Vegan Oktoberfest

Vegan Oktoberfest

Last Saturday, October 4th, we were lucky enough to be hanging out at LA's first Vegan Oktoberfest! It was amazing. Rows of beer tents, adorable tasting steins, German-inspired vegan food, and THOUSANDS of other vegans. A place I wish I could hang out ALL the time, frankly. We're pals with the folks who ran the event and they hooked us up with preferred parking so we could get in early and munch, meet, and photograph everything.

After a warm but not overly unexpected 20 minute wait in line upon arrival, we got our tickets scanned and were given our adorable 4-oz beer-tasting stein.  We entered the gates and were amazed. So many vegans in ONE PLACE! And so much BEER! Seriously, paradise. We would've been happy with the food options alone! Your beer stein could be filled (presumably) an unlimited amount of times, all you had to do was wait in line. The food lines were considerably longer and slower-moving than the beer lines though, so often one of us would wait in line for food and the other would run around getting beer samples. 

There were several food trucks (including the Grilled Cheese Truck & the Green Truck) selling Germain faire like veggie brats & sauerkraut-filled sandwiches, and a number of booths selling baked goods, non-dairy cheeses, vegan ice cream, lemonade, pretzels, and fried dough.

They're were some awesome outfits to be seen at the 'fest, both homemade and otherwise. These cute couples were adorable AND willing to let me photograph them. They rocked. And seriously- coolest outfit ideas!

We tried the 'Sloppy Otto' jackfruit, sauerkraut, and grilled onion sandwich, a Field Roast veggie sausage with spicy mustard and pickles, some 'bierocks'- ground Beyond Meat sausage crumbles cooked with carrots and onions and seasoned, plus some seriously AMAZING 'beer cheese' from Nary Dairy. For dessert we noshed an apple cinnamon raisin roll with glaze from Life is Sweet Bakery and some dairy-free blueberry ice cream from Kind Kreme. Oh, and a lot of beer- but after so many taster cups, I vowed to not even try and remember which one had been which.

And in case you couldn't tell from our Homemade Chick'n Salad recipe, we LOVE LOVE LOVE Beyond Meat. They're an awesome company making amazing meatless meats, and they're pretty damn friendly too. We met up with our friend Justin, head of their Twitter account, and ate some of their beer-soaking bierocks, a puff pastry filled with faux meat crumbles (pictured above). They were handing out coupons and chatting up visitors, and we were happy to have stolen a minute of Justin's time to hear about some new products they've got in the works. All we can say is...GET READY. Beyond Meat is about to take it to a whole new level!

After all the beer and food, we were stuffed. Though there ended up being a bit of an oversold ticket problem, the people in charge offered refunds to anyone affected promptly. And just look at all those beer-drinkin' vegans! Our only suggestion for next year? A bigger venue. LA has so many people willing to come eat delicious food and drink delicious beer, imagine how crazy awesome an extra couple thousand people would be?! SO MUCH good vegan press! All we can say is...PROST!! For more on the event and next year's ticket sales: VeganOktoberfest.com.