Being Vegan in Victoria, B.C. (Green Cuisine, etc.)

hi Victoria BC on the west coast of
Canada is like a lot of smaller cities in that if you're vegan and you're living here you're going to get very familiar with just a few options again again again the city is unusually affluent as Canadian cities go it's also maybe a little bit older than average in terms of the demographics a lot of people come to retire he's certainly going door to door see a lot of gray-haired people in this city and so it's not the most dynamic or happening places not that I'm complaining just the other day I sat down in a restaurant and I was the youngest person there and given that I'm about 100 years old that's impressive um downtown Victoria BC as you can see in in this footage it's preserved historical architecture this is not going to be impressive if you're watching this in Europe or many places around the world but as Canadian cities go it's actually quite unusual that they've held onto a lot of these small narrow buildings from a hundred years ago most cities in Canada you're barely looking at anything that's older than 1975 in terms of architecture now the disadvantage of that is that many of the restaurants and coffee shops in downtown Victoria they really just don't have much space they're slotted into old buildings that used to be a haberdashery 150 years ago the Market Square which I've been showing you the entrance to here is pretty well known in terms of tourists and local people there's kind of a public space a square if you will where they do have I don't know small scale public events concerts that kind of thing I actually have known people who lived in Victoria for years without knowing about this place though because it is a bit hidden there are many different stairways leading down to this central public area but once you know about it this is the area that hides the kind of most famous most loved best known vegan restaurant in the city which is called green cuisine now green cuisine is so well known for a couple of reasons for one thing they're an exception to the rule mentioned they have a lot of space they have space where people can hold meetings and they do vegan groups environmental groups animal rights groups even I think some meditation groups and yoga groups that kind of thing hold meetings here they have a space for kids to play they have enough tables that you can sit down open up your textbooks and do your homework or you can sit around with friends and have a conversation so in that they're very rare and very valuable and I think everyone in the vegan community does value this as a crossroads as a place where things happen um on the other hand as you're seeing here you know it looks a bit like the prison cafeteria in terms of the food that's on offer yeah I mean you know there's variety they normally have some noodles some sort of rice and lentil options if you're really cheap a lot of the people who work in local office buildings live on the soup they come in and just get the soup and cornbread and they have two different soups each day your choice of a couple different soups this is all charged based on weight it can be cheap if you're very shrewd about how you weight your food and it can be very expensive if you're not really paying attention um the food is just okay I know what the vegans here who have eaten a hundred times this restaurant and the truth is you know they're kind of sick of it and I know vegans especially people who are more foodies or entrepreneurs try to get their own vegan business going who have said to me that honestly they kind of hate the food in the dessert section even though I'm not really into it I'm just not somebody who goes out and eats ice cream or you know goes to sit and eat a muffin and that sort of thing but if you are vegan and you've been vegan for years I think it really is a kind of amazing public service that this is a restaurant that will serve you amazing high-quality baked goods amazing ice cream - by the way the ice cream is very impressive I'm not someone who's into ice cream just I don't care for one way or the other but it's definitely the most impressive vegan ice cream I've ever had in terms of the desserts you know they make a lot of things that just as a vegan I assumed I would never taste again and I'm not really into it but like I can definitely imagine that would be very meaningful and important for a lot of vegans and if you've got kids if you're raising kids being able to offer these bates desserts whether you get them as take out and serve them home or eat them here at the restaurant i think that would mean a lot to many people like I assumed I would never taste a Nanaimo bar again not that I really love the namou bars or really care about it but um you know the fact that there's a restaurant that has the time and and really cares to make you a vegan version of a Nanaimo bar of a chocolate brownie of those types of old-fashioned baked goods you know it's impressive and for a lot of vegans that'll be nostalgia bringing back childhood memories of baked goods that they maybe haven't had in years I mean I was living in Asia and so you know I hadn't eaten this stuff in years for various reasons and also I mean if you if you pause the video slow down here at any point if you pause and look at the ingredients which they list publicly they're pretty impressive the ingredients with the baked goods are impressive and the ingredient for the ice cream impress me too I was avoiding filming the faces of people in the restaurant so I don't actually show you the seating area and I don't show you the staff because I think that's impolite to kind of put a camera in people's faces but anyway that is green cuisine right in the middle of downtown Victoria and in the middle