Quaint daytime eatery puts a little welcomed spice into conscious eating
Mia Stainsby
Sun
At Vancouver’s Land of Green Ginger, Marie Booth serves up some cookies and muffins. Photograph by : Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun
When looking for a bite to eat, vegans can trip over landmines. Watch out for the eggs over there, and yikes, there’s butter in the sauce and chicken broth in the vegetable soup.
At Land of Green Ginger, there are some vegan options amongst the simple vegetarian fare. It’s a tiny little place with an old-fashioned kitchen range behind the counter. Quaint, yes, but it produces some very tasty muffins, including a good selection for vegans; they have crunchy domed tops and nice, moist interiors. Some are made with rice or spelt flour for wheat-sensitive types. The signature muffin is the ginger date with spelt; chocolate chip chai with cardamom, cinnamon and vegan chocolate was good, too.
Marie Booth and Simon Fawkes, who run the small daytime café do a great job with the baking.
There’s a limited number of savouries, mostly in the form of organic rice bowls and wraps (made with rice bowl fillings). They come in small or large ($7 or $8.50) with a side salad. Choices include Mediterranean, Mandalay curry, Mexican, Thai coconut curry, Indonesian, Jamaican jerk and Japanese temple.
Rounding out the savouries, there’s a different soup every day, a quesadilla, pakoras, samosas and a tortilla de patatas (Spanish potato omelette). Majority of offerings are organic and fair trade. Land of Green Ginger opens at 7 a.m. and you can stop for a bowl of organic whole groats that have slow-cooked overnight.
The name Land of Green Ginger was taken from the street upon which Fawkes’s great grandfather’s brokerage firm was located in Hull, England. The younger Fawkes travelled to Thailand and Burma and fell in love with the country, and apparently with Booth, whom he met in the South Pacific. In 2003, they opened a spice importing business and they still sell spices in their shop.
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THE LAND OF GREEN GINGER
2967 West Broadway, 604-737-1588. www.greenginger.ca.
Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. [email protected]
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
