Smiling Vegan

I confess, when I found out I was sitting in a vegan restaurant my hopes for a good nosh took a nose dive. Prejudices about vegan food kicked in: it’s all straw and twigs, served in a hair shirt with lashings of self-flagellation, isn’t it.

Well, no. The dishes served in Vegismile are as varied and tasty as you would find in any good restaurant, and once you get stuck in you will forget that this is food without animal protein or dairy fat. Oh, and they have cannabis beer. More on that later.

Vegismile, in Rokko, is the brand new bouncing baby of Takeshi Yamamoto, a young man with big passion for good food that is both healthy and cruelty free.

Takeshi takes eating well very seriously. Twelve years ago at the age of 18 he was diagnosed as allergic to meat and dairy products. He subsequently turned what could have been a considerable inconvenience into a career, firstly by going abroad to study with vegan chefs in the US, Canada and New Zealand and then building up practical experience working at an organic restaurant in Kobe before opening up Vegismile in April this year.

Vegismile is not a big restaurant. It is what interior designers like to call intimate. The interior was created by friends from a local design school who with use of orange and green and natural wood have created a feeling that is cheerful, and relaxing, and suggests both modernity and tradition. The dining area is decorated with some of the books from which Takeshi learned his art, samples of organic products he uses and magazines for the patrons to read.

But we didn’t come here to stare at the walls. What of the food?
The menu doesn’t look like any macrobiotic fare I have seen before. There are pizzas, burgers, and dorias — in a vegan place? The pizza, which comes topped with tofu, natto (the Indonesian, non-smelly variety) or soy bean chicken (textured vegetable protein or TVP), is slathered with what looks like cheese, but is in fact a concoction of tofu, onion, sesame … and something completely secret. The doria uses soy milk instead of real milk, and the burgers are made with patties of bean and herbs.

The burgers are large and as satisfying as their meaty counterparts — and the one I had was a lot tastier. Many vegi burgers have the consistency of spiced sawdust, but not these. They are served between slices of organic wholemeal bread, are succulent and herby and quite filling. The burgers are served with a generous portion of salad and the soup of the day — today a herb-laden chilli bean soup. The dorias are made with brown rice and come in unusual flavours such as kimchi and curry.

The large menu includes an intriguing variety of appetisers and sides such as nachos and salad, and sesame cream toast, tomato and mushroom bruschetta. The dessert menu for a health-conscious restaurant is hedonistic and gives us ice cream and parfait made from soy milk.

The drinks menu features cocktails, all made with 100 percent organic juice, and there is organic wine and organic beer and that cannabis beer. OK, it is not strictly speaking cannabis beer, but it is made (in Niigata of all places) with hemp seeds. If I remember my high school home economics classes right, the seeds do not have a high THC content, but in the interests of scientific discovery the KS team selflessly offered itself up for testing. Hmm… very organic, quite tasty, extravagantly bubbly, but no sudden cravings for corn flakes.

All drinks and dishes on the menu are priced at either ¥500 or ¥1000 depending on size and exoticness so you can fill up without emptying your wallet. A word about the location. Vegismile is only a five minute walk from either JR Rokko or Hankyu Rokko, but is in a residential street round a dog-leg bend not evident on the map. It has a sign outside that reads Sun Sun — the name of its Sunday incarnation. It may take you a moment to find, but please stay with it. It’s worth a bit of head scratching. Leave your hair shirt at home.

VEGISMILE
2-1-14 Hachiman-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe-shi 657-005
OPEN: Everyday except Wednesday, 6pm to midnight
Nearest stations: JR Rokko-do, Hankyu Rokko
TEL: 070 5657-3888

Text: Chris Page
Photos: Taka Kataoka