The Tofu Hunter

ChuMinh Tofu & Veggie Deli

2012-01-29T12:03:00.000-08:00

I have finally located the antidote for Maruta's and other vegan un-friendly Asian delis all over Seattle: the ChuMinh deli at 12th and Jackson where the staff is lovely and everything is animal-free!
The vegan deli has a well stocked hot case full of various curries, veggies and tofu dishes. There is also an impressive selection of various deep fried things and both sweet and savory rice flour pastries. The prices were inexpensive and my dining companion and I tried a bunch of different dishes:
In the above picture we have stewed greens and tofu (with two different types of greens- this was my favorite!), some kind of fresh, lightly steamed veggie and tofu, an egg roll, an interesting and delicious shishkabob with grilled pineapple and various savory sweet and sour flavors, and a coconut bamboo shoot curry.

We also ordered a bahn mi and it was large, fresh and spicy!
It was such a treat to be able to order freely from the plentiful options and not worry too hard about the potential for meat/fish ingredients. My only complaint is that all of the tofu had been fried, while I would have preferred it to have been steamed, and as a result the various dishes all felt a little greasy.

The Sunflower Cafe

2012-01-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

While in the Methow, we made our own breakfasts and lunches with the exception of the last lunch on the way back home. As we left Winthrop, hungry and soaked from a wet morning ski, we scratched our heads about where to grab a reasonably priced, vegetarian friendly, tasty lunch, and were stoked to notice the Sunflower Cafe. It appeared to be what I affectionately call a hippie cafe; a ripe haven of tofu scrambles and yogurt etc.

Indeed it was a cozy place, though it seemed most of the savory vegetarian options were centered around eggs. As far as non-eggy vegetarian options go, there was a hummus wrap and a veggie wrap (and possibly some soup, but it wasn't ready yet when we were there).

Now the ladies in the cafe were lovely, the place itself was warm and inviting, but I have a gripe against "wraps". I think wraps are one of the worst culinary inventions of recent time and I wish they would disappear. As far as I can tell, a "wrap" is anything stuffed into a cold (often whole wheat or some other aberration) tortilla. A cold, splitting, dry whole-wheat tortilla is one of the last things (in the context of our modern, 1st world, food variety explosion) I would choose to put in my mouth. Lightly smear it with few streaks of hummus and stuff it with lettuce, cucumbers and olives? Not much better.

As I said before, I appreciate the aesthetic of this place, and the workers were so sweet and friendly, and I feel a little bit reluctant to make them the target of my wrap rant. And I should say that my dining companion had a tasty spicy chicken sandwich that came with a huge salad with some amazing homemade lemon-honey-herb dressing. The folks eating around us seemed happy and satisfied. I bet the soup would have been delicious.

But seriously, it is time for the wrap craze to move along. What happened to burritos? A burrito has a warm, supple, soft tortilla and you can stuff it with all kinds of stuff, including (cheap to make, warm, please!) beans and it makes a wonderfully satisfying vegetarian lunch.

Are vegetarians so culturally misunderstood that people really believe that a cold, hard, cracking whole wheat tortilla stuffed with undressed lettuce is what we DESIRE? Or maybe it IS what we desire as a group and I am way off-base??

Snow!!

2012-01-18T08:52:00.001-08:00

I hope everybody is hunkered down and enjoying this snowy day! I've got a kitchen full of tasty ingredients and am looking forward to using this day for some home-warming cooking.

Since we seem to be in a collective snow frenzy, I thought I'd take this opportunity to mention the Snow Buddy app, written by my faithful dining companion:

http://www.nwsnowbuddy.com/

This app (for iPhone and iPads) is a one-stop-shopping resource for everything you want to know about the current snow fall, future predictions, avalanche conditions and ski reports in the Pacific Northwest.

Enjoy!

Cinnamon Twisp

2012-01-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

Cinnamon Twisp, in Twisp, is another standout in the Methow area. In addition to the famed cinnamon twisp pastry pictured below (a delicious twisted buttery doughball gooey with cinnamon laced honey and chopped nuts), I noticed that their pastry case carried small take-out containers of vegetarian friendly foods: peanut noodles with tofu, tabbouleh, etc. YES!!!

East 20 Pizza

2012-01-09T10:25:00.000-08:00

East 20 Pizza is one obvious stand-out to the dearth of good, vegetarian food in the Methow area,
and its nightly overflowing popularity speaks to this.

Suffice it to say the pizza is tasty and reasonable priced. We ordered a "Puttenesca" with chicken on just one half. It was deliciously packed with olives, capers, tomatoes, pepperoncinis, oregano, spicyness, etc.

If there wasn't some part of my brain/body telling me not to eat pizza every night, I probably would cut out the relatively fruitless Methow vegetarian dinner search and eat only here.

Carlos 1800

2012-01-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

My dining companion and I had been dreaming of tacos all the way across eastern Washington and it was with excitement that we spotted Carlos 1800 Cantina in downtown Winthrop (a town with an old-West theme).

