We Tried Eating Vegan at Popular Restaurant Chains

Hey everyone, how's it going? Welcome back to another video. I'm Chris. I'm Jasmine. We're Sweet Simple Vegan and we're filming on a phone so I gotta get used to looking at the camera right there. So take it away. So today we are going to show you or actually we're going to try to eat vegan at three popular restaurant chains and these are three places that we haven't been as vegans before so it'll be interesting. It'll be our first experience and we'll be recording it, sharing it with you, sharing with you our thoughts on the food, showing you how to eat vegan at any of these places with their specific tips or hacks or anything you need to do. We've got you covered. So we did put part one out of this video I would say maybe about a month ago. So we went to Denny's, Olive Garden, and Red Robin and that video was I think our most viewed video ever. Link down below if you want to check it out. So we thought it would be fun to do another round of three restaurants so I'm hungry and today where are we? We are going to the Cheesecake Factory. Actually this was highly recommended by you guys. Thank you so much for your suggestion but much to our surprise, is that the right way to say it? There are actually vegan options here. We looked online. We haven't tried them yet so we're going to go inside and explore and see how it goes. I think one of the salads is even called a vegan salad. Oh it's called salad right? Yeah. Okay is it? I don't know. Okay well we'll see. Now that's really all we have to say to introduce this video so let's go to our first place. Here we are. So when was the last time you were at Cheesecake Factory Jasmine? I actually have early 20s. Okay yeah I don't remember the last time I was at one. Oh no actually scratch that. Maybe when I was like 18, 19. Okay. Yeah here we are let's go. Your Medusa jacket. You look like a cobra snake. So we found on the PETA website there is a whole article that was updated in December of 2019 that has a bunch of options. There's actually a lot to choose from. I don't even, I thought it was gonna be a little easier to order but now it's gonna be a little tough because there are too many options. It's a good problem. It's a good thing yeah. So the bread here, the wheat bread has honey in it but the sourdough is vegan so she's gonna bring us a second sourdough. How is it? It's warm. It's very good. So we're definitely getting this just because it's so cool that they even have this. It's a vegan Cobb salad and the burgers are calling our name. They do have a veggie burger. We just have to make sure we don't get the bun because it's made, where is the bun? Oh here we go. It has a brioche bun. Our waitress also let us know that the Impossible Burger here is vegan without any substitutions so the bun is vegan and then they also have vegan cheese that comes default so that's pretty cool too. So our food is here. The Impossible Burger we asked to come with chow cheese then it has a special sauce that is also vegan. All right first, well actually he already bit it for a photo but this is a thick burger like usually Impossible Burgers are a lot thinner so really good. What is the sauce? I think it's like a special sauce like a Thousand Island type feel. Cool. We have the vegan Cobb salad. This looks so tasty and it's really pretty. It's very colorful and then we got the avocado toast which I'm happy it's like very, what's the word? It's not basic which is good. It has a lot of things going on. I don't know where to start here. I'm gonna like, I'm gonna start in the middle. Sunflower seeds, avocado. All right so it looks like there's pickled onions, tomatoes, radishes, arugula. I appreciate the loaded avocado. There's a lot of avocado on here. That's good. I'm actually extremely full right now. That was very filling. I'm impressed too. Yeah it was really good. So number one I was happy to notice that the servers and the wait staff seemed informed on what vegan was so that's very good because some places I know when we went to Danny's people, well the lady kind of looked at us like so we had to like ask and verify and then like check their website so we noticed that the Cheesecake Factory website doesn't have much nutritional information on it or an allergen menu which we thought yeah that was uncommon for like a popular restaurant chain um but they did know that what vegan was and what on the menu was and wasn't vegan so we were able to verify that everything that we got was completely vegan friendly which was really cool. The fact that the Impossible Burger is made vegan by default now it's awesome and yeah that is really cool. Yeah. Sorry. Go for it. And one of the servers in there happened to make our stuffed shells last week. Yeah she's like I follow you guys like oh my gosh but it was cool because she was also able to verify what is actually vegan because she understood um yeah the Cobb salad was great avocado toast I mean it's avocado toast but I love the freaking train I love the fact that they put like the pickled onions the radishes the arugula it was really good with everything on top of it and it was way better than like a basic avocado toast and then the Impossible Burger I mean I feel like the burger is going to be the star of the show so. Totally. The burger was like thicker and like bigger than normal though compared to like another. Yeah it was. It's usually like the Impossible Patty's super thin so that's some girth to it. I also had my mouth open there because I was trying to pretend like I was singing like a train. Oh I didn't even realize that. I realized if the audio for the train isn't in the video people are gonna feel like what the hell are you doing so it's just me being stupid. So I do know that they have a veggie burger as well along with the Impossible Burger so if the Impossible Burger is not something you want to order you can