2018: Every Vegan Restaurant in Chiang Mai Reviewed.

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we know it's hilarious the first night that we got to check by we went to the grocery store like oh let's get beans that's all let's get big cans a big tuna everyday we're like oh you should make the pants right we never you we put together for a year we're coming up on our one-year anniversary I don't know she cooked for me once other you barely barely I think a big cake with that's true when we were on vacation with my daughter yeah well there's been a remarkably little cooking in this relationship she makes she makes up for it another department Banas yen we are sitting around Bangkok Airport we just got the stunning news delivered to us on livestream that one of the restaurants who went to when we were in Chiang Mai which repeatedly vegan heaven is owned by my old YouTube frenemy Brett Brett Rowling's frenemy or outright enemy I don't know so we thought we'd do a quick video reflecting on the state of vegan restaurants in Chiang Mai Thailand at the end of 2017 to start 2018 now I'm not even let you get a word in edgeways here because I want to start this video with a really important disclaimer if you are going to chiang mai on vacation in order to eat in vegan restaurants don't do it like there's no way you can justify taking a vacation this place in terms of cuisine or sitting around people that is just stupid and i think a lot of people do a lot of people kind of plan a vacation around going to Chiang Mai to eat vegan food and that's just crazy that's that's just nuts I mean this is not I mean I can imagine going to Paris for the patisserie you know what I mean like there's there are some destinations in the world that are food destinations we are really talking about some kind of gourmet high-level cuisine that you can't get anywhere else where there's something you're gonna learn from it it's said that is not Chiang Mai right Chennai you know there are some if it's more like the exact opposite if you happen to be trapped in Thailand anyway you can stop by these restaurants if it's you know you know I mean if it's in between points a and points B for you but there's no way to justify a vacation in these terms yes we met a couple at a Murtagh that seemed just to be going on a vegan tour right right vegan restaurant to her right but I mean even for us so we were we were there because we had a court case we had to attend we didn't have a choice really but I wrapped up my job in Yun and China we exited Union China we were on our way from Mancha to Bangkok and Chiang Mai is literally halfway between those two places and we had a quarter so we stopped well what did we do what we were there if people asked us because people live home to assess what we were doing a chairman I was like well we're getting a lot of reading done and we're sitting around in a lot of vegan restaurants so we did end up doing a vegan restaurant tour because for us there was nothing much else to do hit the museums and things yeah that's true we did a couple other things museums yeah seems our excusably awful all right go um I don't want to take this up what I would say is the restaurant I would name as the winner you may disagree what'd you pick I would say the number one restaurant in terms of the actual quality of the food and the overall experience and places in everything else I'd say the overall winner is actually a Mirta so I feel free to disagree no that's what I was gonna say I thought you're gonna say vegan no no so I give the prize to a Mirta but even a Mirta is weak enough in their cuisine game that I've got to say it really is hit and miss so look I think the first time we went there I had a pretty negative experience it's true of a lot of these players we won't repeat so these restaurant views are based on repeatedly yeah busy trying quite a few items like ordering kind of almost the whole menu over three or four visits at each of these places so we are we're in a pretty good position to make review but the first they are hit and miss and when you have a hit and miss menu it means that if a customer like me comes and happens to order stuff off the menu that's a myth yeah right the the first time that we went we got the two different burgers right right first one the one that's on the first page of the menu it was great it was like an awesome vegan patty that had like kidney beans and all kinds of great stuff but the the other burger you got was so whack it was like it was like a true device close patty that like it tasted like a wet napkin in a hamburger that's right yeah and the two recipes for the for the veggie burger they look identical on the menu part but so you people have to try and yeah and I actually saw when you look when you look at the reviews on happy cow some of them are really positive saying this is the best best veggie burger they ever had but there were a couple saying they had the veggie Burnham was just tasteless oil mock so those are the two different options of the menu right right mmm but yeah they're tempeh ribs were like amazing I don't know yeah so some things were like really great so great soy yogurt right they did they do make their own soy