I didn't take any pictures, but can say that it was a mistake to eat there. It is quite possible that the meat entrees were good, but we both ate vegetarian and our experience was lame and over priced. I ordered fajitas, and they consisted of a a bunch of (almost assuredly recently frozen) veggies (rubbery slices of orange and yellow carrots, soft broccoli, etc) in a sauce that tasted like the liquid from a can of tomatoes. My dining companion ordered a sauteed veggie quesadilla that came with the same wet, soft, lame-ass veggie mixture (minus the sauce) in a spinach tortilla with a little barely melted cheese. The quantity of "mango salsa" (a selling point for his quesadilla), would have maybe filled a thimble.

To add to our growing regret, the waitstaff had a few practical jokes up their sleeves that were of one of my least favorite types of humor: do something unexpected but not very funny and force your "audience" to react. For example: If a dining patron drops a fork and asks for a new one, return with a comedic fork the size of your leg and offer to them. See what happens!

Eating here reminded us that we were in the middle of an old-west Disneyland type of environment and that our hopes of a quality vegetarian dining experience were naive.

The Twisp River Pub

2011-12-31T09:01:00.000-08:00

I recently spent my birthday in the Methow Valley and did some serious research about where to eat on the special night. Unfortunately, it appears the Twisp/Winthrop/Mazama stretch is pretty bleak for good vegetarian food.

I initially got really excited about this: http://www.winthroptipidinners.com/, an unusual (and not corny/cooperate/tourist trap, as the name might make you think) restaurant developed as a life dream by a local woman that revolves around eating artfully prepared, healthy, traditional (local as possible) Native American foods while in a beautiful tipi. In the winter time, there is fire and candle light and and animal skins to keep everything warm. The proprietress, Suekii, cooks everything in a nearby kitchen and brings it via hand held wagon to her hungry guests. I spoke to Suekii about what she does for vegetarians (no bison steak for this birthday gal), and it all sounded wonderful... hummus and pickled asparagus, stuffed squash, emmer farro, etc. But it turned out that the tipi was already fully booked (it only holds 8) on the night of my birthday.

There are other fancy type options in the area, including the Sun Mountain Lodge and the Arrowleaf Bistro, but these have really limited vegetarian entrees that are priced at meat prices. No thank you.

So I went to the Twisp River Pub, where I knew there were decent vegetarian options to be had. My dining companion and I split two things: the Asian salad and a veggie burger with fries.

Based on the menu description, I had hoped that the Asian salad (with rice noodles) would be similar to the contents of a Vietnamese bun. Turned out the noodles were more of a garnish, and the salad was mostly green. I ordered it with fresh tofu (instead of fried), which was possibly a mistake, because it came fully unmarinated (rather than in the sesame marinade the menu describes).

The pub-made veggie burger was tasty, and the fries were excellent.

For my birthday dessert, I ordered a warm walnut brownie with vanilla ice cream. It was delicious.

Tacos El Asadero

2011-12-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

I have walked past the jumbo bus, Taco "truck" at Othello and MLK, by the Othello lightrail station, countless times and finally stopped in for some tacos. There weren't any vegetarian tacos on the menu, but it was no problem to order them. After you order, you can actually board the bus and and sit inside and eat and watch Mexican TV, but I got my tacos to go.

I ordered three vegetarian tacos. They were somewhere around a buck fifty a piece, and came full of beans, rice, lettuce, tomatoes and sour cream. Both the red and the green salsas were delicious and spicy. I think the refried beans may have been cooked with lard.

The one thing that was obviously lacking was the little packet of pickled carrot/radish/jalapeno/fresh lime... on one hand, they are tiny insignificant garnishes, on the other, they are one of my favorite parts of eating at a taco truck.

These tacos totally hit the spot, and are hard to beat for the price. One complaint is the use of styrofoam in the packaging for the tacos to-go. I'd definitely be willing to pay a little more for a compostable option.

Revel

2011-12-10T17:59:00.000-08:00

Some hidden hipster part of me is really reluctant to embrace restaurants that gain quick noteriaty; I tend to initially shy away from places with too much hype (or accolades, eh). And then eventually, once curiosity or necessity or social obligation finally requires it, I drag my snagglepuss self out into the world to check then out. And on occasion I am blown away. Revel was a restaurant like this. I should have gone sooner.

The menu is small and changes frequently, and is grouped into a few categories: salads, dumplings, rice bowls, etc, each of which has maybe 3-4 varieties in it, including one that is vegetarian.

On a surprisingly lovely recent night I began with a spinach salad with palm hearts, black lentils and smoked peanuts. The dressing was salty and lightly acidic and every item was perfectly in balance. I would not have guessed that the explicit flavor of the lentils would be important and enhancing in a salad like this, but it was.

Next I had the vegetarian dumplings, which were filled with cauliflower and ricotta and served with pickled leeks and a black truffle puree. They were every bit as interesting, delicious and unusual as they sound.

The perplexing this about this place, which had fancy, well crafted, artsy type food, was that the prices were in the same ballpark as a "normal" restaurant. Both the salad and the dumplings were $9 each. Ordering them together made the meal extra fun and decadent, but wasn't necessary to get full. I am intrigued by whatever else is going to be coming out of this kitchen!

Lemongrass

2011-12-03T17:45:00.000-08:00

I recently went to Lemongrass Vietnamese restaurant on 12th ave full of excitement for a bowl of vegetarian pho.

