Gentle Gourmet Cafe (and more...) @ Paris

How can we miss croissant in France? I found the BEST vegan croissant! A MUST-try in Paris!!

Gentle Gourmet Cafe is a fine dining vegan restaurant in the 12th district of Paris. I went there for a French breakfast. It's better to make a reservation a day before even for breakfast. The cafe opens at 8am. I was there at 8.15am, but it wasn't ready. Luckily, they let me in and waited.

I was very hungry and the kitchen was still warming up. I decided to order something quick: croissant and a cup of coffee with heavy cream =]

The croissant really surprised me. A vegan croissant is difficult to make well, as it requires a lot of butter to give the layering and fluffiness and the pleasant smell. Usually vegetable margarine can't replace it well, but this one has almost the same taste as a normal croissant!!

Plus it had a blink blink surface, which is usually a brush of egg. I guess it was a brush of soya milk and sugar mixture (learned in the vegan dessert class, write about that later).

A chocolate dip came separate. It tasted so much like nutexxx!! That's a bonus to me.

The coffee is good as well, and I was very satisfied with the heavy cream on it. It was smooth and light sweet.

The cafe was serving a late summer menu. Half an hour later my full breakfast came to the table. I ordered a creamy scramble tofu with baguette.

The ingredients in the scramble tofu was a perfect match: smoked vegan ham, mushrooms, shallots and asparagus. Especially the asparagus made a well balance with the  sauce. One fresh and light, one creamy and heavy. The smoked vegan ham was firm tofu strips actually. If you expected something resembles ham, that might be a bit disappointing. I'm a big fan of tofu products, so again that was a bonus for me! The baguette was herbed rather that just plain.



The meal was quite cosy, but imagine how many times you can try a vegan croissant! At least chill for an hour or two with a coffee and the vegan croissant there!!

I had a nice Italian pizza and ice-cream... Check the ice-cream store and you may be surprised how many vegan flavour they had... the one I went had 6~7! The pizza was a take-away near the Sacre Coeur. Simply order a vegetarian pizza without cheese, then it turns into a vegan pizza =] The ingredients were abundant: aubergine, olives, tomato, mushrooms, pepper, etc. The pizza was baked fresh after the order. The base was a medium.

Country Life @ Prague

For the three days I stayed in Prague I relied on Country Life and Loving Hut. Since I don't know the language, it was quite hard to discover some other veggie restaurant/ cafe by accident.

Both of serves vegan buffet, which was paid by weight. As I remembered, it's around 30Kč /100g in County Life and 23Kč /100g in Loving Hut. However, County Life provides happy hour discount after 3pm. Large plate costs 139Kč and a bowl costs 90Kč. They were both good =] Especially in Country Life, I had the chance to try a traditional Czech dessert - Makový závin (Poppy seed roll). I loved it so much! The texture was bread-cake like, which rich filling of poppy seed. Poppy seeds are used as a decoration in bakery in West Europe, but here it's a main ingredient for many dishes.

The menu in Country Life changes daily, especially for the dessert, it's only by luck to get the desire one. They usually make a few, and as long as it's sold out, you'll have to wait tomorrow or a few days later......


For the main course, as you can see I grabbed a bit of ten (or more) items: chili, tempeh, cuscus, salad, germinated brown rice, etc. They also sell sandwiches and burgers and take away sweeties etc in the health store next door. And there's a small store for vegan cosmetic and skin products!

Don't miss the peanut butter bagel in Bohemia Bagel if you're a peanut butter (crazy) person (like me). The peanut butter was homemade, very smooth and creamy with a lit bit of chunky peanuts inside. I finished the whole dip even there was no bread at the end! Just use the fork to eat it directly =p

牛角包

自從三年前學過做牛角包後，就立下決心不要再吃牛角包。那種一絲絲的口感原來是靠大量牛油做出來的，普通超級市場買到的一磚紙包牛油只夠做幾個牛角包O.O
太肥啦。

但自從上星期在鎮上那間有機店發現一款純素牛角包之後，就一直忘不掉它～前幾日忍不住買了一個！

牛角包切開一半，灑上碎朱古力，放入焗爐待朱古力熔化，再塗上自家製花生醬，做下午茶最好不過 =]
無蛋無奶的牛角包沒有記憶中的酥香、稍硬，但仍有一絲絲的口感。不錯喔～
（P.S. 原來那間有機店有賣豆腐雪糕！）