yogurt and make their own soy ice cream and a bunch of other stuff a Mirta and them really nice guard and sitting in class the operation in bunch of ways but ordered their hummus partly cuz it was trying to get more protein in a meal so hummus was inexcusably awful like you know absolutely terrible right a picture look like normal helmets right chickpea right right right what they brought out was nothing was nothing like that like Betty Ann Thomas yeah but yeah it's a nice place to read except for when the music was right you're terribly repetitive yeah chanting did you think what is do you think Tibetan Buddhist do you think yeah stuff yeah so I don't know though to me I'm like a Mirta which we both kind of pick as the winner that kind of shows you how the whole scene still I mean so look probably number two goes to vegan heaven - mm-hmm this is chain vegan heaven wanted to we only have rate if he can happen to so I don't know if Brett knew I was there bread is allegedly the owner of this restaurant maybe you would have poisoned my food there are a lot of things in the menu they do right that they're do spectacularly well so Panang curry is Patsy you right that's you is a no problem the problem pets you is a very simple Thai dish but that is the best tattoo I've ever had in my life and I lived in Thailand for years added up not continuously I still have a mouse in Cambodia also goes back and forth town many times that is the single best version of that this you've ever had and it's sorry nervously it's all vegan all this stuff right but for example the french fries were shockingly awful when we we ordered some things that came with french fries and we just said forget we didn't even eat them like yeah we tried them forget franchise this horrible yeah so that is funny again hit and miss menu although from our perspective more hits than misses we had a few things there that were awful but we really ended up trying the whole menu yeah pretty good breakfast yes yeah see that's the funny thing I guess there is some foreign influence in the bread because I never guessed that place was owned by a westerner to me like their real strength there is in the Thai cooking not in the Western cooking not on the veggie burgers not in the French fries but in like Thai like penne and Korean Patsy you and this kind of stuff I like the khao SOI soup right yeah yeah certainly several good you know in Thai pumpkin soup who's known as the bowtie Thai curries in general quite strong there which is not to say all their Western food is bad they did a really good their falafel was excellent yeah you know and in Thailand you want a lot of terrible falafels if you and again I'm ordering the stuff partly cuz I'm just trying to get an approaching in my diet get some hummus get something filling in your diet so I'm not just eating salad yeah why don't we delete a lot of salad not complaining but sometimes you're just scraping by on salad yeah but wearing a sign yeah that's true also a great burger one of the signs they may be western owned was just that the breakfast that's a real British thing you know baked beans for breakfast so I wonder if that does show some influence from Bret Rowan's himself I don't know yeah alright so working in the list we went to a vegan meet up with other aspiring vegan activists and a place called M aim I am ma I am EMA McCann very hit and miss there's some parts of the menu where the whole part of the menu I think is awful but and we if we had only gone there once we would have given them a very negative yeah but we ended up going back several times which we didn't expect to do and then we had a bunch of things in the menu that were really excellent right and you really wouldn't be able to guess from the menu what's good and what's bad yeah and the interesting thing about this place is that if you don't like the food you can tell the owner that you didn't like it and he will not charge you for it look we didn't take advantage of that you know when we first went we got a couple dishes we didn't like but we didn't want to be we didn't tell ya the first time we got a mushroom thing and he was like we didn't eat it basically on the plate so it was like oh I won't charge you for that so yeah I think I just gave discount on that actually but yeah but no I mean I didn't want to be jerk but the first time we went it was so bad we thought we'd never come back yeah but then when we did come back we ended up trying out the placement menu that that impressed us so yeah I just say a lot of these places reflect the amateur nature of a lot of vegan cuisine and that place is not pure vegan right right that's the funny things and like the drinks of honey so you mean is a nice place to sit and do reading it is a lot of vegans stay there for hours so it is one this place where people you know buy something and then stay for three or four hours nothing wrong with that or it's a good place to meet people - it was nice for that right up for the vegan meetup right but actually and they have vegan slogans up but they do have some stuff with honey with eggs and with dairy I think their breakfast many things but their breakfast menu I think has a ghazan yeah what have you so there were