Thanksgiving is for vegans
Horizons
611 S. 7th St.
Capogiro Gelato Cafe
119 S. 13th St.
Picture Thanksgiving dinner. Now remove the turkey and the gravy and the stuffing cooked inside the bird. While you're at it, take the cream out of the potatoes and the butter off the table.
OK, now enjoy.
Luckily, at Horizons you can do just that.
That may be a hard picture to paint for all you die-hard carnivores, but try instead to see it as a breath of fresh air. The menu tells you to expect "modern vegan cuisine," but what it doesn't tell you is that this translates into "simply good food."
Want proof? Take a trip to the softly lit restaurant in Bella Vista and enjoy a Thanksgiving meal free of meat and dairy but chock-full of flavor.
The seasonal dish to sample is the Autumn Plate, with red-wine-braised Nebrodini mushrooms, creamy parsnip puree, baby fall vegetables and roasted rutabaga salad served in a mini ramekin.
A word like Nebrodini may look intimidating, but rest assured that it is merely the name of the mountain range in Italy where this immensely tender mushroom is grown. And if root vegetables like parsnip and rutabaga don't conjure up images of a beautifully decorated fall table, then maybe this just isn't your time of year.
Make sure to wash it all down with a bottle of Brooklyn Brewery's Post Road Pumpkin Ale.
"I know it's hard for a lot of people to think about anything other than turkey this time of year," said Horizons general manager and pastry chef Kate Jacoby, "so we're always happy to make suggestions about what to do when 'The Vegans Are Coming!' "
If you succeed at avoiding the desserts at Horizons (go ahead and try saying no to the pumpkin cheesecake spiced with toasted hazelnuts and drizzled with rosemary-cinnamon caramel), or if you need a walk before you fit anything else into your belly, round off the meal and steer clear of the dairy farm by taking a stroll up to Capogiro in Midtown Village.
Order the Sidro di Mela con Chiodi di Garofano Sorbetti. The name is a mouthful and so is the flavor. It's a crisp, cool apple cider sorbet spiced with clove and made fresh daily.
Thanks to the folks at Fair Foods, the apples hail from an Amish farm in Lancaster County. And since it's sorbet (as opposed to gelato) it is dairy-free. Maybe there is room for a vegan at the Thanksgiving table after all.
