Sticky Fingers Bakery’s vegan cupcakes will be in plentiful supply at DC VegFest, set for Saturday.The food fest is a chance to try some of the area’s best meat-free fare. (Lavanya Ramanathan/The Washington Post)
This week, All We Can Eat’s Joe Yonan mined the pitfalls of dining while vegetarian, particularly when it’s fast food and no one — diners or restaurants — really wants to get into the nutritional nitty-grity.
The menu at this weekend’s DC VegFest will be considerably more transparent; the food festival is, as the name suggests, meat-free (yup, fish-sauce free, too). There will be curries and cupcakes, injera, stromboli and nachos. But between the 19 vendors, from Amsterdam Falafelshop to the Fojol Bros. to the new Burrito Bandits, there won’t be an animal product in sight: Saturday’s VegFest isn’t just vegetarian. It’s vegan.
Eating is a major component of the festival, of course, and the mission of the event includes opening the minds of veg-curious omnivores. To that end, lots of speakers will expound on the health benefits of vegetarianism and the tricks of vegan cooking (a highlight may be Isa Chandra Moskowitz, creator of the ground-breaking vegan cooking show “The Post Punk Kitchen). And if that doesn’t work, one bite of Sticky Fingers’ new peanut-butter pie — a butter-free, milk-free, egg-free sugarbomb -- will.
Organizers Compassion Over Killing and the Vegetarian Society of DC are making a few changes this year, including adding more vendors to accomodate the growing crowds and extending the fest one hour (it now runs from 11 a.m.-6 p.m.). The dishes will also be smaller and priced more gently — between $4 and $6 -- so festival-goers can sample more. As always, there will be free samples from popular national veggie brands such as Gardein.
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And submit your favorite D.C. veggie dish now for our search for the area’s most essential dishes.
