Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Whole Foods: Vegan Cheese Pizza

I like to shop at my neighborhood Whole Foods Market for vegan staples. No, their prices aren’t always the most competitive, but they always have my favorite vegan cheese and faux meat products in stock. 
Still—it never occurred to me that I could order a phony pepperoni and vegan cheese pizza to-go from their wood burning oven.

Duh.

On a recent trip to Austin, my buddy Andy edified me on the art of making this happen. The exchange was quite comical.

Andy: Can you guys make me a vegan cheese pizza?

Pizza Guy: Um—we can make a vegan pizza, but not with cheese.

Andy: But you guys sell vegan cheese here, right?

Pizza Guy: Yeah...

Andy: Um—so put some on it.

Pizza Guy: Okay.

It was that simple.

So I decided to try my new trick at the Whole Foods in Lakewood. Here’s how it works in Dallas:

Pick out your favorite faux meat toppings and vegan cheese from the cold case. Take your selections to the pizzeria (by the prepped foods area). Order away. We asked our pizza specialista to get creative with our pie, so she loaded it up with phony pepperoni, FYH Vegan Gourmet, and all sorts of veggies.

Pizzas bake in about 15-20 minutes—just enough time to get your shopping done. Once you pick up your cheesy concoction, you’ll be handed the empty faux meat and cheese packages to pay for separately. Grab yourself a bottle of wine, and check out as usual.

Dinner is done.





The pizza was awesome - but in the future, I might ask our pizza maker to dice the cheese a little finer for more even melting.

 

10 comments:

Drew said...

Great idea, Eddie! Care to weigh in on the never ending crust debate: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/cityofate/2009/07/question_of_the_week_which_sty.php ???

Drew said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jamey said...

Thanks Eddie - this is probably going to be dinner on Friday.

Drew - as for crust - for me, I'm always on the fence. Usually just depends on the mood I'm in as far as the thick-style vs. cracker crust.

Luckily with this option, we have the thin-crust covered at Pizza by Marco, and now a more thick-crust version at WF.

Unknown said...

I never thought of asking for that. Looking forward to the new Whole Foods opening on Park Ln in January. Thanks for the 411.

Eddie G said...

Yeah, I'm with Jamey on this one. It really all depends on my mood :)

bc said...

Excellent idea - never thought of asking them to do that. I just usually order cheeseless pizzas for delivery, but I will say that I love a plethora of veggies on my pizza as you apparently do per the picture, but when you have to go cheeseless, there's nothing to hold it all on there, so you end up with a mess. Going the vegan cheese route is a win/win.

Proud Parent of a Bumper Sticker Maker said...

How did payment work? Did you pay for the soy products before giving them to the pizza guy?

Also, there's a restaurant that I think is close to opening on Arapaho in Richardson really close to Veggie Cafe called "Felafel Restaurant" that says vegetarian and vegan on one of its signs.

Eddie G said...

Hey Proud Parent of a Bumper Sticker Maker (great name, BTW!)-

We paid for the soy products separately when we checked out.

And thanks for the tip :)

Anonymous said...

Good Lord, that looks fantastic!

Jamey said...

HUGE news!...I'm not sure if this will be a regular occurrence, but when I brought my vegan cheese to the counter to get a pizza to go, they said they didn't need cheese. They already had the vegan cheese in the back and they put it on - no extra charge!!!

WF Lakewood Rocks!