A Magical Menu

The Chef: Barry Jones Horton

The Menu: An incredible, three-course delight from our star guest chef. We started with a perfect kale salad that featured pomegranate seeds, sliced persimmons, sprouted mung beans, red onion, and a fresh lemon vinaigrette. We take kale salad pretty seriously around the VNHQ, and this one blew us away. Then, we dined on tofu skewers with a citrus-peanut sauce served over rice with citrus as well. Um, we could have pretty much eaten this sauce on everything in our lives forever. Really. Though we sadly didn't get a photo of it, dessert was an amazing chocolate tart covered coconut-coffee crème, which pretty much made us die.

The Goods: If there's anything we like better than having guests (which we like a LOT, for the record), it's having fancy chef guests who cook for us! Barry is the former Executive Chef of The Ravens restaurant, and he recently moved to the Bay Area, where he's working on starting up a catering business called Local Love. Yes, we will keep you posted. Yes, as soon as you can you should book him for something, because, um, did you see that sauce? Ridiculous.

Tasty Testing

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: There's a lot going on here, so we'll take it one step at a time. Ready? Okay, first up top there you see a bowl of laksa, a savory Singaporean soup with rice noodles, tofu, scallions, cucumber, and sprouts. Moving counterclockwise (there's a reason, trust us) we have a barbequed tempeh skewer bathed in velvety peanut sauce. To lighten things up, a small cucumber salad with fresh mint and soy sauce-based dressing. Finally, a dessert (see—dessert should be last, there's the reason) couscous infused with dried fruit, toasted almonds, and cinnamon.

The Goods: Wondering what prompted this culinary collage? The secret component that all these dishes have in common is: the July+August issue! That's right, the recipes for all these delightful edibles will soon be yours. Well, just as soon as the end of June rolls around, and you get your hands on a copy of VegNews! Until then, we hope this photo supplies a sufficient stand-in.