In addition to having a vegan broth, my current qualifications for what is a "good" bowl of pho include:

1. Soft (NOT DEEP FRIED!) tofu
2. Interesting selection of veggies
3. Broth that gets its goodness from more than just MSG

What arrived at the table looked exquisite... nice soft, white tofu, and a selection of veggies that included broccoli, baby bok choy, green beans, carrots and more. But I took one slurp of the broth and had a, wait, WHAT? moment on my tongue.

This ol' gal has gotten quite adept at tasting the foul or flesh (or fish) when it sneaks into my food. A check with the waitress confirmed that, in spite of the fact that vegan broth is standarly used in some OTHER soups, the "veggie" pho will be made with meat broth unless otherwise specified. Ah.

I'm glad to know this, and I would consider visiting again in spite of the broth confusion because of the surprisingly hard to find soft tofu and nice veggies.

Best Corn - Antojitos Mexicanos

2011-11-27T17:25:00.000-08:00

There are many emerging intriguing culinary delights at the "Othello Swap Meet" parking lot at the Othello lightrail station at MLK and Othello, including Antojitos Mexicanos, AKA "Best Corn" shack that sells elote (roasted corn on the cob sprinkled with various delicious things), and esquitas (roasted corn off the cob).

On one cold recent evening I bought myself a large sized order of esquitas and it was quite the treat. I ordered mine with everything but the mayonnaise (mayo seems to be a standard part of the dish), and what I received was a big cup full of freshly roasted, freshly decobbed corn layered with butter, lime juice, cheese, chili powder and chili sauce. It was super delicious, and the buttery, corn-y, lime-y cheesy, spicy liquid that remains once the kernals are gone is a treat in itself.

This would be a great snack to munch on while waiting for the lightrail... all the tastyness of a well-dressed elote, but with the tidyness of a spoon.

CP Thai

2011-11-20T14:42:00.000-08:00

I was recently in Georgetown tasked with the responsibility of bringing home lunch, preferably of Asian persuasian, to a group with vegan preference. I decided to give CP Thai (in the little strip mall that holds my home-Kinkos) a try. The waitress was skeptical of my special requests (no fish sauce, unfried tofu), insisting that the food would have "no taste." I persisted, and unfortunately, she was right.
Can't say what the food would have been like with meat or fishsauce or fried tofu, but we ordered Garlic Tofu, Ginger Tofu, and Rard Nah (wide rice noodles with some veggies and tofu in a cornstarch thick gravy), and the vegan versions of these were more or less bland and greasy.

Eh, now I know I guess.

Chelsea Deli

2011-11-13T10:23:00.000-08:00

The Chelsea Deli is the relatively new deli in Columbia City, and I am sheepish to admit that the first time I visited I left without ordering anything because I thought the two obviously vegetarian options looked unappealing to me. I WAS VERY MUCH MISTAKEN, and missing some critical info: Field Roast can be subbed for meat on just about any of the otherwise enticing sandwiches. YES!

There is some personnel connection between the Chelsea Deli and the Other Coast sandwich shop up in Ballard, and the sandwich I ordered is very similar to the Ragin' Cajun I've had in Ballard: toasted whole wheat baguette, field roast slices, tomatoes, red onion, chipotle aioli, broiled pepper jack cheese. Greasy, flavorful, filling and delicious!

In an interesting take, the Chelsea Deli also sells jumbo sized baked goods, including this rice crispie treat (I munched on it for days), and brownies that seem to be about quarter pan size. Nice.
Another nice vegetarian-friendly food option in Columbia City!

Marutas

2011-11-06T22:02:00.000-08:00

For years I had heard about Maruta's Japanese grocery store/to-go Sushi case/Chinese take out window in Georgetown and only recently had a famished lunchtime visit. I started in the store, where the pre-made sushi sits in refrigerated cases, and was disappointed to find that the only vegan options were cucumber rolls and inari. So I bought a bag of seaweed flavored chips and a package of melon chews and walked next door to the take out window to test my luck there.

Photo courtesy: http://livinginseattle.wordpress.com

Unfortunately the take-out area was no better. The only vegetarian option here was a sad looking tray of greasy veggies. There were many *almost* vegetarian options: MaPo Tofu with pork, fried rice with pork, noodles with chicken. Dang. Ended up leaving with nothing but my chips and candy, and it turned out that even my chips had both shrimp and bonito in them.

A Casa Que Pasa

2011-10-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

I love going into a burrito shop in a college town like Bellingham because I know that the vegetarians are going to be well taken care of!

The burritos at Casa Que Pasa are large (about 2 meals worth for me) and delicious. There are many vegetarian and vegan options, and on the day of my meal I ordered vegetarian daily special: flour tortilla, spicy black beans, deep fried potatoes, guacamole, sour cream, cabbage and green salsa. It was quite the burrito!
And as with any Mexican restaurant worth its salt, Casa Que Pasa has a nice little salsa bar with a variety of red and green homemade salsas and spicy pickled carrots. All were tasty, none were especially spicy to my palate.

Reminds me that I should spend more time in Bellingham!

Bamboo Garden

2011-10-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

The Bamboo Garden is a vegan Szechuan restaurant near the Seattle Center, and I recently visited with a friend who had just returned from the Szechuan region of China jonesing for some dry cooked green beans.

The Bamboo Garden rendition was spicy, tender crisp and tasty, but unfortunately lacking the scrumptious blistered skin of the beans my friend had eaten in China.

