Maggianos

A couple of weekends ago, the in-laws were in town and we went to a lovely Italian restaurant in Austin called Maggianos http://www.maggianos.com/en/Pages/Home.aspx in South Austin.  I spent a few months in Italy when I was in college so I have a warm place in my heart for REAL Italian food (not cheese soaked pasta dishes you get here) so I was excited to be be there.  Awesome place.  But not at all vegan-friendly.  As a good vegan does, we bombarded the cashier with vegan questions and began to order...the cashier, a 20-something-plays-videogames-and-drinks-chocolate-milk-and-wears-the-same-shirt-for-days-on-end kinda guy says challengingly, "the Pizza's NOT vegan."  Incredulous, I say, "Really? It has milk?"  "No", he replies, "It has YEAST!"  I shake my head and say "It's OK" and he just stands there, not entering my order into the register and looks at me (ready for a fight)..."It is a living ORGANISM".  I just have to laugh, and retort "I am not here to argue, I am just trying to feed my family".

I really don't mind being challenged like that...but it is funny that a person who clearly is not vegan and in fact clearly was anti-vegan would seemingly worry about the well-being of single celled organisms.  If we had to worry about critters as small as yeast, gosh, I couldn't sip water from a glass that wasn't recently sterilized for fear I might ingest a bacterium!

Good food though...what was vegan!  LOVED and I mean LOVED and will FANTASIZE about the marinated olives, zucchini and eggplant in the refrigerated section...drooooollll....we had some decent pizza that the kiddos loved and the husband loved his pasta dish.  All in all a very nice visit!