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The damn place ran out of the Daiya fake cheese, which means, of course, that Duccini’s couldn’t sell the much-hyped vegan jumbo slice. The guy behind the dingy counter at the U Street pizzeria couldn’t tell me when they would start reselling the slices, but he indicated that when Duccini’s did have them for sale, they were more popular than anyone imagined. Hence the lack of fake cheese now.
Or at least that’s what I thought he said. We were talking through a language barrier.
Disappointed at failing with my self-assigned task, I headed straight to El Khartoum on Florida Avenue to get a to-go order of ful medames, that popular fava-heavy Middle Eastern dish, which is vegetarian without even trying. The preparation was different from the one I had a year and a half ago when I wrote this story on ful. It was less busy and less interesting, but it was still a bulging bowl of slow-simmered favas loaded with onions and oil and tomatoes. And it was still a fine, flavorful dish.
The ful almost made me forget, though, that I needed to contact Compassion Over Killing and ask that eternal, 21st century question: WTF? What happened to the vegan jumbo slice promotion?
Executive Director Erica Meier wrote back to say:
“We just heard from John [at Duccini’s] about this – the vegan cheese pizza promo was a huge hit, more so than they expected. I know they sold nearly 70 large vegan cheese pizzas during the first two nights of the promo (last Wed & Thurs), and the $5 deal lasted through Sunday night.
John said he’ll update us tomorrow about the next delivery of vegan cheese, and I’ll keep you posted.”
She then directed me to another new vegan option: the Garden Blend burrito at the Chipotle outlet on Dupont Circle. Here’s some gushing blog report about the new item.