Monday, November 27, 2017

Road Trip! Oracle Arena in Oakland

Personally, I'm a Sacramento Kings fan. But when your parents, who are Golden State Warriors fans, are celebrating their 65th anniversary, you just have to drive down to Oracle Arena in Oakland and cheer for the Warriors!


I don't know what your experience has been, but I always find it difficult to locate vegan options among all the food concessions at ball parks and arenas. So I decided to do a little online research before heading to Oracle Arena over the weekend. I found a 2013 blog post from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which listed Oracle as one of the top ten vegetarian-friendly NBA arenas.


Well, maybe, but that doesn't mean it's easy to find the food items they listed in the blog post, since they don't say which concessions actually offer these vegan dishes. After comparing the items mentioned in the blog with the food maps on the arena's website, I decided that I had a reasonably good chance of finding the "Vietnamese ginger-garlic tofu sandwich" at the banh mi sandwich cart near Section 122. And that's exactly where it was!




It was a good, hearty sandwich, and they certainly didn't skimp on the tofu. I can't swear to it, but I think they used Hodo Soy Five-Spice Tofu Nuggets, which I keep in my refrigerator for snacking purposes.




The PETA blog post said tofu lettuce wraps and a Vietnamese noodle salad were also available at Oracle, but I couldn't begin to guess which concession stands would have those items. There's a Kaiser Permanente Healthy Picks stand too, which carries pre-packaged salads, but I didn't think anything there would be as interesting as the tofu banh mi, so I didn't check it out. If you're interested, though, the map says it's near Section 127.


Maybe we can help each other out here. If you're aware of other vegan options at Oracle Arena, please list them in the comments section so that other vegans will be able to find something to eat while they cheer on their favorite team or watch their favorite performance artists. They'll be glad you did!


Monday, November 20, 2017

33rd Street Bistro

Sorry to have dropped off the face of the earth for the past month or so. I've been having some issues with vertigo that made a low-sodium diet necessary and I'm still trying to adjust to that. In addition, I was traveling for a couple of weeks. At any rate, I'll do my best to get back to a weekly blog schedule, vertigo permitting.


This week, I visited a restaurant that I stopped going to when I went vegan more than fifteen years ago -- 33rd Street Bistro in East Sacramento. I used to love having lunch there, but after I went vegan, I discovered they had nothing on their menu that I could eat. That changed recently when they began offering the Impossible Burger, one of the new generation of veggie burgers that's supposed to  look and taste like the real thing.


My friends Cathy and Genevieve went with me to 33rd Street Bistro a few days ago so I could check it out. I'm a huge fan of the Beyond Burger that's available at Broderick Roadhouse these days, and I couldn't imagine that the Impossible Burger would be able to compare with that. I was wrong. I loved the Impossible Burger, at least as much as the Beyond Burger. For starters, it doesn't have that pink center that kind of creeps me out when I eat a Beyond Burger. And it looks and tastes exactly like the burgers I remember from my pre-vegan days. Really, the only complaint I had about this burger was that 33rd Street Bistro hasn't taken the extra step yet to provide a vegan cheese option. If they ever do that, I'll be heading back over there for lunch regularly again, just like in the old days.



33rd Street Bistro is located at 3301 Folsom Boulevard, and their phone number is 916-455-2233. Their website address is http://www.33rdstreetbistro.com/, and their Facebook page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/33rdStreetBistro/. The restaurant is open Sunday through Wednesday from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., and Thursday through Saturday from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.