also order their veggie burger just make sure to let them know that you are vegan that one I'm not sure if it comes vegan by default but I don't think it does with the lady didn't say anything true but just make sure you make make sure you make sure make sure you just check on the bread and then check on if there's cheese on it oh here we go um order the veggie burger without cheese or sauces and then ask for the skinny licious bun or lettuce wrap so that's a way to get it vegan but because my thought now is because the Impossible Burger comes on a vegan bun that I think they could just use that one yeah so I guess you can just let them know I'm sure they can do it yeah overall impressive um if you ever have friends or family that want to go to Cheesecake Factory go and get options yeah there are a whole bunch of other things too that we didn't get that I think there's a falafel salad you can modify yeah if you look at this list on PETA it's pretty extensive you can see there's so many options to choose from um that are vegan we were gonna get a lentil salad but they didn't have lentil soup lentil soup yeah they didn't have it today so I don't know if that's a common thing or when they don't I guess it's kind of like a rotating thing but the soup wasn't vegan today but I don't even think we need it oh yeah we couldn't even finish our food we have like half a salad left and some toast but we did finish the burger because that was good all right now we are going to try to find a place to work in this area um and then we'll see you guys for the next meal so we lost the introduction we did for Melting Pot so we're going to redo it right now um but basically for the second restaurant we're going to the Melting Pot and if you don't know what the Melting Pot is it's like a fondue restaurant so usually the first course is like a cheese fondue type thing and then the entree you like cook your own it's like white people shabu shabu good job but yeah so basically they bring like a broth bowl or like oil out and it's like in a melt in a pot and you basically like cook your food in it so yeah there's a hot plate in front of you and then there's a pot for every course it's like a double boiler yeah with different things so the first one like it says cheese and then broth and then um the last one is chocolate and then you it's dessert so that's where we're going for the second um restaurant and we actually wanted to go here because we found out they had a vegan menu which kind of blew my mind i've never actually been to the Melting Pot but my perception of it was just cheese like i just was like oh they do a lot of cheese things there so we probably can't go there but somewhere or another you came across the vegan menu so we knew we had to include it in this video and um yeah we're going to share our first experience we're going to show you everything that is included in the menu and yeah that's it let's go i'm excited here we are can we see when we walk in we're not even in yet but like right outside the door vegan menu just sat down we're in our little uh corner here like zoom out we could we just kept walking and walking i didn't realize how big this place was the very last table in the corner here you are all right they put us back here here's the menu but i think there's i don't know where i think the vegan menu might be separate let's see let me check in here i think that's the wine list oh yeah i think we're gonna have to ask yeah yeah so here's the vegan menu this is what we saw outside um they don't give it to you when you first sit down you have to ask for it but it is a four course experience and um they have a vegan cheese they have one vegan cheese you choose a salad the entree there's only one entree and then we have to choose a cooking style which we haven't decided on we don't i don't know if i want to do the that one because it's just frying everything um so we just have to choose between the broth and the mojo style which the guy said might be a little spicy i don't know so i'll let you know what we choose so we ordered the vegetable broth because the guy said that the mojo was a little spicy and i can't really do spicy so is that why you chose that one i don't know chris ordered so got that we got both the salads we can both try it and then there's only one entree option so we just each got the same thing we got the fondue the cheese because there's only one option and then they did have a deep fry version but he recommended not getting it because the tempura here is not vegan and he said it would just be vegetables and i agree so we'll see we'll see how it goes i don't know so the waiter just came to check if we wanted honey in our bread they have one bread option that does have honey so since we said we wanted the vegan menu he just wanted to double check that we didn't want the honey bread so appreciate that so he's i'm excited you get vegan bread the guy like the guy was saying they give you chips too since they only have one vegan bread so i mean chips is always a win right so we got granny smith apples we got some what do you say pretzels and french bread oh there's pretzels in here pretzel bread oh pretzel bread and french bread oh so there are two vegan breads we got some chips some carrots celery tomatoes and he said this is called liquid gold for a reason it's going to be very hot so be careful and also make sure to bring your plate over there so that you don't get any cheese on the table because then it'll end up on our elbows and we don't want that get that close-up shot i'm so pumped wow i'm excited be very careful seriously he just melted it i'm scared delicious i don't know about apples i'm gonna do the apples try it okay it's really good he cries he's got a green apple here it's not bad it's sour but it kind of goes together right no yeah it definitely goes together but it's just not my kind of combination like a bread