We also ordered the Hot and Spicy Fried Bean Curd Braised with Bell Peppers, Broccoli and Cauliflower (special ordered with fresh tofu).

And the Pan-Fried Rice Noodles with Mixed Vegetables in Hot Spicy Szechwan Sauce.

Both dishes were spicy, savory, and fantastically vegan, but weren't quite the flavors my buddy remembered from his trip. That said, I still tend to be thrilled with any delicious Szechaun meal, (authentic or Americanized) that is clearly vegan friendly, and for this reason the Bamboo Garden holds a place dear to my heart!

Broadway New American Grill

2011-10-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

I recently had a lovely happy hour at the Broadway Grill, where well drinks are $2.50 and food is about $5. There is a decent selection of junky vegetarian options (fried pickles, garlic fries, truffle fries), and one healthy type of vegetarian option: white bean puree with pita.

We ordered the white bean spread and it was decent, certainly good enough compliment the stream of well-rum and gingers that flowed down our gullets!

Tacos Chukis

2011-10-09T10:38:00.000-07:00

[UPDATE, 1/21/12: I haven't seen it yet with my own eyes, but it sounds like Tacos Chukis now serves homemade salsa and home-stewed beans for the vegetarians. Has anybody tasted either of these? I'm excited to go and give them a shot!]

There has been quite a little stir recently for Tacos Chukis, the taco shop with a sweet story (the Mexican owner, after finishing a degree at the UW, took a giant bike ride down to Mexico and spent some time investigating all the best street food with the intent of coming back to Seattle and opening a restaurant) and I was eager to give it a try.

Tacos Chukis has a limited menu with a handful of meat options and a vegetarian version of each that uses nopoles, grilled prickly pear cactus pads, in place of the meat. I ordered two nopoles tacos.

While I am not a huge fan of nopoles, these tacos were still pretty good: fresh, hot tortillas, cilantro, onions, lime, guacamole, and a little melted cheese on the tortilla. However, if I could redesign these tacos to fit my personal perfect vision, I would make them with tasty home stewed beans instead of with the cactus.

I was super hungry and found that 2 tacos wasn't quite enough to fill me up (the tacos are inexpensive and can easily be eaten many at a time!). Good to know.

This is such an endearing little taco shop and I love the story and the fact that they have an unusual vegetarian option (even if it isn't my ideal vegetarian option). The one other missing item, far as I'm concerned (aside from some beans), would be some homemade salsa.

On the meat side: I heard rave reviews from my meat eating dining companions about their tacos. I think between the two of them they managed to try just about every meat taco on the menu!

The Counter

2011-10-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

I was recently an evening guest of some friends up in Ballard, an area that feels ever more like an adventurous trek from my increasing southern/central Seattle world. We started our activities at the giant LA Fitness mega-gym, where, among other activities, I got to watch one of my hosts do some special pushups while balancing on free weights. It was quite an evening, and we all felt as though we'd really earned our detour into the strategically abutted temptress The Counter on our way out of the gym.

We started with a a "50/50" order of fries with half potato and half sweet potato. We had our choice of dippin' sauces and chose Buttermilk Ranch, Roasted Garlic Aioli, and Sweet BBQ sauce. The quantity was not disappointing, and the fries were tasty (the sweet potato fries, which seemed to be lightly battered, were the favorite.)

The Counter is a "build your own burger" restaurant where you can really get yourself into burger trouble by getting greedy and losing track of complimentary flavors. I based my burger off of a 1/3 lb veggie burger, and topped it with horseradish cheddar, grilled onions, jalapenos, mixed greens, tomatoes, and chipotle aioli. Pretty tasty!

If any one of us could have mustered even a semblance of an appetite after this feast, I could have been convinced into topping it all off with a milk shake. Instead, we let a good thing be and waddled off into the night.

Thank you D & W for the lovely evening!

Ba Bar

2011-09-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

There is a certain pleasure in dressing up a little bit and walking into a restaurant where the other patrons are also looking good, and for a frugal Seattle-ite such as myself, this experience comes rarely. For this reason I enjoyed with my general experience recently at Ba Bar, the new Vietnamese restaurant with a pleasingly hip ambiance located on 12th ave in the old Watertown location.

The menu is somewhat limited, and we started with the most substantial vegetarian small plate: Mung Bean dumplings (there are also a couple of salads).

These dumplings were unlike any other I've had: the dough had the slimey, gummy texture of wet mochi, and the insides were the texture of somewhat dry mashed potatoes. Was this the mung bean? I am totally ignorant about what a mung bean dumpling is supposed to be like, so it is hard for me to criticize these. That said, I found the textures to be hard to bite/chew/swallow. The sauce, however, with fried shallots, was fantastic.

There were just a few vegetarian entrees (including make your own spring rolls), and I chose the tofu vermicelli bowl.

Now, there is no shortage of fantastic, inexpensive, vegetarian tofu vermacelli bowls in this city, so I found myself with really high expectations for this $11 primadonna. I am dissapointed to say that it just wasn't very impressive. Granted, I am not a mushroom fan and the bulk of this bowl was savory, delicious (so I was told by my dining companion) shitakes, but apart from that detail, the bowl was too light on my favorite parts of the bun bowl: browned peanuts, fried shallots, fresh herbs, and shredded veggies. The sauce was delicious (it was the same sauce that came with the dumplings), but everything else was sort of ho-hum. Even the distinguishing feature, some strange little smashed burrito type garnish made with tofu skins, was sort of cold, greasy and bland.

