my baby's in the white fluffy clouds

I think I may have spent more weekends in Providence than fully at home in 2010. This is awesome, as I love Providence, but as I don't have a kitchen there, I've been eating out a lot. The upside of this is that I've discovered a bunch of vegan food in Providence that I hadn't known about before, and I thought some of you might benefit from hearing about it --- they're all good restaurants for omnivores as well.

• I'd always known about the Garden Grille (warning, website contains Flash) on Hope St. in Pawtucket --- well not always of course, but for a while. They're an all-vegetarian but not all-vegan place that my mother discovered. I'd particularly recommend their amazing drinks and their seitan products; they manage to get the seitan both crispy and moist, which is actually pretty hard. (eredien  is good at it; I've been able to duplicate it, mostly, with a two-stage cooking process, but it's quite time-consuming.) One of these days I will make it to their brunch.
• Right next to the Garden Grille [0] is Rasoi, an Indian place with the same awesome hanging lamps as Namaskar (flash again) in Davis Square. I had passed it by in favor of the Garden Grille on a number of occasions, until a friend told me that they had a vegan and gluten-free brunch on Saturdays. The brunch was amazing, and recently I went back on a different day with eredien , postrodent , ab3nd , and my mother. Their menu has a lot of vegan and gluten-free options marked on it, and they even have a veganable thali. (Well, there's a little bowl of raita, but you can just give it to postrodent , it's cool. Or to whoever. It didn't touch the food.)
• Over on da Hill, there's Julian's Restaurant, which seems biker-hangoutish and has a great beer selection. There are always new things on tap, and I've been able to come in and say "Three weeks ago I was here and had something... smoky?" "Oh I bet it was *something unintelligible*, I bet you'd also like *something else unintelligible*." "Sure, I'll try that OH MY GOD IT TASTES LIKE LAPSANG I WANT IT IN MY FACE." They have great seitan, there's usually a vegan special, they make their own ketchup and it is actually good... oh and the bathroom is basically Steer Roast. [2] Last time I was there there was a Neubauten video playing in it on loop.
• And of course there's Thayer Street, which has a few places I knew I liked (Blue State Cafe, East Side Pockets, and what the hell happened to the original Spike's? Yes, their veggie dogs are vegan) but I only just discovered the delicious vegan pizza offerings of Nice Slice. They even have bike delivery if you're within a mile (and they don't cross the river). Not a sit-down place really, but a great place to go if you're short on time.

[0] And also right next to a barbecue place with a disturbing mural of a somewhat-anthro pig getting ready to eat.

[1] Being vegan usually means ending up lactose-intolerant. I thought I wouldn't have to care; I do. :/ Oh well.
[2] Linked to this and not a normal page because I was totally there when whoever wrote this article was, and I find that entertaining --- and yes, the Minibosses concert did rock that hard.