Confession: As much as we like fine dining, we’re equal parts obsessed with carnival food — the type of food that’s completely outrageous and ridiculous in real life and quite frankly childish. And not just carnival food, but voluminous food of that nature. To be clear, on the daily we are fitness/health freaks/bio-hackers. We eat healthy AF, track our macros, hit advanced levels in the gym, and have top 10% physiques. But by “healthy eating,” we mean it as a ratio, not an event. We dont restrict food groups, or really ourselves. When it’s time to indulge, we INDULGE to the point where onlookers stare in disbelief or perhaps horror. Imagine Man v. Food — that’s us. It’s madness. The juxtaposition between our fitness-forward lifestyle and our obsession with carnival food is striking. But, we have seen many folks engaged in the same absurdness. Just take a look at the caloric intake involved with the cheat meals of some your favorite celebs like The Rock (who describes his cheat days as akin to going to church, he has cheat meals north of 2.1K calories), John Cena (2.6K calories), Lebron James (960 calories), Chris Hemsworth (1.8K calories), J.J. Watt (2.4K calories), and Ryan Renolds (1.8K calories). However, we wouldn't call our carnival food meals “cheat meals,” because we aren't necessarily on a diet (note: we don’t consider veganism a diet, rather it’s an ethical stance against the exploitation of animals). But I digress. The point is — carnival food is an underrated delicacy, but finding veganized carnival food is quite hard as you can imagine. Most carnival food involves meat or at least some animal byproducts. But if you’re in Vegas, and looking for a carnival food fix (as we were) The Modern Vegan (“TMV”) serves some of the most delicious vegan creative carnival food on a platter, a generous platter at that. Pretty much every entree nearly took us to God, Divine, Universe, Source, or whatever you wanna call it — it all made for a transcendent experience.
Even though some of the dishes were carnival-esque, there were no gimmicks; the food was high quality and the main character of the entire thing. We tried the mac n’ cheese skillets, popcorn chicken, crab cakes, gyro burger, and the “OH MY GOD” which correctly characterizes the aftereffect of the fudge brownie/vanilla ice cream dynamic dessert duo.
Our FAVES:
MAC n’ CHEESE Skillets. Hands down the best vegan mac n’ cheese we’ve ever had. We ordered the Buffalo Chick’n Mac n’ Cheese and the BBQ Brisket Mac n’ Cheese. The BBQ skillet came with barbequed steak strips, coleslaw, TMV sauce, ranch and green onions. The Buffalo skillet involved a crispy spicy buffalo chicken cutlet, coleslaw, TMV sauce, ranch and green onion. The actual Cavatappi pasta itself was buttery with a hint of nuttiness, and had a lot of substance. It wasn’t gummy or overly soft nor was it grainy or tough. We suspect it might have been chickpea noodles. It certainly wasn’t your average refined white-flour or whole wheat pasta. The creamy cheese sauce really shined through the dish. I imagine nutritional yeast (aka nooch, iykyk) was the base. I would dare to say it was indistinguishable from traditional cheddar sauce and the blend of the Buffalo, BBQ, and special TMV sauces took it all to the next level. All of the sauces clung well to the pasta. The plant-based chicken and BBQ steak topping were great additions, the taste, mouthfeel, and flavor were a A++, they both absorbed the sauces and perfectly blended into the dish.
The other entrees photographed below were super appetizing. The runner up would certainly be the Gyro Burger. It was completely unbelievable. Finding vegan gyro meat is a rarity, so let’s start there; and then combining it with the the burger + tzatziki + pesto sauce was truly TOP tier.
Crab Cakes: Made with chickpeas and heart of palm, served on a bed of greens, topped with TMV’s homemade mustard remoulade.
The Gyro Burger: Plant-based burger patty, gyro meat, pesto, fries, tzatziki with the usual burger stuff.
Popcorn chicken: Deep-fried, breaded plant-based chicken bites topped with green onions, served with TMV sauce.
OH MY GOD: Hot fudge brownies with vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, peanuts & powdered sugar.