Some of the questions I get asked the most from people when they first go vegan revolve around dealing with family members and their opinions, travelling or eating out. I plan to talk about all of these things in more depth this month, but for now I want to share a little restaurant review and some thoughts from the day my family came along to a vegan cafe with me in Gran Canaria.
I am the lone vegan in my family, which could feel like a daunting experience but thankfully whenever I visit my parents are possibly the most accommodating they could possibly be and my Nana loves my mushroom fajitas and veggie lasagne. To me, it’s all about compromise and respecting each other’s way of life. Although I have strong beliefs when it comes to living a vegan lifestyle myself, the way I share it with my family is to cook for them, share recipes and show how delicious meat free meals can be. Food is love, and people will react better to cake or a banging chili than preaching.
Whilst my family are more than happy to try my vegan cooking, if we were to eat out, my Dad and Nana would probably order meat every time. Whenever I visit them in Gran Canaria where they live, we tend to eat at home, or out at places that serve meat and veggie options, like Chinese or Indian restaurants. Over the past few years, I’ve watched the list of vegan restaurants on Happy Cow go from 2 or 3, to numerous places that I can barely keep up with, so when I heard how great Bioloco was, I immediately put it top of my list to visit.
To my surprise, my family all said they would eat there too. I thought maybe they would come, have a drink and then eat somewhere more suited to their tastes so I was really happy that they would be giving a fully vegan cafe a try, and a little nervous since I hadn’t been before and wanted their first experience to be a good one. I needn’t have worried – the location was perfect (right near the city’s beach) the interior was cool, the staff were incredibly welcoming and the food was a hit with everyone.
I went for quite a classic burger, my Nana had Canarian potatoes with salad, my Mum had the spicy bbq pulled burger which was a special, and my Dad had a vegan caesar salad. Everything was delicious, the beer was ice cold, and I was so happy to see they served vegan cortados too which I hadn’t had since ditching dairy. I had an amazing dessert of nutella, chocolate cake, ice cream, coconut and hot chocolate sauce which was insanely good, and the bill was more than reasonable, I had to double check they hadn’t made a mistake.
If you find yourselves in Las Palmas, make a beeline for this place, if only for a chilled out coffee with a slice of their cake. The place was packed, and it makes me so happy to see vegan businesses thrive in such a meat-centric culture. As for my family, they may not be rushing to join the vegan society any time soon, but my Dad said he’d like to go back next time I visit to try another dish on the menu, that’s a win if ever I saw one.
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