My handsome partner and I took a Friday off of work a few weeks ago to indulge in a little self-care. Since he is the Executive Director of a non-profit and I am a nanny, an event coordinator and run my own non-profit, we are pretty exhausted. During the week our time together is usually spent cooking delicious vegan dinner together and then collapsing on the couch in a cuddle heap with a crossword or The Food Network and his dog, Jackson. So, we have date days a few times a month to connect and spoil ourselves with romantic restaurants, afternoon cocktails, treats, movie matinees, buying fancy soaps and books, walks, and some good old fashioned sucking eachother’s faces.

Let me tell you, finding an eatery that tantalizes our tastebuds is TOUGH - we LOVE to eat and have lunched in the obviously vegan-friendly restaurants in our city. This time, we solicited reccomendations from friends and we decided to go to Bistro 7 1/4.


We called ahead to make sure that they could accommodate our veganism, and they confirmed that Chef Alex would whip us up something with what he had on hand. Uhhh…what? Usually our forays outside of establishments without vegan items on the menu resulted in a meal of side dishes passed off as a meal. Instead we were treated to parsnip pancakes with roasted fennel, ginger, and jalepeno with lenti sauce and fennel olive salad.

Not only did we get what was easily the most beautiful meal we’ve ever eaten, there was vegan chocolate pudding with toasted coconut to be had and syrupy, sweet espresso to finish it all off.