Please note that since writing this blog post, Dophert has closed down
It’ll come as no surprise to anyone who knows about my pork fetish (think ribs, pork belly, chorizo… these are a few of my favourite things) that the prospect of going vegan is the stuff of nightmares. It’s not that I need to eat meat at every mealtime – I don’t. It’s just that I don’t really like depriving myself of anything – especially when the dreaded “dietary requirements” rule out not only meat, but also fish, eggs, dairy…
So it was with some trepidation that I entered Dophert – a new vegan café in my Amsterdam buurt. I contemplated the menu: could I face a cappuccino without “real” milk? Nope. Could I deal with a club sandwich whose “bacon” was made of tempeh? No again. And what about the cakes and pastries made with neither butter nor eggs? You’ve got to be kidding me. Nope, vegan I will never be… But there is one exception: while meatless chilli con carne completely gets my goat (it’s called “carne” for a reason, people!), I’m perfectly happy to eat a vegan meal that never happened to include animal products in the first place.