I so enjoyed sitting in the warm crowd of lovely patrons, and the ambiance was perfect on a recent cool evening, but still it's hard for me to imagine going back and paying slightly more upscale prices for the dishes I got.

La Medusa

2011-09-19T06:24:00.000-07:00

Ok, the picture is sort of lame, but this is an announcement that La Medusa, the lovely, somewhat higher priced (eh, by my frugal standards) Columbia City Sicilian Soul Food restaurant is experimenting with a happy hour. I went recently and split a couple of reasonably priced happy hour snacks (ratatouille and polenta fritters) with some friends and drank and a most delicious elderflower/aperol cocktail.
The happy hour was a nice opportunity to have a taste of what makes La Medusa so wonderful without having to shell out the money for a full dinner. Especially as the weather turns more to fall, I look forward to more afternoons sampling the delicious offerings!

Beloved Mexico

2011-09-12T10:22:00.000-07:00

I have raved about Beloved Mexico before here, but wanted to post a little update with another tantalizing picture. As a quick review, Beloved Mexico is a very special taco truck in West Seattle that takes care to use good quality ingredients and makes healthy and satisfying food for both meat-eaters and vegetarians alike.

I recently had the pleasure of eating a full meal at the truck, and was thrilled with what I got. I ordered a vegetarian enchilada meal (with the special request of filling them with pinto beans and veggies instead of the standard vegetarian filling of potatoes and cheese), which came with my choice of two sides.

The enchiladas were delicious... warm corn tortillas filled with tasty fillings and covered in a fresh green enchilada sauce, a little sour cream and a sprinkle of queso and cilantro. I chose sauteed onions and peppers as one side (well seasoned), and a house salad with lime dressing as my second.

I left, as always after a visit to Beloved Mexico, feeling full, healthy and happy!

Rudloof's Pizza

2011-09-05T22:27:00.000-07:00

Rudloof's Pizza is one of a couple pizza options in the Bavarian themed tourist/outdoors Mecca Leavenworth. Stopping to eat here was a debate... there was a hunch among us that the pizza was going to be the lamest kind, but a peek through the fence at the plates of fellow diners inspired some confidence and we gave it a shot. It was the wrong choice.

The best part of the meal (it's all relative!) was the family sized house salad with ranch dressing. It was reasonably large (though two of us easily polished it off), and included some dried carrot/cabbage shreds, mozzarella, a few tomatoes, cheap croutons, and a mix of fresh and old lettuce.

The pizza was, unfortunately, one of my least favorite kinds. The crust, which seemed pre-baked, was a sort of greasy, pillow-y texture with no chew or character. The toppings (we chose fresh tomato and bell pepper) were finely diced and lost in a repulsively deep layer of un-browned cheese.

The whole experience made me sort of sorry. I felt sorry for the restaurant for wasting so much money on excess mozzarella. I felt sorry for the cows who made the milk in the cheese that I wasted. I felt sorry about wasting our precious dollars on this dinner. I felt sorry for myself for the vast number of unenjoyed calories I put into my body during this meal.

Pai's

2011-08-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

I came across Pai's food truck late in the evening at the South Lake Union Block Party. Most of the cuisine related components of the event had long shut down, and the masses of hungry late-comers were hanging out in a parking lot surrounded by soft glow and smokey allure of the food trucks.

I have long coveted the Hawaiian plate lunch, and was thrilled to see the Pai's has a vegetarian friendly plate. It is a pretty far stretch from the traditional meat/rice/mac salad type of affair, but the deviations made it that much more awesome for me as a vegetarian.

I got a "plate special" with lemongrass tofu and bok choy over rice, and my two sides were sesame coleslaw (no mayo!), and vegetarian kimchee.

Thank you Pai's for creating such a rad option for the vegetarians! (And vegans too, far as I can tell).

Seven Stars Pepper

2011-08-19T21:49:00.000-07:00

I have written about Seven Stars Pepper before, but the gist is this: it is a Szechuan restaurant in the International District, you take an elevator to get up to it, and it is rumored that they are one of the few Seattle restaurants to use real Szechaun peppercorns. A recent meal here reminded me of how tasty the food is, and sampling a few new dishes inspired me to put up a second post.

A meal at Seven Stars Pepper begins with a complimentary dish of their kimchee like salad: fermented pickled cabbage, carrots and celery in a slightly spicy sauce.

We ordered dry cooked (AKA deep fried, I'm guessing) green beans (that's the kimchee on the side). They were garlicky, spicy, oily and perfectly tender crisp.

We also ordered the Dan Dan noodles with tofu. These are humongous hand shaved noodles in a spicy peanut sauce.

And last but not least, soft tofu in Szechaun Sauce. The soft tofu was bathed in a beautiful bowl of oily garlicky spicy red sauce, green onions, roasted peanuts and peppers.

I should mention that this is rather intense food... it is spicy, salty, and oily. Definitely a treat to eat in moderation, but feels a bit like it needs to be interspersed with some salads!