and cheese all right so we got our salads i got the we got a house salad and a california salad do we know which one's which babe i feel like they look very similar california this is the house okay he also brought this um garlic and wine seasoning he said to put on the salad but he said be careful little goes a long way so yeah that's what we're starting i know it's just a salad but this is pretty good how's yours good did you put this stuff on it no i'm about to remember a little goes a long way i'm not usually a fruity vinaigrette kind of i like it it's like a raspberry it's tart i like it this is my first time at a melting pot and i just want to say even though we so we completed round one round two is on its way and the guy the guy was like i called him rounds then we're gonna have he said round one and round two short intermission um but it's really fun i'm enjoying this this is cool thank you this is just vegetable broth but it smells so good it's very herbaceous we also saw on the vegan menu it can be made entirely gluten-free as well so perfect option for gluten-free and vegan obviously six different sauces however our only two vegan friendly sauces are going to be our signature ginger plum sauce which is going to be on our right and of course our teriyaki glaze cool vegan entrees for us very cool i'm sorry i'm a little ocd the way that i stack things better for the video cheat sheet of sorts on the table it tells you how long to cook things so obviously we're just doing tofu and vegetables so they are on the second and third line up there and then we have the sauces here so we have the ginger plum and the teriyaki glaze which are both vegan and then when we go through our table here so mushrooms tofu meatless meatballs artichokes um asparagus and mushrooms got some more mushrooms broccoli and some potatoes chris has the same thing edamame and then the two sauces i was talking about earlier potatoes going in make sure you take your spoon out so it doesn't conduct heat cooking for about 10 minutes what else do you want to put in i feel like we should stick a bunch of things in there yeah veggie meatball the guy said it's a hundred percent plant don't worry all right let's try the teriyaki what is it do you know what brand that is i i'm not sure i feel like you would have better experience taste familiar but i'm not sure you don't want it i do i'm just giving you extra food yeah the mushrooms are done we should take them out they're super soft are you meditating that's good that's hot dessert came and for this we have some bananas berries and pineapple and usually they serve things like brownies and pound cake but since we're vegan this is a vegan option and i actually prefer it because i was really full at this point and we just have a vegan dark chocolate here nothing special nothing out of the ordinary but it's cool it's vegan so once this melts we're just gonna dig in you can't go wrong with melted chocolate and fruit i'm like tired from chewing so we just got home from melting pot and i thought it was pretty good it was better than i had i thought it was going to be honestly yeah the fact that they had like a vegan cheese fondue and like yeah totally it was that was cool i personally thought it wasn't worth the 45 i don't know i don't know i think it's more just like a special occasion kind of thing it definitely wasn't like it was an experience i guess but i mean like food wise yeah it definitely wasn't 45 dollars worth of food or anything but i think the fact that like you cook it yourself and i don't know i think yeah it's like a date night or like a special occasion kind of place so and the fact i guess the fact that you can go there as a vegan and eat and like enjoy kind of what the non-vegans are eating and have like a special experience without sacrificing you could tell they put effort into it which i definitely and the staff was very like happy yeah accommodating i was gonna say like happy about it too like the guy was so pumped they were getting the vegan one and he was actually telling us stories about he actually dated this girl she was vegan and she introduced him to all these vegan things so he knew what he was talking about yeah it was cool yeah yeah so it was still pretty good um oh the chocolate and the strawberry that was that was really good the fact that they not only had tofu but they had veggie meatballs was pretty cool i don't know what meatballs they were called poplets right veggie poplets i have no idea i don't know what brand it is or anything i feel like i've never actually tried those before i feel like it was a weird thing to put and boil into like yeah i wouldn't think of putting a meatball into there yeah i guess that would be good but with what we had the meatball was a little weird but overall it was a cool experience um i had a fun date night that was cute and it was really cool that we can go to a place like that have a full vegan menu vegan cheese that isn't daya yeah that's all i really gotta say pardon the light we are in the car right now we're about to head into pf chang's and we just drove an hour an hour from vancouver to beaverton in order to get some pf chang so needless to say we're starving i actually feel a little sick i was watching videos on my phone which is not a good idea i'm sorry i think it'll go away i think i just need some water and like fresh air a little bit oh my god yeah anyways um wait i'm looking at the wrong place there's the lens we looked online there are actually quite a few vegan options to get here one of them in particular i am very excited about the lettuce wraps also we just want to say it is night time it is dinner time we don't know how the light is going to be in there we're going to try our best right now if i need to whip out my flash on my phone i'm going to do it so chris can film we're probably going to make a scene in there if i need to take