Week 4 - Hogtown Vegan

The Hogtown Vegan - Bloor & Ossington

Welcome to Week 4 of The Lazy Vegan Challenge Blog! I apologize for the late entry as I got really sick last week and had to postpone my blog :(

However this past Sunday of January 27th, I had the privilege of dining in at my featured vegan restaurant with a few of my peers who are also doing the challenge with me!

It was great because everyone ordered a different dish so there were different tastes and opinions going around the table.

The restaurant we ate at was at "The Hogtown Vegan"  which is on Bloor and Ossington. Their menu is particularly famous for their uniquely prepared entrées in which vegans would ultimately describe as "vegan comfort food". In other words, nostalgically satisfying your taste buds with the flavour of meat. So ironically, their menu includes a "Burger Section" with the unthinkable creative suggestions such as Hogtown Burger, Pulled Unpork Sandwich, Unchicken Burger, and much more.

Southern Combo - $13

The restaurant is small and always packed. We had to wait almost over half an hour to get in. Even late on a Sunday night! The environment felt more of like a super casual "hangout joint", which obviously works with the successful amount of traffic they get.

Once seated. I decided to let my colleagues place their orders first so that I wouldn't get the same dish as anyone else. The waitress had suggested for me to try the Unchicken and Waffles as it was one of their most popular entrées and generally received good ratings. I decided to go for it until one of my colleagues made another suggestion and said to try the Southern Combo if I liked "sweet". The unexpected suggestion from him caused me to agree under pressure and impulse that I didn't even know what I had just ordered.

The Southern Combo was basically the mimic of "chicken strips", really made with breaded, deep-fried soy chicken served with a side of sautéed garlic collard greens, along with their famous mac 'n' "cheese" and their house-made BBQ sauce for the strips. It was good. It definitely tasted like chicken strips. Their mac 'n' "cheese" was good too. That's really all I can say to describe it. I guess I'm not much of one for "comfort food". 

If you had been a meat-eater before becoming vegan and had once enjoyed the taste of chicken meat and mac 'n' (real) cheese and missed that taste, then you definitely would have appreciated this dish more than I did. Or anything else on their menu for that matter. 

Philly "Cheese" Burger with Fries - $12

The photo to the left here is the Philly "Cheese" Burger with a side of their fresh-cut fries. I'll have to admit that I really enjoyed the fries. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it were smothered in their house-made mushroom gravy. If there's any comfort food that I would always appreciate as a vegan, it's "poutine" (fries topped with gravy and curd cheese for the wondering non-Canadians reading this). 

However, if you're one to appreciate the healthier lifestyle, perfectly happy living on greens, and the type to cringe at the thought of meat, then this restaurant is definitely not for you. You really and literally have to miss and appreciate the taste of meat in order to even consider The Hogtown Vegan, as the majority of their entire menu is based on the idea of mimicking that common yet distinct taste. 

Shroom Burger & Side Caesar Salad - $12

There's always the typical healthy option that they offer such as salads and...well just salads. It's nice that they're still considerate for true hard-core vegans (which I am seriously slowly becoming). 

But based on my personal views as a vegan and my personal reason for not being nostalgic for meat, I give them a 4/5, mainly because the dishes weren't that bad and the service was decent enough.

**All photo's are taken by me from my iPhone :)



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