a couple of things that had to specify we got vegan versions up there but anyway the owner does seem like a really nice guys heart seems to be the right place yeah actually it is not a vegan restaurant it is merely vegetarian and most of the stuff in the menu is vegan yeah and when we looked it up we got the impression that it was a bike cafe but that's right it wasn't no we finished that out there really the bicycle side oriented well it's hard enough to get to though I mean a lot of these places are like secret yeah I mean thanks for the internet you'll figure it eventually but you know a lot of us are not even a Mirta yeah but it's good because then they're secluded enough to be away from roads right so we should put in a negative review that one free bird cafe that's terrible right so it was right on the corner of two big road two main roads everything we've mentioned in this point we'll put in the links in order for for these restaurants but so everything is basically been a thumbs up but with some kind of caveat so far the one that is really a thumbs down I think is the free bird cafe and everything there like most of the food if they if they do reduce the price by 50% it would still be a ripoff you know I mean it's that kind of thing you could you can cut the price in half and it's based on donations yes carrot juice is there running it as a charity or a non-profit but to me that's not a good enough excuse I got to tell you and they're right on the main drag or on a road we have ground-level air pollution coming in and traffic noise coming in and you walk down steps you're actually laying but below yeah sidewalk level it's just awful so yeah horrible experience and also just great you got really bad yes that's right they they broke some of the basic laws of cuisine they basically gave me raw but seared chickpeas and then I had horrible indigestion for more than 12 hours after that we need to start a campaign yeah I know fully cooked beans yeah instead of fully raw Christina fully cooked fully chickpeas are fully could begin vegan they're also called garbanzo beans that is correct anyway so look another one that's kind of a bright light in the list I think is the reformed cafe which is inside green tiger right yeah so I mean this place in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of what's going on in veganism in in Thailand maybe in the world generally this is mostly a nice place to sit yeah it is mostly a nice place to get a cup of coffee do we have ice cream we did we did have we do have vegan ice cream there's only we only went for breakfast and lunch we were never there in the evening because it looks just like there would be many mosquitoes yeah a lot of mosquitoes touristy yeah right that's true there's you know we did see something sceetos during the daytime - that's right so just you know because it's an outdoor and surrounded by like I mean it looks it looks beautiful the water features that they have but the mosquitoes come and get at you yeah but yeah I think it was you know delicious but not so healthy the food that we got there cafe yeah you had a lot of complaints the more we ended up eating there several times you had a lot just being honest meal by meal you were disappointing but a lot of things to me but always gonna say all of Chiang Mai is kind of drowning in coffee shops hmm there are too many places that exist first and foremost as a place to sit there I don't really drink coffee I do if I'm sick or the something wrong with me like today at the airport maybe today at 6:00 a.m. I'm gonna drink some coffee or something yeah and we get up we serve we're at an airport right now these guys I guess um you know uh but yeah the Chiang Mai people seem to have the delusion that there's an infinite demand for coffee shops and you see a lot of coffee shops business now 2017 so and well we'll see what happens with that you know reform gif a beautiful place to sit okay place to get some vegan food yeah sometimes like that I mean like like you know getting like the mango lassi that was like delicious but like you know what's the food value I think it's just like mixed with coconut yogurt and and I'm a cheapskate I mean spend as much on one drink as you'd spend on an entire meal and all my restaurant yeah you know it's okay because if that's all you're gonna get if you just want to get a coffee or a mango shake and sit around you know I mean know everyone comes to chiang mai to waste money fundamentally waste waste time yeah all right cool but I think so this is an interesting contrast a place that really puts them to shame there's this there's this chain in town totally 100 percent corporate non-vegan chain yeah which I refer to jokingly is the salad conspiracy right salad conspiracy is properly called the salad company so it concepts the story the salad concept anyway will give you guys a link so that that's not a big in place there may be four vegan options on the menu yeah I could all say tato wedges it's a quinoa energy boost salad the tofu organic salad yeah that's it and the juices like there are a couple types of salad you could also do a custom salad that's true and their couple types of salad a couple things but they're excellent