The Seed: A Vegan Experience
at 2pm (5 hours before closing) on Saturday, almost all of everybody's
free food samples had run out.
You can get some pretty rad food without even going in. Parked outside is
The Cinnamon Snail (pretty much the best vegan restaurant in NYC these days), and for those who prefer shorter lines,
Mac'n,
"Miami's original vegan food truck". Mac'n has some pretty darned tasty
mac'n'cheese and battered-tofu sandwiches. They say they plan to stick
around NYC a few months, so hopefully you'll all get to try their tasty
fare even if you can't stop by the Seed on Sunday.
One of the best things about the Seed is that it's big and varied enough that everyone will like
something
there. The space at 82Mercer is really
nice. Classic giant Soho loft with nice big windows and fancy amenities.
It was plenty lively but never overwhelmingly crowded ... surely one of
the benefits of the $25 ticket price.
All the seats were full for this cooking demo and all the other
presentations, too. I didn't make it to any of the presentations,
panels, or films. There were certainly some good ones, though, and
there's
more on Sunday. I managed to keep plenty busy with tables and socializing.
Kopali Chocolates do a
great job coating various things (banana, mulberries, cacao nibs, goji
berries, espresso beans) in single-origin organic fair-trade Peruvian
chocolate. My only request to them is to take a lesson from Life Savers
and offer a variety pack—why should we have to choose just one of these
flavors?
Dan Mims of
CLLCTV
keeps hydrated in between bouts of explaining how to pronounce the name
of his exciting new local deals site (where you could've, for example,
scored some
cheap tickets to the Seed!).
The
Vitamix table was seriously mobbed. People really want to see those cashews get puréed by a $500 blender.
These raw pizza wedges from
Gingersnap's Organic tasted excellent:
I think it's genuinely great that the Seed thought to include some art
and live music.
Sea Shepherd's table looked really great. They're doing a superb job with the merch.
