Ahh, holiday travel:
900 miles down and 900 miles back along the beautiful Oregon and California Coast; a beautiful, wet, windy and cold coast indeed.
And despite the awesome Redwood Forest, the rolling vineyards of Sonoma and the majestic, rocky coastline of Southern Oregon, I alas, could only think of the vast desert of fast-food neon that we encountered both up and down one of the purtiest places on Earth.
Every couple of months we make this trek and we're rewarded on both ends (My Mom and J's Mom are both amazing cooks). But the 16+ hours in between are brutal on both our booties and our stomachs.
What are we going to eat?
Sure, we packed the car with healthy snacks like fruit and nuts and some of my mom's homemade energy bars. But we still needed some proper FOOD at some point.
Well, lucky for us we decided to make our first stop at the Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka, Ca. They have quite a few options for the non-meat eaters out there. J and I both chose their "Humboldt Green Party" burger. Which is basically a Garden Burger on a whole wheat bun with lettuce, tomatoes, red onions and a sliced dill pickle. Fries or a salad come as a side and they don't put mayo (or any condiment for that matter) on the burger. Instead the kind waitress brought out a selection of condiments to our table so we could dress our patty exactly as we liked.
It was quite good.
We both got the fries and I had a "Downtown Brown Ale." Delish!
J had a nice cup of joe (as he was driving that leg).
And we're off!
Three hundred or so miles later and a nice overnight stop north of San Francisco, we pull into a Burger King.
?!!!!?Burger King!!?
Yep.
I had heard that they are the only major chain in the U.S. that offers a veggie burger as an option at every location. So we had to check it out. It took a bit of convincing to get Jason to even pull into the parking lot (neither one of us has eaten at a Burger King in over a decade). But he indulged me and we checked out the options.
The Burger King veggie burger is a Morning Star patty sandwiched between two basic Burger King buns with tomato, lettuce and pickles. We ordered both of ours with onions and no mayo (the mayo alone adds nearly 16 grams of saturated fat to your meal!)
It was a ho-hum experience. Not bad. But not great.
The buns are a bit soft and the patty had an overwhelming carrot taste.
But, it was good to know that a veggie (although not vegan) option exists out there in fast-food land.
6 days later,(after many a delicious meal at my in-laws) we began our return trip home to Oregon. Our first food stop was at an old hangout of ours in Valencia, CA: The Habit
We ordered two Veggie Burgers with a side of fries and waited in anticipation.
Ten minutes later our burgers arrived.
WOW! Toasted whole-wheat buns, a perfectly grilled Garden Burger patty, an inch thick layer of super green, fresh, romaine lettuce, ripe tomato slices, cucumbers, red onions, and alfalfa sprouts!
It was a salad in a sandwich and it was a knockout.
Now, if only they had more locations en route to Oregon.
We returned to Lost Coast on the last leg of our trip for another Humboldt Green Party burger and were pleased that it tasted just as good as on the way down.
We made it to my folks later that night and enjoyed a warm bowl of vegetable soup.
So as a recap here's how I rank the three burgers:
1. The Habit's Veggie Burger
2. Lost Coast Brewery's "Green Party" Burger
3. Burger King's Veggie Burger.
I look forward to finding more veggie travel options on our next trip down. But in the meantime I'm back to cooking my own food!
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