LOCAL: Millenial Brewing - Vegan Food Rally [Review]

Hi there! Last Friday Rachel and I had the opportunity to go to the Vegan Food Rally at Millenial Brewing Co. in Downtown Fort Myers. It seems one of our favorite places to hang out keeps surprising us with a good time because we were not expecting to attend a vegan food rally there! The good thing is that this is also a recurring event, so if you missed it this time you can definitely try again later.

Also, we were not alone, Rob and also his friend Brandon tagged along, so we thought that our strategy was going to be that each of us would get food from a different vendor. Four of us, five vendors...we got this! Listen, things went a bit different than expected.

The Vendors

The food vendors participating in the rally were Manila Bistro, Dave's Neopolitan Pizza, Free Flowing Health by Chef Lisa Brown, Mac Munchees Desserts - Herbal Fusions, and one of our favorites - Seasoned Green. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, people had already depleted most of the food from Seasoned Green and Free Flowing Health.

We can trust our instincts and say that Chef Lisa's food was very welcomed and appreciated and we look forward to the opportunity of trying it the next time she's at Millenial Brewing Co. Also, we have reviewed some of Seasoned Green's food in our Mac N' Cheeze Festival blog post (which you should check out here) but we are dying to once again eat the Buffalo Ranch Fried Mac n' Cheeze.

Now, let's talk about the food we did try, shall we?

The Food

Manila Bistro is a food truck that specializes in authentic Filipino cuisine, particularly pancit and lumpia. Pancit means noodle in Filipino and it is a national dish that usually consists of noodles cooked with soy sauce along with some variations of meats and chopped vegetables. Lumpia is a type of spring roll commonly found in Indonesia and the Philippines.

So, from Manila Bistro we tried:

- Lumpia Shanghai

Rob was the one who decided to go ahead and try it. As he describes it, it was very savory and overall good. However, when ordering the food, the people working at the food truck did not seem to be completely sure of whether the lumpia was completely vegan. Does it contain egg? Are all the ingredients vegan? The answer to these questions were "It's like a spring roll" and "Yeah, it should be vegan". It was not very convincing, so we are still wondering if it was indeed completely vegan or not.

Look, we knew we were at a vegan food rally but at the same time, it is important to always be cautious and double-check that everything that you are being served is, in fact, VEGAN.

Next, we have Mac Munchees Desserts - Herbal fusions, which believe me, had me very excited because I am a chocoholic (Natalie). But wait, what you need to understand is that it is not only that they sell vegan desserts, but that they make them infused with kratom and kava! Also, you can order them with no infusion - which is what I did because you should not mix kava or kratom with alcohol.

They were selling a variety of desserts such as banana pudding cheesecake, orange dreamsicle cheesecake, key lime cheesecake, s'mores fat mac, and cookies & cream fat mac.

From Mac Munchees Desserts we had:

- Cookies & Cream Fat Mac

Thankfully I had the chance to grab it before it also sold out. If you have weak teeth you should not eat this type of dessert because the rice crispy treat can be quite hard but other than that, it was delicious! The white chocolate coating with the crumbled Oreos was the perfect combination. I can't wait to try their other desserts! FYI you can find their yummy desserts in the Kava Kulture Bars in Ft. Myers, Naples, and Cape Coral.

Lastly, we have Dave's Neopolitan Pizza. Oh Dave...oh Dave, Dave, Dave. *Sigh*

What can I say, I was expecting to have a good vegan pizza and the experience was a bit of a catastrophe. First of all, when we asked about the vegan pizzas, they were baffled by the question and answered that they just had vegan cheese. Just with that initial odd conversation, we knew something was off. Then, the guy said that he could make us a vegan Margherita pizza which for us it was fine, but then he offered to put garlic butter in it...butter...the second red flag! If it has butter in it then it is not vegan...

Anyways, we waited for about 30 minutes or more until the guy arrived at our table with 5 small boxes of pizzas and he didn't know which one was the vegan. He randomly chose one and said that he was sure that was the one. We had to nervously start analyzing if, in fact, that was vegan cheese. We had also ordered non-vegan pizzas, so we were comparing them to try to figure it out.

Thanks to Rachel's expertise, we concluded that the pizza was NOT VEGAN!

It was very unfortunate, but we had to return the pizza and get the money refunded. We also had to explain to them what veganism is and how they should separate and identify clearly their orders, so that this doesn't happen to anyone else. They were very sorry about it and promised to do better the next time, so let's hope that's the case!

Final thoughts

Overall, we can conclude that our meals from Manila Bistro and Dave's Neopolitan Pizza were served with a side of anxiety and frustration. Only 3 of the 5 vendors that participated in the Vegan Food Rally were genuinely prepared to serve vegan customers and these were Seasoned Green, Free Flowing Health by Chef Lisa Brown and Mac Muncheese Desserts. Which makes sense because they do specialize in preparing vegan and plant-based food/desserts.

We understand that it can be tricky and a learning process to understand, prepare and add vegan dishes to a menu, especially when a business mainly offers non-vegan food. However, we believe that for future events like this one, it is the responsibility of the event organizers to make sure that the vendors are aware and knowledgeable about what is veganism. It is also responsibility of the vendors to do their homework prior to participating of this type of event - again, if you are not a vegan or plant-based food business - and also, train the staff because based on this experience, there was a lack of understanding of which food ingredients were vegan.

Although we always manage to have a great time over drinks and we were happy to see that the event successfully provided good options of vegan dishes and desserts, we were disappointed at the quality of the vegan dishes we had the opportunity to try. We hope to assist again the next time it happens and hopefully, see some improvements and try more delicious vegan food.