Caffe Pascucci, Piazza Trattati di Roma, 1, Savignano del Rubicone, Italy
From the outside this looks like another typical café/ bar in Italy – it has the kind of smart, stylish understated elegance that citizens take for granted. It is in a run of the mill location, situated in the Savignano sul Rubicone shopping mall near the small coastal town of Cesenatico.
The green plant logo is the only thing that gives a clue that this is something different. Caffe Pascucci is the first 100% vegan bar in Italy! Three cheers for them! It officially opened in September this year and hopefully will give others the courage to follow suit.
A lot of restaurants, shops and cafés are responding to the rising number of customers seeking humane alternatives to the standard carnivore diet. These, however, only take a half way house approach by providing veggie friendly food without entirely sacrificing the ubiquitous ham and salami options.
After 17 years of living in Emilia-Romagna, it is a relief to finally find a place where there are no such compromises. All the drinks, snacks and light lunches at Pascucci are unapologetically 100% vegan. Continue reading →
At the age of 30, Seth Hayhurst was beginning to show the onset of middle age spread but could not by any stretch of the imagination be called obese.
Actually, you would say that he looked in pretty good physical shape. Mentally, however, was another story.
He’d gone through a messy divorce and ,although now in a good relationship, he realized he had ‘anger issues’ and attitude problems that needed to be addressed. He declares that he wanted “to be shiny again”.
Above all, he felt his life was slipping into a mundane pattern in which he was destined to become just another average American with declining health and lower energy levels.
In the introduction to this documentary, directed by his brother Daniel, he says: “I looked in the mirror and saw complacency. I saw a man settling into normalcy ……so, I could just fall in line with the rest of the people on the assembly line of commonplace OR ….. I could make a push at my limitless potential. I could try to reset my intelligently designed body to heal itself!”
His radical solution is to ditch fatty meat orientated fast foods and embark on a 60 day raw vegan diet. Seeing how others who ate like this looked vibrant and alive convinced him that this was the life changing, clean living alternative he was looking for.
This weekend was the 4th edition of the Veg Fest near my home town of Cesena in Emilia Romagna. This has been an annual event for the past five years (one year was skipped as the original venue fell through).
For the past two years the festival has been held at Parco Fellini in Gambettola, a small town situated midway between Cesena and Rimini.
The organisers are the local group Lega Anti Vivisezione (LAV) whose broad goal is to promote Vegetarianism/Veganism as a more humane lifestyle choice.
I attend as one of the converted, having been a vegetarian for almost 40 years now. These days, I count myself more as a demi-vegan. To fall short of being a full-on vegan as this would mean the stiff challenge of foregoing most beers, wines, cheeses, cappuccino, dairy ice cream etc. etc. I’m working on it!
It is interesting to note the social changes over the past five years using this Veg Fest as a subjective indicator of some subtle ways in which attitudes are shifting. Continue reading →
ICELAND, DEFROSTED by Edward Hancox (SilverWood Books, 2013
If I was commissioning a book about Iceland, I would want something that was more than a standard check list of places to visit and things to do.
I’d want a book that told me exactly why this small duck-shaped country is so unique, stunningly beautiful and how it comes to be blessed with the knack of producing so many stunning musicians.
And lo and behold, I don’t need to commission anything because Edward Hancox has just published almost exactly the book I’ve been looking for. The book was crowdfunded through kickstarter and hit the target in just six days, as clear an indication as any that I am not the only one looking for a book on this topic.
To further demonstrate that he and I were on the same wavelength, I had just written a review of the album by Samaris (yet another great new band from Reykjavik) and then found that Hancox had published an interview with the teenage trio on his website.
As if this wasn’t enough, he is also, like me, from the English Midlands – Shropshire to be precise (I’m from Lichfield in Staffordshire).
Being in his early 30s, Hancox is more than 20 years younger than me but, heck, you’re only as young as you feel, anyway, right?
‘Heck’, by the way, derives from Icelandic and one of the authors favourite crossover words ; another is berserk. I didn’t know the etymology of either – geyser was the only Icelandic word I thought I knew.
The book begins in Reykjavik and then follows the author as he takes us on a circuitous route around the rest of the country. We follow him being awestruck by glaciers that still cover 11% of Iceland’s surface, keeping a safe distance from some of the thirty one active volcanoes and taking frequent stop-offs in the hot pots, luxuriating in the numerous naturally heated pools. Throughout, he nurtures a dream of one day witnessing the elusive Northern Lights.
There’s clearly plenty in Iceland to satisfy the most discerning sightseer, but the recurring message of the book is that it is warmth and hospitality of the people that keeps him coming back for more. While the first impression is that the locals may be that they are aloof and unfriendly, the opposite turns out to be the case once the frosty exterior is defrosted.
I was curious to read about the bars and restaurants on the island and was pleased to learn that there is something akin to a religious devotion to strong coffee among the locals. The home-brewed beer also sounds spectacular and I have no reason to doubt that the author’s enthusiasm for skyr, a creamy yoghurt, is wholly justified. This, together with the popularity of rhubarb, means that on the drinks and desserts front ,at least, everything on the island seems hunky dory.
But when it comes to the main courses we are presented with horrific cuisine which sounds like something out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Hancox lists delicacies (!) like lamb’s tongue, sheep’s head, seal’s flippers, puffin’s heart and he samples hákarl (fermented shark), a dish that even too grotesque for many Islandic people.
You wouldn’t catch Jonsi & Alex eating a reindeer!
As a vegetarian, I find it irritating that Hancox never once considers not eating meat and fish as a possibility even though this horrific diet is enough to turn the stomach of the most fervent carnivore. The most un-veggie passages come when he is won over by the beauty of the reindeer and shocked that some farmers treat them roughly; “How anyone could treat that creature with such cruelty and barbarity is beyond me!” he remarks but, three pages later, he is tucking into a meal of cooked reindeer commenting how delicious it tastes!
Since his devotion to Iceland began with a love of the music of Sigur Rós, maybe he should take watch Jónsi & Alex’s vegan recipe show to make him more aware that tastier, and more humane, culinary alternatives exist.
These foodie quibbles aside, There’s a lot of love in this book and a lot to love about it.
What started out as an adventure to travel to Iceland has, by the author’s own admission, become nothing short of an obsession and he communicates this with real wit and charm.
I would throughly recommend this book which has stoked my enthusiasm for making my first visit to Iceland next year.
It’s perhaps understandable that many vegan books and cooking classes focus mainly on the nutritional aspects on the diet.
Above all, they aim to convince doubters that you can still eat (and live) ethically and healthily after cutting out animal-based products.
The fact that this lifestyle requires a lot of self-discipline means that many regard practitioners as the dietary equivalent of flagellants; deliberately torturing themselves because of their radical beliefs.
All the more important therefore to show that vegans recognise the importance of comfort food; something you eat primarily with pleasure in mind.
This is why in the inaugural cake competition held at the village of Sorrivioli di Roncofreddo near Cesena in Emilia-Romagna was such a welcome event. Continue reading →
It’s perhaps understandable that many vegan books and cooking classes focus mainly on the nutritional aspects on the diet.
importance of comfort food; something you eat primarily with pleasure in mind.