I mean they're good value for money ordering a salad there and a sit-down restaurant costs you about the same amount as getting salad at the grocery store remember yeah but I will say like the blocks of tofu that you got and the organic tofu salad or free you see you see what I have to put up with she likes to complain this mall the complaining is strong in her no it's cool I mean you know I dig it but you know I would you say I thought salad concept really represented a kind of standard of like corporate efficiency excellence that the vegan restaurants in general lacked you know I mean so in so many ways when we went there when went to sell it concepts it's true like you know we had the same two vegan options every time or something but I saw it a lot of respect a lot of admiration for the just how the hotels ran you know in a real contrast to the kind of pokey hippie run made for tourists so babe we can mention or not back when I did the videos with Jake Eames over a year ago your Africa or something now we talked about some of the authentic Thai places yeah I really want to endorse any of them but I guess we'll just put in as a footnote here pretty much everything we've mentioned except for salad get to sell conspiracy pretty much everything we mentioned is really for tourists and the prices reflect that and the menus are in English reflecting that etc etc but there are also tying in places that are really by Thai people for Thai people that don't have that characteristic right yeah so you know when the prices are lower and the style was different and so on yeah on this trip I didn't have anything positive to say about any of them I'm a bit of a snob and I'm also used to be saying northeastern Thailand I feel as astrum much stronger vegan tradition than northwestern Thailand northeast is called san the northwest is called mana but I don't know what the less said the better we went to one place that was a that would had a much better quality fare but a year and a half ago and will in fact this time it was worse but but when I took you there I mean I was kind of lecturing you about it but I said look they're making you food here that's really significantly different from anything you're ever going to get at a Thai restaurant in America yeah I think I can also get the credit significantly different for anything we got in Thai restaurants that are just tourist oriented in Thailand also right yeah so you did get to have that experience they had a kind of fermented tofu yeah which is very different from very different Chinese right and you had a kind of herbal soup that was that was homemade broth was pretty good right so if the point if you get out there and want to try something more authentic you can and it is much less for Western tastes and it has like you know that the authentic soup has big pieces of like inedible herbs in it and stuff no big chunks of lemongrass that you're supposed to go through it's a gallon dal and lemongrass right right right so a little bit of a little bit of different thing so I think we probably went to maybe three other joints were not mentioning here there was the place that had the vegan Mexican bowl was a pure vegan right so that's the surprise that's not the same as vegan heaven there's a totally different restaurant called pure venom and you remember the small one I think was called taste of heaven do you know this one want you read at the beginning and their world no no no boomer read the beginning we went and there were they yoga all day yoga doing hippies with their wife-beater shirts on remember that joint yeah so we're not we're not gonna review them but I'm just mentioning we did actually go to a bunch of other places that were not mesh yeah so we got the links below um bottom line I guess some people come from parts of Europe or North America where there really are no vegan restaurants then when they get to Chiang Mai they freak out they just feel so happy to be to be staying somewhere where they do have some vegan options I can relate but as a food destination or as a vacation activity no this is 100% not worth it you can't justify your time and your money and I will say if you are if you do happen to be in Chiang Mai and you're vegan and you're not going for a vegan tour yeah it is less expensive to go to a market sure sure you know we went to went to the market and got bread rice salad bar right right mango sneakers if you go too right if you go to real tight tight markets I mean I guess that's that some chores are there for that just for the fact that the fresh fruit is cheap and available and there are some traditional Thai roadside well just like eating durian itself eating rambutan itself you know there are a lot of things you can just get straight out the market but mango and sticky rice is definitely example the traditional dish that's you know accidentally vegan yeah it's gonna in vegan no matter what but on the other hand going to the market doing those things we were able to do that because I still spoke enough Thai I could communicate in the language at a certain level and if your only language is English you're probably gonna end up going to these same tourists are in places yeah okay we are out Banas yen