Hella Vegan Eats Pop-Up Dinner (VEGAN MOFO: DAY 23)

Last night I went to Hella Vegan Eats Pop-Up Dinner at a bar called Dear Mom.  I guess the idea behind these Pop Up Dinners is that, for one night, a chef or group of chefs will have good food available in a place they don't normally have it.  Luckily for me, the a Pop-Up Dinner by some folks called Hella Vegan Eats was going on while I'm here in San Francisco.  Lucky me!

It was very casual.  You'd go up and order and pay for food, then wait for a really long time for it to be ready and a server would bring it to you according to the card they gave you to put where you're sitting.  I think it just took a long time because, obviously, they don't cook here all the time.

I wanted to order everything on the menu!  I wish I taken pictures of all the things we didn't order because many of them were gorgeous-looking, especially the Jack-O-Lantern Black Death Fried Rice.  Hopefully the internet will come through with a picture of that when I get a chance to look.  I got the Diablito Fritters.

When I ordered this food, I was incredibly hungry.  I had been waiting for my sister to be ready and was putting off eating so I'd be hungry later.  Once we got there, customers didn't get the chance to look at the descriptions on the physical menu until we were actually AT the counter.  By then, I seriously couldn't think about what to get.  I don't even know how I ended up ordering this, but it's probably the least healthy thing on the menu (although that doughnut burger seems like a possibility), but it was really difficult for me to wrap my brain around what all the words meant at that time, and somehow I ended up with Fritters.

They were really good, though.  I didn't take a picture of the inside, but it was ooey-gooey good, and the whole thing was kinda spicy.  My sister didn't like it because it was spicy, and she'd almost ordered it also, but changed her order because I was getting it, so that was lucky.  She got the Deep Fried Witch's Fingers.

They were basically fresh veggie fries with a really tasty curry dipping sauce.  There was asparagus and yams and squash.  Good stuff.  And then I decided to get the dessert for us to share.   It didn't turn out to be a deep-fried candy bar with pumpkin ice cream after all.  Even better.  Instead, it was doughnut holes with pumpkin ice cream!

I should have been using a flash all along, huh?

There is a bit of black in the middle that is the chocolate-cayenne "drizzle" that was described in the menu.  So, OK, it wasn't a drizzle, it was a candy hunk.  Whatever.  My little sister didn't even like it because of the cayenne, so it was better for us that I could eat all of it.  Just the doughnuts and the ice cream would have been enough for me because they were both really yummy.  It was the first time I've ever had a vegan doughnut I didn't make myself.

I felt so heavy after eating all this stuff!  I'm such a wimp now.  Used to be, I could shovel in fried food just like the rest of America.  But eating a meal like this after so long of NOT doing that really felt rough.  Actually, in the middle of writing this entry, I walked to Herbivore and got myself a green juice, because remembering about eating this makes me crave raw veggies!  This food was really yummy, though, and if I had it in Pittsburgh, it would be incredibly tempting to me, like Oreos after you've smoked a bunch of pot.