Padrino's Pizza

2011-07-18T10:04:00.000-07:00

Padrino's Pizza now inhabits the building that the fleeting Purple Rain Cafe used to occupy near the Silver Fork and Emerald City Fish and Chips on Rainier Ave. I admit, I was initially turned off by the place because of their logo:

But received a glossy full color menu/brochure/coupon pack in the mail from these guys that brought me around a bit. The clincher for me was the bold statement: FREE DELIVERY, in my delivery-neglected south end neighborhood. Good advertising!

I was recently racing the rain on an outdoor house project and decided it would be a perfect night to have dinner delivered. Ordered up an XL (had a coupon!) cheese pizza topped with broccoli and red peppers.

The pizza wasn't spectacular, but I wasn't really expecting it to be. It was, however, better than Pizza Hut or the like because it had a thin crust and a reasonable amount of cheese, and a nice list of interesting veggie toppings to choose from.

I won't be turning to these guys for honest-to-god pizza cravings (we are so pizza spoiled around here, especially with Flying Squirrel so near by), but it is fabulous to know that there is an option for delivery.

Ducks and Drakes

2011-07-11T21:09:00.001-07:00

For all the sassy posturing and raunchy dancing of Woody Goomsba, Leavenworth it is actually a pretty low key town after hours; a fact that was to my disadvantage one recent weekday night when I was looking for somebody to make me dinner a little before 11pm.

It was kind of a demanding circumstance, I realize, which is why it was all the sweeter to walk into the Ducks and Drakes tavern and find that they have a late night menu. The late night menu wasn't especially geared towards vegetarians, but pizza and nachos were options, as was the Southwestern Chicken salad, which I ordered sans chicken.

I did my routine menu scan of some kind of protein I could substitute for the chicken, and landed upon a blob of hummus, which they gladly (though skeptically) added for me.

I was very hungry and this salad really hit the spot. It was huge, and made up of nice deep green romain lettuce with corn and tomatoes and onions and cheese and tortillas strips and spicy ranch on the side. I enjoyed every bite.

Great to know there is a late night option available in little Bavaria!

Tony's Bakery

2011-07-02T01:43:00.000-07:00

I recently went to Tony's Bakery, in the MLK/Graham complex, to sample their Bahn Mi. In a similar style to Q Bakery (in the same complex), the bakery is full of both prepared packaged foods, prepared hot foods, baked items and sandwiches.

I ordered a tofu sandwich and a basil seed drink and took the food home.

The sandwich had some good attributes including lots of good fresh veggies, but there wasn't anything that really made it stand out. My normally non-finicky meat eating dining companion's pork sandwich was slathered in so much butter that he had to scrape his bread.

The basil drink was an experiment... I'd never had it before and wasn't sure what to expect. I was hoping for a lightly sweet, crisp, basil scented sparkling beverage, and was about as wrong as I could be. The reality of the basil drink was a mega-sweet, mega-viscous cream soda flavored syrup with basil seeds in little mucousy pods.

For dessert we chose on of the many interesting looking baked goods, and landed upon this deep fried hollow sesame rice starch ball with a seemingly raw, chalky dough ball bouncing around in the center. I found many of the Tony baked goods to be intriguing, but I think that my MLK/Graham tofu bahn mi preference lays with Q Bakery, if for no other reason because their bread seemed fresher and they have a spicy lemongrass sauce that I love.

All Purpose Pizza

2011-06-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of the Seattle Bouldering Project, the new bouldering (rock climbing low enough to the padded ground that you don't need ropes)/yoga/fitness gym near the Goodwill at Dearborn and Rainier Ave? It's pretty darn sweet (even if you aren't interested in the climbing aspect, it's a good deal to join for the unlimited yoga alone!)

Anyhow, after a recent gnarly sesh at the gym, some friends and I went to somewhat near-by All Purpose Pizza.

We started with a giant family style house salad that stole the show for me. It was huge and loaded with tasty ingredients and came with slices of garlic bread made from Columbia City Bakery baguette.
Next we ordered a pizza, split down the middle with half caramalized onions/jalapenos, the other half arugula/fresh tomato.

The pizza has a thicker, sour dough type of crust, and if you go in expected that detail, it's pretty tasty. I made an ordering mistake though: the jalapeno was fresh and startlingly spicy to the degree that I (and, well, everybody else too) had a tough time eating the half I designed. Live and learn!

The Elysian

2011-06-18T07:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like the sort of celebratory meal that involves dressing up and savoring plates of exquisitely prepared fancy ingredients. And other times I feel like the sort of celebratory meal that involves drinking a 5000 calorie coal dark beer and eating a giant mound of french fries.

The Elysian brewery on capital hill recently colluded with my vision for the latter. True to a typical Seattle brewery, the Elysian has a ton of vegetarian (and vegan, and gluten-free!) options. I chose the black bean burger with pepper jack, red pepper aioli and skinny cut french fries.

It was a Friday night and this place was packed!

Sutra

2011-06-12T10:03:00.000-07:00

I have written about the (vegetarian/vegan, prix fixe) Sutra experience before here, so shall spare the details but will say that I had the pleasure of recently visiting Sutra again with some lovely dining companions, and this is what we ate:

Nettle Miso Soup with a salad of Baby Tom Thumb Lettuce, Pickled Shunkyo Radish, Sea Beans and Goose Tongue (sea vegetable), with lime-ginger-tahini dressing and a sesame seed crisp.

