For our Saturday adventure, Kathleen and I reached for a little bit of tradition and took a nice walk west through Centretown (where we live), Chinatown, Hintonburg, and ended up in Wellington West before turning around for a bus back home.

If perhaps a little familiar, we more than made up for it with a few new places to stop.

First on the list was Ahh Coffee, where the drinks are both fantastic and inventive. We both had veganized choices¹ from The Future menu and took a seat in the sort of hybrid art gallery space and cafe and were very happy with what we were given!

From there were some familiar stops, including Maker House and Spaniel’s Tale, where I picked up two books, including Brandi Bird’s Pitiful, and Renee Gladman’s My Lesbian Novel. After a good long browse in the book store, it was just about time for lunch, and we were in the right spot.

Next to Spaniel’s Tale is Banh Mi Yes, who, the moment I learned that they have vegan options, proposed that we give them a try. Kathleen had never tried Banh Mi before, and while I already knew I loved the Vietnamese sandwiches, was anxious to taste how they turned out when made vegan.

We were not disappointed! We purchased one vegan pork and one vegan chicken one, exchanging halves. While we enjoyed both of them greatly, I think the chicken might had had a slight edge for both of us. We also committed to try the tofu next time we visit!

Once we were finished our delicious lunch, we continued west. Kathleen had found a skirt online at Victoire that she wanted to try on. While in the end, we came away empty-handed, it was still a lovely store which neither of us had visited for some time.

And finally, no walk out to Wellington West would have been complete without a stop in at Bread By Us! While there was a line as usual, one of the neighbourhood cats kept us entertained as we imagined a little dialogue where it made fun of us for waiting in line when there were so many bugs to be catching!

Now, normally we would have stopped in for a focaccia (still our favourite in the city), but this time, we decided on a sourdough. Our dinner was a dill pickle tofu spread on toast and focaccia did not seem to be the right bread choice. Although we do not have a powered food processor (just a manual one) and our spread was nowhere near as smooth as shown on the recipe, it turned out delicious all the same and we will be making it again!

Please, sun, I’m begging you. Visit us again! ☀️

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1. Kathleen had one called Foster Chaild, which was a chai drink and mine was It’s a Double Rainbow, which was a Thai tea drink, both with oat milk and bananamallow syrup. ↩︎