The Vegan Duchess is a raw, vegan, and organic quick-serve “food counter” located just north of Eglinton Avenue on Yonge Street. I refer to it as a food counter because it’s a small space, with a take-out counter, a grab and go fridge and a shelf lined with packaged raw snacks. The space is new, clean and bright, and there is a small high table along the window at the front where you can stand and eat, if you don’t want to take out.
I was happy to make it to try this spot for lunch on their opening day, since it’s walking distance from my school. The menu is small but great, as they consulted one of my favourite chefs, Doug McNish on the development and making of the dishes. You can enjoy everything from Caesar salad to a raw lasagna made with zucchini noodles, fresh marinara and cashew cheese, but I enjoyed one of my favourite raw dishes, the soft shell tacos. I love the flavour combination of the walnut crumble, chunky guacamole, lettuce, southwest tomato and chia seed salsa, and cashew crème all together inside a soft shell raw taco shell. I also really enjoyed my smoothie, which could have been a meal, but I treated it as a dessert. It was awesmazing with banana, raw cacao, coconut oil, almond milk, vanilla beans, and maple syrup.
This new spot gets added to the list of other great healthy places in the Yonge and Eglinton neighbourhood like Greenhouse Juice, Fresh (who have a new line of organic juices in glass bottles!) and the Raw Juice Co.
I hope that the people running The Vegan Duchess can serve the area well and make people happy, because one thing is for sure – we all need more organic, clean food as fast food!