Housemade buckwheat fettucini, roasted asparagus and truffled watercress, masa breaded fiddlehead fern and shiso with a tamari, yuzu leek broth.

Roasted Cauliflower, mung bean, cashew cheese, house smoked morel cake served atop sauteed chard and radish greens, an eggplant mousse and peppercress oil, finished with black lemon molasses reduction and parsnip chips.

Chocolate-coconut ice cream with mirin-blueberry coulis and cacao nib brittle.

El Chupacabra

2011-06-06T08:54:00.000-07:00

I vicariously experienced a funny mixing of worlds recently while on a bike ride with a bunch of friends through west Seattle. It was one of the first genuinely sunny days of the year and Alki beach was PACKED. As we slowly weaved our way through the throngs, the group decided it was both hungry and thirsty and took a turn into the beach side El Chupacabra to order some burritos to go. I couldn't coax myself into the dark bar/restaurant and waited outside with the bikes.

Turns out I lost my comrades as they nestled into the "kinda douche-y but really cool" bar and had a few beers and some chips and salsa among the scantily clad in the in the dark and artsy cave. They emerged squinting and rubbing their eyes about an hour later with burritos and chips and salsa in paper sacks.
My vegetarian burrito was mostly rice and sour cream, but other people randomly got more ingredients in theirs. The salsa was mostly good, and included an unusual variety that had a nacho cheese color (as well as a decidedly not good "too cumen-y" green salsa). It's hard to complain too much when you're sitting in the sun on a summery Alki day, but I am positive I wouldn't make a special trip to El Chupacabra for the burritos alone.

Big Mario's Pizza

2011-06-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

Big Mario's sells giant, cracker thin slices of tasty New York Style Pizza. I happen to love this style of pizza with the thin almost crisp crust, a complete layer of browned and blistered mozzarella, simple tomato sauce, and a slice so large it begs to be folded into a pizza taco.

You can buy pizza by the slice or by the pie, and there were nearly a dozen different pizzas at the ready for the hungry slice-buyer. I saw plenty of vegetarian options: cheese, fresh tomato and basil, mushroom and spinach, and some kind of Greek looking option. I didn't see any vegan pizzas.

Another plus is that Big Mario's is open LATE (4am on weekends!), which is awfully nice for the bar go-ers in the Pike/Pine boozebath.

Thanh Vi

2011-05-25T09:26:00.000-07:00

(Back in Seattle!)

Thanh Vi has a couple of locations around town, including one on the Ave in the U. District. I recently went to this location looking for a cheap, fresh and savory dinner, the usual desires that send me to a Vietnamese restaurant.

I was pleased to see that Thanh Vi has a large section of menu dedicated to Vegetarian items, including multiple vegan broth phos and a handful of vermicelli bowls. I chose my usual favorite, the lemongrass tofu vermicelli bowl, aka Bun Dao Hu Xao Xa (can't figure out all the accent marks to really make that right!).

The upsides of the dish were that it had WAY more veggies than usual... bell peppers, celery, carrots, cucumber, green onions, in addition to the regular lettuce and white onion. Down sides were that it was really light on herbs, not at all spicy, and I found the lemongrass paste to be a little mealy and bland. Another downside was that the bowl of sauce that came with it had fish sauce in it (always taste it first!). I was surprised about this because of how generally vegetarian (vegan) friendly their menu looked, and when I asked the waiter if they had a vegan version, he told me that there was already enough sauce on the dish without the bowl, and the bowl was just extra for dipping if I wanted. Hmm.

It's hard to complain about an inexpensive, huge bowl of fresh ingredients, but I can say that I have had much better versions of this dish elsewhere. (And the recent stellar version at King of Pho in Auburn might have seriously spoiled me!)

Burma Superstar

2011-05-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

I LOVE eating in San Francisco, and it's always a tough call determining which restaurants will make the cut on a short trip. This time I decided to try the extremely popular Burma Superstar. Burma Superstar doesn't take reservations, but they will call your cellphone when your table becomes available so it is possible (and recommended) to check in and then go have a beer elsewhere while you wait.

Once in to the busy, cozy restaurant, my dining companion and I drank white wine sangria with Asian pear, lychee and oranges.

We started with a traditional Burmese Tea Leaf Salad, which came to the table with compartmentalized ingredients: Romain lettuce, toasted peanuts, fried garlic, split yellow peas, toasted sunflower seeds, toasted sesame seeds, chopped tomato, fresh jalapeno, lemon, and a wet pile of fermented finely chopped tea leaves. If you don't order it vegetarian style, it also includes dried shrimp.

The waiter then mixed the salad at the table. It was spectacular. I don't think I've ever had a better salad than this... the mix of textures and savory and bright flavors was absolutely incredible. The fermented tea leaves reminded me a little bit of the salty briny flavor of capers, and added a really interesting dimension to the overall flavor. I would come to Burma Superstar for this salad alone!

In addition to a designated vegetarian portion of the menu, Burma Superstar indicates on their menu that many of their meat dishes can also be made vegetarian (which, I believe means vegan in this restaurant's vernacular). Awesome.

