Not too long ago, my family and I were in Dallas taking my son to Six Flags for the first time. So if you happen to be in the area and want an amazing vegan place to eat, I thought I would tell you about the restaurants we dined at.
Spiral Diner
Every time we pass through Dallas we always go to Spiral Diner, an all-vegan restaurant. As of this post, they have three locations: Dallas, Fort Worth, and Denton. The place is decorated with a retro diner theme and is essentially home to vegan comfort food. When you walk in there is an assortment of vegan packaged food to purchase and a charming host/hostess to seat you. They'll take your order and you can pick out your drink at the self serve soda fountain. They have a variety of fun drinks to try like teas, ginger ale, and root beer. These are not the sodas that you'll find at your local fast food joint.
Our last visit we had the spicy buffalo chicken nachos, the picnic sandwich, the jalapeño popper sandwich, and "The Mitch" Tofu club. Their menu is huge, and with all those choices it can be quite difficult deciding what to eat. There are nachos, sandwiches, burgers, salads, pastas, quesadillas, Frito pie, veggie bowls, and their current specials.
Our buffalo nachos were topped with a cashew nacho cheese, buffalo soy chik'n strips, carrots that add a delightful sweetness, jalapeños for some more kick, green onions, diced tomatoes, and delicious ranch and blue cheese dressing to help cool things down. The picnic sandwich is made with soy chik'n cooked with their homemade bbq sauce, topped with cool coleslaw, pickles, onions, and mayo to balance out the bbq sauce. The jalapeño popper sandwich is for those jalapeño lovers (like my dear hubby). It's packed with jalapeños, (vegan) bacon, fried onions, (plant-based) cheese, and (vegan) sour cream to counter those jalapeños. My son's favorite, the "The Mitch" tofu club, is grilled tofu, tomato, lettuce, bacon bits, and chipotle mayo for a flavor kick.
By no means do they skimp on the portions of any nacho plate, sandwich, or any other entree. You will walk away full! The menu tends to change, so keep that in mind if you try the diner after reading this.
To finish off the meal you can pick out a dessert from the display case at the counter. They had an assortment of cupcakes, brownies, and pies. The selection is different every time we go, but I'm never disappointed with all the choices.
We've tried two out of three locations and the staff has always been friendly and the food is absolutely amazing.
El Palote Panaderia
The other restaurant we tried was El Palote Panaderia: an all-vegan, family-owned, Mexican restaurant with a very casual feel.
To start: you order at the counter and then find a seat, they'll bring the food out to you. The menu was on a board behind the counter with a huge selection of things to try: tacos, tamales, nachos, sandwiches, tortas, flautas, enchiladas, burritos, and menudo. The tamales and menudo are only weekend items. After you've finally decided what you want to order, then you'll need to pick the soy styles: carnitas, carne guisada, bistec, chicharron con salsa, chicharron crispy, or al pastor. This how your soy meat will be seasoned for entrees like tacos.
We selected the nachos to start, then tacos and tamales for our mains. The entrees came with some amazing refried beans and rice on the side. The nachos have the delightfully seasoned soy meat, cheese, jalapeños for a kick, diced tomatoes and cilantro for freshness. The soy meat is perfectly seasoned as if they slowly infused the flavor into the meat. Your tacos will be corn tortillas filled with the soy style you chose, then topped with simply diced onions and cilantro. The garnishes add a nice texture and freshness to the dish. Then you can give it a squeeze of lime to brighten it all up. El Palote offer offers two bean and soy chorizo and two picadillo tamales. Those are the fillings for your masa dough that will be cooked (usually steamed) in corn husks. Just unwrap and enjoy!
If you actually have room after eating that delicious feast there is a bakery display case with an assortment of baked goods. We took ours to go! If you love their taco filling as much as we did, you can purchase some ready-made seasoned meat (vegan of course) to take home. We have sadly only tried the vegan Mexican restaurant once before moving, but I know where we'll be having dinner if we are ever in the Dallas area again.
For more vegan restaurants try https://www.happycow.net
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