangely-already-familiar old corner store grocery with walls made from big hunks of cement painted mostly white except for a big and satisfying Vegginini’s mural scrawled on there in the colors of fruits and veggies.

On the inside, it’s dimly lit, warm, and quiet with the only sounds coming from conversations at other tables and from moving pans and chopping knives in the back. There are very few decorations. A sticker with vegetables all over it with the words take your medicine is actually the only decoration I remember seeing. No, I take that back. There was also a metal wall-hang sculpted like Michigan.  This also had words on it, but I can’t remember what they said. Something nice about Michigan, I figure.

In fact, the only real frill I can remember on the inside was, in the back of the restaurant, to the right of where you walk in, there is a series of six or nine monitors all connected to each other — their screens completely blank; presumably busted. What they were intended to show, I couldn’t say — maybe the menu? PSA’s? The Kentucky derby blown up to a frantic magnitude?

Doesn’t matter — they’re all blank now and so they almost blend into the walls unnoticed. So it’s not really as much of a  frill as it is the ghost of a frill that died there some time ago.

There’s no waitstaff — when yr ready with yr order, you just walk up to the register, tell ‘em what you’d like, and pay upfront. 

When yr order’s ready somebody will walk it out
to you.

And when yr done you clear your own trays and stack ‘em on yr way out.

Simple as that.

I love that kind of shyt sometimes. No waiting to be seated, no coursing out the meal into appetizers, soups, drinks, entrees, etc., no waiting around for the bill, and if you want something just go and get it!

I mean it can be fun the other way around too…

I’m just sayin’ here and there the stripped-down approach is what I long for — and here that longing was satiated.

Okie, onto ze food!

WHAT WE ORDERED

Fishless Tacos
These things were hot fire. I don’t mean that they were really spicy, I mean they tasted really good. They were that kind of hot fire. Flakey flash-fried breaded vegan whitefish, fresh mixed greens, juicy tomato, red onion, and a tangy Frank’s-style remoulade w/ a gentle spice bite. Yum dudes.

Large Curry Bowl
The curry broth on this sweet little baby was delicious — aromatic and just-rightly spicy. Spinach, carrots, zucchini, brown rice, and a dollop of a sort-of rich cashew creme that dissolved nicely into and then became one with the bowl. If you order this and eat it, you may also become one with the bowl. I recommend it. I also recommend guzzling the broth at the end. Lawd knows I did.

Chickless Avocado Panini
Another hum-dinger. ^_^. This thang was surprisingly rich — in a good way. Melted vegan chz, avocado, crispy chickless chickun, fresh spinach, and tomato on a perfectly toasted bun. It was served with this yellow sauce which, dang me, I forgot to ask what it was made of; suffice it to say that it almost reminded me of a sort-of benedict sauce which might sound strange, but it doesn’t feel strange when yr dunking yr sandwich into the little black vat of it and sopping it up.

Vegan Chickless Spicy BBQ Entree
Whew! I think this one was my favorite. Thin margin favorite, but favorite none-the-less. A mound of crispy breaded chickless chickun covered in sweet and super tangy red BBQ sauce, curry rice, a little heap of green bean/zucchini medley, and creamy vegan mac n’ chz. If you put tangy BBQ and tasty vegan mac on a plate together the hairs on my arms and neck stand up, a tingle runs down my spine, and my mind contorts into that of a snarling beast which has survived for millennia on BBQ n’ mac by ravaging it at great speeds then slipping off into a century-long slumber only to awake again and repeat the ancient process. Y’know what I mean? ‘Course you do. This dish is a gem.

Well that was that, ma frands!

The deed was done…

The meal was eaten….

My transformation into the wild-eyed bbq n’ mac beast was completed and the subsequent slumber cycle initiated…

Don’t fill yr void w/ useless shyt! Fill that sucka up w/ some Vegginini’s!

Til next time,

Lot’s of love,

Ta-ta,

J

Xoxo

*Quick mention here that you should take yr own silverware. They don’t use silverware there, and so the meals come out with a packaged plastic set. This, of course, is wasteful.

**On another shittier note — while we were looking up Vegginini’s online, we found an article posted by the Metro Times about an employee of Vegginini’s having been fired for making homophobic comments to some guests who are part of the LGBTQ community. To put it plainly, us VegHedz find this sort of shyt to be totally abhorrent. It does appear in the article that a genuine apology was made by Vegginini’s on that employee’s behalf and that the employee who had made those ugly and inhuman remarks has been dealt with. What you’d like to do w that information is up to you — we just felt like this thing couldn’t go ignored. For what it’s worth, we were treated with kindness on our trip there.