pictures in the bathroom i'll do it it looks crowded too so let's just go here we are oh that's great oh is there a flash on yeah you like put it right in my eye it did block the shot on the plane the concentration gotta get the shot you know all right our lettuce wraps came oh these are always like fun they're like styrofoam what is it actually and we have two dipping sauces and a little boat can go steaming this is everything you brings you right back it is a lot of crunchy things it is good clearly it was good because chris cleaned it it's either we were really hungry or it was really good i think it's good yeah we were really hungry thank you thank you if you guys want i can take these that smells so good what's in it there's tomatoes squash peppers cilantro cauliflower mushrooms green beans it's like it's a yellow curry red cream red curry okay i'll try it it's supposed to be like a there's like two pieces of tofu and we also waited like 45 minutes kind of disappointing looks decent yeah it still looks good but let's see let's see how it goes which where do i bite the tofu that's sad i gotta like mix the sauce it's sad i was really excited for it and i thought it was gonna be great the the tofu wraps like really set us set a high expectation those were really good that was coming up the curry wasn't bad i would like if we were to go again and i like spicy things i would get it again i think the curry was okay i don't know compared to other curries yeah we've had but like i feel like as a curry itself it wasn't terrible that's true buddha feast was not good there was like look like four little tiny pieces of tofu in it it was like they got two cubes of tofu and then cut them all into like thin like squares and then just sprinkled it all over it was really strange um not even that it was like maybe one key was dispersed i don't know it was weird i'd like to go again try something else see how it goes also the service is really slow and weird the service is really weird when chris asked the guy about the tofu he's like oh i think they're supposed to get tofu in here and the guy like grabbed my spoon and started like looking through my food he's like oh here's one here it is he had to like search he was like lifting all the vegetables and then i was like oh that's what you're saying you want more and then i'm like yeah i guess and then jasmine's like oh it's okay and then he's like oh okay he's like she doesn't want it so we're like yeah and then he just laughed it was so weird it was such a weird conversation and anyway whatever i'd never like to be that person but it was like unless it was really bad i wouldn't have said something but it was like he literally had to like dig it was not where they started digging through my food i felt weird about that that was i don't know if they're supposed to do that absolutely not so well that was our pf change experience we don't know if we just got the wrong thing or if pf change i don't know some of the other menu items look good yeah i'd be down to go again the buddhist feast looked good in the photo that's true it didn't look like it did which is usually what happens um i don't want to like set high expectations for like fast casual places that's true but um i definitely think next time i want to try the other tofu i forgot what it's the maypoi that one looked good in the photos at least i feel like that was kind of it yeah oh they had like the sides yeah they had green beans and asparagus but we did get a lot of food the only thing is there's only two of us and we don't want to order everything on the menu because for one thing it's just a lot of money it's kind of expensive and then another thing i don't want to waste food i don't want to have like a ton of leftovers we do a lot of food videos obviously like you watch our channel we do a lot of food videos through the week we cook recipes we film things and we were thinking about bringing other people along with us so we can get more food and try more things so yeah so that's something we'll be next time considering in the future yeah you guys want us to include more people let us know so out of the three places what would you say was your favorite or like where would you go again let's rank them in order right okay so let's okay number one ready set go cheesecake factory for sure number two ready number three ready set go pf chang's but sad so that was fun yeah um as usual if you guys have any recommendations for the next video for places to go leave them down below we still have a whole list from the other videos that we've been asking yeah part three will be coming probably within the next month or so just because these are fun to film and it's cool yeah it's cool to get a perspective and see what's out there and so our goal is just to show people that vegan is accessible and you can eat vegan at places that you ate before you were vegan or at places where your non-vegan friends want to go and you're invited to and you don't want to be that person you know and nowadays it's so much easier to eat vegan at these places um i think they're changing totally i think the coolest thing was that cheesecake factory when so originally when i got the impossible burger you had to order it protein style they didn't have vegan cheese vegan sauce or a vegan bun and now they have all of those things it just goes to show you when you show the demand for a product or like when the consumer shows the demand then the company will deliver so that is all for today's video i hope you enjoyed this video if you did please give it a thumbs up if you aren't subscribed subscribe down below hit the bell for post notifications we post videos every wednesday and friday i'm jasmine we're working on this whole talking over each other thing i think we're getting better yeah scroll back we'll start watching our earlier videos when i first started thank you this is fun just don't