Among all the turkey legs and gyro meat spinning six feet in the air, there are some vegetarian and vegan meals to be found among the Musikfest vendors.
This this is in no way comprehensive – you can find fried things all over the place so I didn’t highlight the obvious stuff (french fries).
Overall, I found that the areas that have the most veg-friendly food are Broad Street around the Boyd Theatre, Main Street, and the area down the hill right behind Hotel Bethlehem. Once you’re down the hill but start moving under the bridge toward Plaza Tropical, you’re options get limited to mostly aforementioned fried things.
**As of the time of this post, I haven’t been in the kid’s area or to the vendors around the back of it, so I’ll check that out soon. In the mean time, if there’s something great over there that I’m missing, please let me know!
On Broad Street, there is Hello Burrito open for business as usual (look for the guy at front handing out 10% off coupons!). Most burritos start vegetarian, and can be made vegan upon request. Something new is Istanbul Grille, mediterranean food that is very inexpensive: grape leaves 2/$1.00, falafel, etc… And it looks like a brick-and-mortar restaurant is coming soon.
Istanbul Grille, Broad Street
Main Street has a good amount of offerings, as all the usual restaurants are open, plus a lot of food stands. The Tiki Bar is hard to miss with it’s bright decorations. Here you can find almost 20 different kinds of fresh smoothies, as well as soft pretzels. (*Ask for pretzels to be made without butter. They can do it for you no problem, especially when there isn’t s huge line of people.)
Tiki Bar, Main Street
Across from that, Stations has a stand set up for their organic soft pretzels that are VERY TASTY. They have a brick-and-mortar business in the Main Street Commons, and will also be vending at VegFest. Show some support!
Stations, Main Street
Keep an eye on Main Street for Take-A-Taco, serving vegetarian quesadillas (and I’m sure they’d leave the cheese out if asked). In front of Johnny’s Bagels you’ll find veg*n gyros, veggie burgers (not sure if these are vegan), and falafel.
Thai Thai II, one of my favorite local restaurants, also has vendor food in front of their place on Main Street. EVERYTHING they are serving is vegetarian. I stupidly forgot to ask if their food includes eggs, so I don’t know if it’s vegan or not. I’m hoping so, because nothing is over $5 (cash only, no tickets here) and they have pad thai and drunken noodles. I LOVE DRUNKEN NOODLES. SO MUCH. (They don’t actually have alcohol in them for my straight edge buds.) Also spring rolls and edamame.
Thai Thai II, Main Street
YUM.
Don’t miss the little gem hiding at the Sun Inn Courtyard, just off Main Street. There you’ll find the always pleasant and wonderful Gail of The Back Door Bakeshop with her awesome vegan black bean brownies! She’s great, local, and cooking up some new vegan recipes in time for VegFest. If you’re really lucky, the fabulous Dina Hall will be there too when she’s not playing a show.
Thanks for feeding us, Gail!
Once you get down the hill behind the Hotel Bethlehem, stay to the right if you’re hungry. You’ll find the vendor offering pickle on a stick (not fried), which is a mere dollar but the pickles are tiny. It’s still fun to eat them off a stick, though.
What may arguably be one of the other biggest veg-food saviors of Musikfest is Alando’s Kenyan Cuisine, just look for the giant zebra. While their restaurant on Main Street is open during Musikfest, at their booth you can pick up some awesome lentil samosas (make sure you get the spicy pili pili sauce on the side!), and vegetable masala wraps (ask for no Ranch dressing).
Alando's Kenyan food
Stroll around and you’ll also find Chan’s chinese food, with veggie lo mein. There’s also a Greek Food stand with grape leaves, a hummus platter, and spinach pies (not sure if they have cheese or not).
Greek Food
If you get over to Steelstacks, there is a bright shiny star of food stands on that campus too. Cactus Blue mexican food is very vegetarian and vegan friendly. And more than that, it’s really important to them to be a veg-destination. One of the owners, Liz, is one of my former college professors. She told a story about her vegetarian mother having such a hard time finding food as Liz was growing up, people always wanting to give her mom chicken or fish as a “vegetarian” dish. So when Cactus Blue opened their restaurant, they made sure that everything (except a blatant meat dish) could be made vegetarian or vegan.
Cactus Blue Mexican Food, Steelstacks
Beans and rice are free of animal products and broth, and they have yummy fresh salsa and my favorite, a variety of hot sauces to use. You can get this tasty plate of rice and beans for $5 worth of tickets.
Cactus Blue dinner, $5!
Any idea about fish sauce in the Thai…ate there once was told no but could taste and smell it?
Susan, when I ate at Thai Thai, they did leave the fish sauce out by request. It normally contains it (as do most pad thais), but they happily left that and the egg out. As for your experience, I can’t say, but that seems odd that it would smell and taste like it. . .
Yeah, I mean I always order everything from the Vegetarian menu (it has a lot of the food from the other part of the menu, but no fish sauce is a given), so that’s actually a good point. I will try to get more info on this assuming I’ll be there in the next dat or two, but certainly let us know if you hear something first! 🙂
I would love to try some of the greek food
Awww man! I’m practically always at plaza trop, so I don’t have time to get up and actually get good food on main or broad. BOO!
I think the red beans & rice at the jamaican place in volks is OK though… at least I hope so anyway, because I was wayyyyy too exhausted to ask details today and had it anyway. I did ask if it was vegetarian and he said yes, and I know I’ve had it in the past.
Spinach pies do have cheese (my mom really likes them).
PS – thank you so so much for this post!!! xox
Oh I didn’t know about the Jamaican place, pretty good? I need to go now and actually eat everything, haha.
Yeah, it’s good!
This is great. I certainly appreciate the time and energy taken to such a thorough food overview. You need to have your own cooking show.
I’m working at the little kid area, mac and cheese is awesome they make it fresh everyday and it’s cheap too! The melting pot stand at plaza tropical has PHENOMENAL Tostones! I definitely need to scope out those vegan gyros, everyone is taunting me with their gyro fever!
The black beans and rice at Cactus Blue is very good and at $5 for a full plate is very satisfying. The picture shows salsa. I wish I had asked for it.
Pingback: LINKS TO LOVE: Vegan Musikfest + Floating Away | Save the Kales!
My brother suggested I might like this blog. He was totally right.
This post truly made my day. You can not imagine simply how much
time I had spent for this info! Thanks!
Wonderful, I’m glad it could help! 🙂 Thanks for stopping by.