Final Meal in SF at Udipi Palace (VEGAN MOFO: DAY 29)

For my last partial day in San Francisco, my sister and I got lunch at Udipi Palace in the Mission.  People had suggested I go to Dosa a few doors down, but I looked at the menu and they serve fish with the disclaimer that they only serve "sustainably caught" fish.  This is something that will always cause me to avoid a restaurant, because I know for a fact that it is never sustainable to catch wild fish, and I do not appreciate menus spreading misinformation to the public by claiming that their wild-caught fish are not verging on extinction.  So I decided instead to choose Udipi Palace, which is entirely vegetarian and has very few non-vegan menu items, all of which can be made vegan upon request.  Also, in Monroeville, a town neighboring Pittsburgh, there is a vegetarian Indian restaurant called Udipi that people keep raving about, so that gave me a preconceived positive feeling about the place.

We started out with samosas because samosas are, like, the best thing ever.

Oh yeah, samosa-y goodness.  Want to see the inside and wish you were eating samosas right now?  I thought you guys might be into that.



Ali and I both ordered curries.  She got the Chana Masala Curry.

...and I got the Special Veggie Curry.

I'm not sure what exactly made this particular curry so special, but it's my opinion that all decent curries are pretty damn special!  Both of our curries were top-notch, I thought.  I didn't like the little cup of chutney that came with it, but that's no big deal.  I did, however, like the big poofy bread and the flat bread it came with.

I'm back in Pittsburgh now, and it's pretty depressing.  Being in San Francisco filled me with yearning.  I feel like I could do so much better for myself.  It's weird.  I both fit in and stood out in SF.  It was easy to meet people and there was something fun to do every night.  There were more places to eat than I could fit into one week, even though other vegans there expressed disappointment in the vegan options!  That really surprised me.  OK, I agree, every city could do better with vegan accessibility, and I would love it if I could figure out ways to make veganism more common and accessible to everyone everywhere, but compared to Pittsburgh, SF was vegan heaven. 

Still, I have vegan heaven in my own kitchen every day!  Maybe people over in SF are doomed to cook less because of the many, many options.  I wouldn't trade cooking for anything in the world.  It's truly my greatest pleasure on Earth to cook good food, especially if someone wants to come over and share my enjoyment with me.

I only bought one item in SF to bring back with me.  It was this jar of salsa from the restaurant Papalote that folks said was good. 

It seems really thin to me, but I'm excited to try it out.  Right on their web site, they have a quote from USA Today saying that "It may be the greatest salsa the world has ever known."  Not that USA Today is the most trustworthy source or anything, but WHOA.  That's a serious endorsement.