Global Vegan Waffle Party 2010: Highlights from Other Cities

June 11, 2010

This was a very exciting year for the Global Vegan Waffle Party, with around 70 hosts signing up for events. Many thanks to all who participated, either by hosting, attending, telling a friend, or even simply joining the Facebook Vegan Waffles page.

What made this year particularly great was the variety of ways in which people hosted parties, and the variety of ways in which they had impact. Some of you truly raised the bar a few notches. There’s not room to discuss all of the events here, but following are some highlights that hosts have submitted. A few details on earlier parties are in earlier posts here and on the Facebook page. We’ll be featuring more of the photos here in the near future!

Amber M. and Cafe Green in Washington, DC leveraged their event to raise some funds for the Louisiana Gulf Response Involvement Team.

Dallas and the Animal Rights Coalition in Minneapolis wrote, “We rented a park building and had about 50 people show up. The line was out the door and we had to make multiple trips to the store to get more flour, soy milk, oil, etc, because people just kept coming and needing more waffles! We had a great time, this was the first vegan event for many people, and folks had a lot of fun.” She posted some party photos, and thanks to her for the delicious photo of raspberries in this post.

Derek G. of The Vegan Bus lamented that he “flaked on organizing a party, but did celebrate with a waffle date.” He made “Vegan Smlove Waffles” incorporating flavors from one of Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s dessert recipes, and posted some mouth-watering photos on his blog.

Earl B. and the Tokyo Vegan Meetup reported, “The Tokyo Vegan Waffle Party was a success! We had 15 people in total and made some interesting waffles. The strangest one would have to be Wasabe waffles. Wasabe is a Japanese spice (very hot). We also made Taiyaki. It’s a traditional Japanese cake type thing. It’s usually not vegan but of course ours were. Ironically it’s in the shape of a fish.” He posted a Facebook album with some pics of the crazy fish waffles.

Elaine & Vegas Veg* Meetup hosted a Vegan Chick’n & Waffles Pool Party with several great recipes, and received a few compliments that the host “makes a mean waffle.”

Vegas Veg Vegan waffle, courtesy of Elaine Vigneault
A Vegas vegan waffle (Elaine V.)

Heather S-D and Leah F. in Fort Wayne, IN featured a range of activities at their outdoor event, and obtained several business sponsors to raise some funds. “We served around 200 people that day a breakfast of vegan waffles, tofu scramble, Rice Milk and vegan spring rolls. We also had 2 cooking demos to teach people how to make the tofu scramble and vegan blueberry muffins. It was a great day indeed. Looking forward to another great event next year!”

Ida, Noah, and Veg Out NYC featured a variety of waffles at their event, including Chocolate Beer Waffles, Yeast-Raised Cornmeal Chili-Dippin’ Waffles, Naked Vegan Waffles, and Sweet Yeast-Raised Waffles. They also tried some crazy topping/flavor combinations. Attendee comments on Meetup included, “The perfect hosts” and “This menu is blowing me away!”

Jess at Cruelty Free WA drew dozens of guests into their Western Australian shop with the sweet smell of freshly baked vegan waffles. Some of the photos feature guests with entertaining t-shirts. She reported, “We had a fantastic day, all up between 70 and 80 people came through the door during the four hour period. We met up with some regulars and chatted with a lot of new faces. The smell was fantastic and we had people from the Oxfam shop down the road come up for some waffles too…The waffles came out perfectly and we had a number of people ask if James had used egg or milk to get them like that.”

Lolo from Sweat Records Miami noted, “Our party was a huge success – probably around 35-40 came through throughout the day.  The Miami New Times did a review of it for their ‘Short Order’ food blog.” She also posted some Facebook photos.

Sweat Records vegan waffle setup
Sweat Records’ vegan waffle setup (Lolo R.)

Raelene C. in Richmond, CA got really fancy, serving mimosas at her last-minute “unofficial” vegan waffle party.

Waffle Frolic is a brand new cafe whose name essentially means waffle party! (We recently learned that “waffle frolics” were thrown long before your grandparents were born.) They hosted a Friday night event that included vegan waffle specials, vegan giveaways from a local bookstore, a vegan information forum, a vegan recipe exchange, and a “late night waffle jam” with a live DJ from 9 PM until midnight. I actually visited Waffle Frolic on a very recent trip to Ithaca, and had some great food there–more on that in an upcoming post.

I believe that Wes and the Austin Vegan Meetup were planning to use a deep fryer in creative ways at their vegan waffle party, and reported a good turnout, but I’m still waiting to hear whether they tried anything crazy like deep-frying the waffles.

The day after our local party, we also had a Vegan Meetup event at Waffle Shop, which featured some delicious cinnamon raisin vegan waffles all weekend. Dawn W. there said they plan to leave that item on the menu for a while.

I’ve also sent out a brief feedback survey to hosts, asking them for any lessons learned. I’m hoping that information will help to make future events even more fun and impactful.

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