Vegan Eats

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Hot Beans is open! Today was day 4 and neither one of us has had much time to breath over the last week or so since the soft open/launch party last Wednesday evening. Speaking of which, the soft open was crazy. From 7 o’clock onwards there was a lineup from the cash register to the door. Insane. We ran out of food in about two and a half hours! All in all, it was a success, although I just wish we had been able to feed some of our closer friends that came later. That was kind of a bummer.

The opening weekend was a lot busier than we expected, which was awesome and very encouraging. We weren’t completely ran off our feet, but all three of us definitely had our work cut out for us (I only speak in idioms now). Maddy’s doughnuts are flying off the counter, we can barely keep up with the demand. All the tacos and burritos seem to be selling pretty consistently, especially the peanut-miso seitan ‘chorizo’ burrito. Now I just have to keep my clumsy self from cutting my hands up anymore with all the prep we have everyday. I’ve definitely been jealous of Scott’s knife skills each time I nearly cut my finger nail off this past weekend.

Anyway, in the slideshow above are some awesome photos my good friend and photographer extraordinaire, Brooks took at the big soft open celebration. I’ve been really stoked to find that friends of ours have been showing us a lot of love, not only by coming to the restaurant for eats, but by giving us shout outs on the bloggosphere. Big thanks to Lauren, Sarah, and Dave! Check ‘em out. Also, our twitter followers have been sending us lots of love too, which is super encouraging. Maddy is very twitter attentive with the iPad we have at the restaurant, which I’m infinitely grateful for; it’s such a wicked to tool to keep people in the loop about all the happenings at Hot Beans!

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Hello, Internet friends! I have some more news for you. Exciting developments, to say the least. My roomie, Warren, with the help of our friend, Mikael (another awesome photographer), photoed our food for promo shots the other night. Warren also did a series of portraits of Team Hot Beans that we’ll include in our press kit along with the food shots. All the pics turned out amazing (obvs) and all these consummate masters of photography demanded for payment was a case of beer! Team Hot Beans is infinitely grateful. Cheers, guys.

In other related news, the restaurant space is getting close. The renovations are almost all done and it’s starting to really look like a restaurant. It’s so great to see everything get closer and closer to the picture we had in our mind’s eye when we first signed the lease! Another big ups to our MacGyver, Brendan. Also, all the rest of the big appliances have been delivered and arranged into their places on the line. We still have a few big things to check off our list, but it’s getting close, friends! Spread the word!

p.s…. and I mean, P.S. In case you hadn’t noticed from the above photo slide show, we’re doing doughnuts. Maddy is a wizard with baked goods. It’s insane. Fried vegan doughnuts. Get excited.

No recipe today. Just a few exciting updates for all of you out there in the bloggosphere. As mentioned in my last post, I’m opening up a vegan takeout restaurant in Kensington Market. My partners and I still have a lot of work to do before we’re up and running, but things are really seeming to be coming together and we’re hoping for a late February or early March open. As you can see from above, we got our finalized logo back from our designer/artist extraordinaire, Laine Greenway. We’re super pleased with it; I think it’s really going to look great hanging outside our storefront on a cool looking wooden panel. Everything else at the restaurant space is coming along nicely, as our MacGyver-like reno guy, Brendan, is making good use of his highly competent handy-man skills (something Scott and I certainly do NOT possess). Scott and I more or less finalized and costed the menu last night, which was very exciting. I must say, it’s looking pretty good.

One last thing! I have a few interweb links for you all to check out. Both Eye Weekly and Taste TO gave us a couple of shout outs, which should help with the pre-open buzz. Make sure you follow our Twitter page to stay up to date on everything. Expect near daily updates. Also, check out our Facebook page!