of the area known as the Market Square lotus pond I mean it's another one of these places it's it's been around forever it's a tiny Chinese vegetarian restaurant fit into one of these small spaces in a hundred-year-old building it's been renovated but still they've got this fundamental problem there just isn't enough space there to have a conversation and I mean I've lived in China I've lived in other place in Asia too if you are really homesick for Chinese food this might appeal to you but I've got to say they serve this kind of strange Canadian version of Chinese food that doesn't taste like anything you've ever had in China the family running the place or who owned the place at least they're they're from Taiwan they're Taiwanese Buddhist vegetarians and everything is vegan the whole restaurant is strictly vegan but as you can see I mean the prices on the menu are actually pretty high it isn't the place you would take someone for a date it isn't really a place you'd sit never conversations there are a lot of disadvantages the most expensive place on this very short list is called be love again be love is slotted into a really small space you can't have a conversation there you can't hang out there but I have twice gone at dinner at this place because I was in circumstance once with a professor where I had to go somewhere vegan that was somewhat fancy or luxurious and be loved is pretty much the only option there are a lot of strange ironies in terms of local vegans and their attitudes towards this place they used to be more vegan than they are so in general a lot of people in the vegan community here in Victoria actually hate the owners and hate this place they they formerly had no eggs on the menu and then at one point they made a kind of public announcement that they were gonna add eggs to their breakfast menu and you know vegans freaked out and said how can you do this and sent in letters of complaints made negative comments on their Facebook page and this sort of thing and you know I think the owners of the restaurant they deleted all the negative comments and there was some controversy when I was talking about this with a couple of vegans basically like a group meeting of eats here in Victoria I raised in response I said oh yeah you know um but you know this other restaurant that serves breakfast here John's place and immediately they just spontaneously said oh yeah I love that place they have such positive memories of this other this other meat-eating restaurant called John's place I said yeah but you know everyone loves this other restaurant called John's place because they have one vegan option on the menu and you know we all hate belove apparently because they're in general vegan but they now have several items in the menu that are only Pro vegetarian or not really vegan they have some things that contain honey as I said they've become less vegan over time now adding eggs and some other things the menu from my perspective again the real practical problem is that if you're spending that much money to sit in a restaurant you probably want a place where you can sit down and have a conversation whether you're going on a date or hanging out with friends or whether you want to open up your books and work on your homework which is my bias I normally have my textbooks with me and if I'm sitting down to catch a bite to eat somewhere I don't want to have to rush out as quickly as possible but look that's about it Victoria BC is not that biggest city um it's not that much going on if you're vegan and you live here the three options I've just mentioned you'll know right away um in downtown Victoria there are a couple of Mexican restaurants that each have one or two vegan options in the menu I do not think they're a good option I do not think they're good quality and again they have nowhere to sit they're really slotted into into buildings that are too small for them and they've done a poor job renovating them so this is really a recurring problem in Victoria there is one Japanese restaurant called kisi KO and that's run by an authentic elderly Japanese couple and they offer a vegan bento box it's very rare the vast majority of Japanese restaurants have absolutely nothing vegan on the menu and also a lot of them are just not authentically Japanese in terms of their taste whether that's because there are more Chinese more Korean or just run by Canadians with a Canadian idea of what sushi and Japanese food is supposed to be about but kissa KO in Elk Bay they do have reliable and quite sophisticated vegan option the menu every day but it's the same problem again that is a tiny tiny restaurant can't really have a conversation there I can't hang out there if it's completely empty if you go at four o'clock in the afternoon or something in between lunch and dinner maybe you can take up the restaurant but again in that smaller space sitting at these tiny tables kind of like an old-fashioned donut shop not the most comfortable situation to be in so look for the foreseeable future hate it or love it I've got to say Victoria BC the vegan scene is dominated by just one restaurant Green cuisine I think the greatest strength green cuisine is really in their bakery I wish they tried to develop more as a base curry and I think they have some weaknesses in other areas but it's a place where you could sit down and have a meeting and many groups do you often see kind of group events being booked there and posters on the wall for events happening there and also even if you just want to sit there and have a coffee and a muffin which is not what I'm into personally but a lot of people are it's wonderful to have a space where you can do that that's not a Tim Hortons that's not a Starbucks and that's fundamentally a positive Pro vegan institution