Maria Vegan Comfort Food Guilty Pleasure without Guilt

Who says you always have to nibble on lettuce leaves or carrot sticks during Veganuary? If you're looking for more satisfying vegan food, you'll find it at Maria Vegan Comfort Food because she clearly proves that fast food doesn't have to contain animal products to spark joy.

Owner Maria Koimtzoglou is a one-woman entrepreneur who has successfully run the business since 2011. Started as New Deli Yoga, it became vegan restaurant Maria four years ago, and with Pandemic, Maria Vegan Comfort Food. As we all know, fast food is lovely to deliver and has given Maria her most significant success to date. Despite Covid, she expanded her team from four to ten heads. Absolutely justified, as we discovered during our visit.

The loosely furnished restaurant is still almost empty when we arrive shortly before 7 pm. But soon after, it fills up abruptly until all the tables are occupied. There seems to be something to this vegan comfort food. Comfort food refers to the guilty, fast food without much nutritional value that many of us like to indulge in from time to time.

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There are burgers, pasta, chips with various toppings and sandwiches. If you like it healthy, you can, of course, order a salad, but that's not what we're here for. Instead, we request a selection from the different categories and decide on a "Not the Usual Cheeseburger", accompanied by two types of fries, one with Chicken Parma, the other with spare ribs.

To round it all off, another mac and cheese. The plates come quickly and we are faced with an Everest of fast-food glory. The burger is somewhere between a vegetable Boulette and Beyond Meat in terms of taste - juicy, pleasantly firm to the bite, just as it should be.

The mac and cheese are sprinkled with vegan parmesan and deliciously pickled onions, which, combined with the cheese sauce, offer a nice interplay of heaviness and lightness. In addition, the fries and their toppings are inspiring. In addition to the homemade "cheese" sauce, the Chicken Parma has a lid of cashew cheese, which is firm and at the same time stringy - as you would wish.

Now for the spare ribs. The secret of this recipe is probably something many would like to find out. They are firm, perfectly marinated, and, combined with the balsamic onions, clearly the highlight that doesn't need to hide from its meaty role model. The preparation of this delicacy is probably also quite complicated, but it is worthwhile.

Special mention must also be made of the cheese sauce. You can think of it as the classic nacho cheese sauce, except that the vegan version is really indistinguishable from its non-vegan counterpart. Everything is homemade, the recipes thought up by Maria. Whether it's the burger patty, cheese or teriyaki sauce, or the Cookie Dough balls and chocolate mousse.

Oh yes, although we can't really eat anything else, a taste of dessert is, of course, not to be missed. There is a delicious Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake, which is almost more salty than sweet, and the secret of the icing is beer. But we were particularly taken with the Cookie Dough balls. Refreshingly chilled, the dough inside is made of chickpeas, which in combination with the dark chocolate icing, actually tastes better to us than regular Cookie Dough.

By the way, the drinks are also vegan, whether beer from Eichenhofer brewery, wine, or soda. Combined with delicious fast food made from ingredients from the organic market and burger buns from Neukölln bakery Pastel, you don't need to worry about your ecological footprint here. That's why the Guilty Pleasure Food at Maria Vegan Comfort Food becomes simply Pleasure Food.