Are the Veggie Burgers at Bobby's Burger Palace Vegan?

The short answer is a resounding no.

I emailed Bobby's Burger Palace's customer service about their vegan options, as they provide no nutritional information online, and this was their response:

Picture from their twitter httpshttps://twitter.com/bobbysburgerpal

"Hello Naomi. My name is Jim and i am one of  the area managers for Bobby's burger palace.

1st as of right now we do not have any specific nutritional information regarding our products. The info I do have for you is that our fries and all of our sides are fried in canola oil. The salt we use is kosher salt and contains no dairy but the sauce that is served on the side does. The onion rings contain buttermilk.  Our veggie burger contains our BBQ sauce as 1 of the ingredients which contains honey, It is also basted with egg and dredged in quinoa flour before cooking. You can always ask for that part of the procedure to be skipped but the honey cannot be omitted. 

Other vegan options include our Chopped Crunch Salad, Super Kale Salad and our Palace Quinoa Salad but all do contain some sort of cheese. The dressings that we offer also contain either honey or pomegranate Molasses. Hope this was helpful. Thanks." 

I appreciate the detailed response, so thank you, Jim, that was more information than I expected.  I really do appreciate that they took the time to give me a complete answer.

I am disappointed that their only vegan option are french fries.  Maybe I should have messaged back to say if the salads have cheese, then they're not vegan. I feel like all these Food Network chefs are in cahoots with Big Pharm, working hard to keep us all sick.  Here...let me show you how to make unhealthy food!  Let me feed you unhealthy food at our restaurants!  Everything's better with butter and bacon!  Oh, now you're diabetic and have high cholesterol?  Go talk to our friends at Big Pharm!  I wonder if they get kickbacks...  All alleged and all my opinions, don't sue me.  Do we still have first amendment rights?  Yeesh.

Yay, no dairy in the salt like certain movie theatres.  And yay, they don't fry their french fries in beef fat or anything weird.  But all their salads have cheese?  Why is there honey in everything?  How don't people know that honey doesn't have the health benefits it used to?  And most importantly what is the point of a veggie burger that isn't vegan, and if you include the entire process, isn't even vegetarian?  (Yes, I know there are sub-groups of vegetarians that eat eggs, but sorry, that's not actually vegetarian.  But feel free to identify as whatever and call yourself whatever.  I'm not trying to argue about it, I'm just happy you're not eating meat.)

I also take issue with restaurants that don't make this type of information readily available on their website.  If you're proud of your menu, then be transparent...  It should be required that all menus make notations for eggs, dairy, and gluten at the very least.

Anyway, I'll continue to steer clear of this place.  I hear TGIFridays may start carrying Beyond Burgers.  Or I'll just buy them and make a burger at home.  Making a good burger isn't rocket science, and definitely doesn't need to include eggs or honey.

Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA: Week 13 Pennington Premium Boxed Share

This week we picked up: 

spaghetti squash, potatoes, parsley, summer squash, heirloom tomatoes, peppers, hot peppers, slicing tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, snap beans and a leek.

Things have been hectic, and there has been some food waste.  I hate food waste.  I have to get on top of using these veggies.  Thank goodness for the tomatoes.  My garden has been a mess this year thanks to the rain.  I need to pickle these bell peppers or freeze them, we can't eat them fast enough.  I've also been super sucky drying or freezing the herbs.  That's been annoying.  They're such nice bunches and I'm letting them go to waste.  And I have no clue what I'll do with the leek.  I braised them using a Martha Stewart recipe a million years ago, I may have to dig that up.

In terms of the CSA, I will say on weeks that I'm not cooking as much, it's been hard to use things up before they go bad.  I'm also on the fence regarding value.  At about $26 a week, I'm not sure it's worth it.  Also, having to get there early because some crappy person is either taking things out of boxes, or perhaps swapping stuff so they get the bigger produce, is annoying.  

The PYO (pick your own) stuff has seemed good with tomatoes, peppers, okra, herbs and flowers being offered.  But knowing that just because they list a pint and a half of something in the morning, that when I drive an hour there, it'll be down to only a half pint make it not worth it.  The whole situation with the PYO has really left a sour taste in my mouth about the CSA at Honey Brook.  If their attitude was more, "Thank you for telling us, that is something we'll work to correct" as opposed to "Sorry if that happened to you once...sorry YOU had such an EXTREME issue..."  Okay, that's not a direct quote, but you get the gist.  They acted as if I were making up a problem that didn't exist... If you post a quart, then it should be a quart.  If half way through the day, you have to reduce that to a pint, fine...but not right after you post it.  And to always reduce the amount you can pick on weekends...I mean come on.  Box share people can't come during the week, we shouldn't be penalized because I have to work and can only come on weekends.

Whateves.  I was so excited about this CSA, and now I'm getting more and more blah.

Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA: Week 11 and 12 Pennington Premium Boxed Share

I forgot to take a picture of the veggies from last week.  We were on vacation, had grabbed the box, threw everything in the fridge and ran back out the door. Sorry.  Here's a list of what we got: 

Cherry Tomatoes, Onions, Potatoes, Parsley, Chard, Heirloom Tomatoes, Shallots, Slicing Tomatoes, Summer Squash, Peppers, Watermelon.

Then last Tuesday, we went and picked up our Week 12 box.

Eggplant, Potatoes, Parsley, Sage, Chard, Heirloom Tomatoes, Peppers, Hot Peppers, Slicing Tomatoes, Cherry Tomatoes

If you want to see what we're going with our box, you should follow me on Instagram.  I made a black rice with bloody mary tomato salad from Anna Jones' book A Modern Way to Cook.  I also fried up a bunch of eggplant slices using panko and VeganEgg by Follow Your Heart.  I served it with a simple tomato, garlic, onion sauce for a quick weeknight dinner.

We even did some veggie sushi with tomato "tuna," mirin and rice vinegar pickled peppers, and carrot lox.  Nothing tasted really fishy, but everything was really good.

Sorry again for posting everything late.  In addition to the vacation, I was remodeling the bathroom.  I'll post links to that later.  I'll try to get Week 13 out on Wednesday.