My meat eating dining companion kindly ordered vegetarian so that we could both try multiple dishes. We ordered the Shan Noodles, vegetarian style, described as rice noodles in a spicy tomato sauce with pickled radish, cilantro, peanuts and tofu. Similar in presentation to the salad, the Shan Noodles came to the table with compartmentalized garnishes that the waiter stirred in as we watched.

Shan Noodles Pre-stir

Shan Noodles Post-Stir

We also ordered , which consisted of tofu with onions, tomatoes, squash, carrots, green chilis and mint leaves. This was eaten over rice.

I'd never had Burmese food before this, and it really was different from any other culinary ethnicity I've ever eaten. All of the dishes tasted different from what I'd expected based upon how they looked. To best describe it, I'd say the dishes have the earthiness of Indian food, the fresh herb flavors of Vietnamese food, the sourness of Korean food, and the dry/fresh pepper heat and roasted flavors of Thai food.

With reasonable prices and friendly service, I'm not surprised this place is as ragingly popular as it is!

Buttery

2011-05-19T08:56:00.000-07:00

In Santa Cruz now...
There were a few things that drew me to Buttery right off the bat: First off, the name sounds delectable. Second, rumors about the horrible service were all over the internet, and I am always interested in seeing what it's truly like in a place where people claim they turn around and leave because the couldn't get anybodies attention to take their orders.

I went at lunch time, and the amazing smelling cafe/bakery was bustling. That said, I had no problem at all standing in line and ordering my sandwich in the normal way. I got an avocado and jack sandwich on whole wheat bread.

The sandwich was tasty... it felt like something I'd make myself at home. I liked the little cornichons on the plate.

Sitting in the cafe smelling the bakery was a fantastic sort of torture, and after finishing the savory part of lunch I made a beeline for the pastry case. There was another option for the ordering process to go south... Buttery has a spool of numbered tickets in a wall dispenser and attempt to conduct business based on ticket number. That said, the minute I got close to the baked goods, just scoping out my options before I even had a ticket, an employee noticed me and asked if she could get me anything. There was nothing unfriendly or difficult about the process at all.

And the macaroon that I got (and unfortunately didn't take a picture of) was, hands down, the best macaroon I have ever eaten. It was perfectly moist and chewy with beautifully caramelized outer ridges. It was a real work of art!

Pizza my Heart

2011-05-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

I was in Santa Cruz maybe a decade ago when I first came across Pizza my Heart. I remember it then as being a cool, independant pizza shop with awesome pizza. For this reason, I was especially excited to find out that there was now an outpost in Monterey, near where I was staying.

Turns out Pizza my Heart is now a small chain, and the interior of the restaurant had a small chain feel, which was sort of a detractor for me. That said, they had a vegetarian pizza that was right up my alley: The Linda Mar, made with broccoli, artichoke hearts, fresh tomatoes, spinach, fresh garlic and black olives. YUM. This pizza was very vegetable heavy, which I completely enjoyed.

Pizza my Heart now has custom made hot sauce too... habenero, jalapeno and chipotle.

Another thing Pizza my Heart has going for it is some serious condiments. In addition to their 3 custom made hot sauces, they have this awesome little rack full of herbs and spices and delicious things to sprinkle on your pizza as you desire.

I guess the world keeps changing, and it's a good thing that these guys are doing so well!

Big Sur Bakery

2011-05-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

The Tofu Hunter just spent some time in California, so the next few posts are going to reflect my eating adventures while down in the sunshine.

We began in the gorgeous Big Sur area. It's always tricky to determine when to splurge on local delicacies when traveling, and the upscale yet back-to-the earth combination of Big Sur lead me to believe that a nice meal here would be a good idea. My dining companion and I chose the much revered Big Sur Bakery and Restaurant for what I had hoped would be a artfully and exquisitly prepared feast. I had also assumed that, in what felt like a sort of a fancy neo-hippy establishement (they have a rustic outbuilding bathroom, for example), I would be in a haven of vegetarian delights. It wasn't exactly the case.

Turns out the Big Sur Bakery isn't really set up for vegetarians. They have a small and pricey menu with wood fired pizzas, meat dishes and vegetables dishes to go alongside. The waitress told me that (depending upon how hungry I was), the vegetable dishes could indeed serve as a full meal, so I gave it a shot. My dining companion and I both ordered off of the (~$13 each) vegetable side dish portion of the menu.

I ordered the roasted vegetables, which were exactly true to the description: some tiny beets, a little carrots, some fennel slices and some bok choi. Not bad (hard to go wrong with roasted veggies), but pretty meager in quantity.

My dining companion ordered the risotto, which came with fava beans, asparagus and peas with basil oil. It was extremely savory and delicious, and together we promptly polished off the teeny tiny serving. I had assumed that it was vegetarian, but found out later that all that savoryness was actually coming from a rich chicken stock. Ah.

I think that if I ate meat, and had come here with the lavish intent of ordering a $15 appetizer, $30 meat dish, and a $13 vegetable side, I might have had a very different impression of my meal. As it was, my attempt to have a fancy, local vegetarian meal by way of an overpriced veggie side dish was sort of pathetic.

Pub at Third Place

2011-05-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

I was recently at the Pub at Third Place for a big ol' gathering of friends. The menu had a Greek/Middle East style bend to it and had all sorts of delicious looking options, and I made a classic mistake that is typical of me: I ordered lamely.

Instead of ordering a big fresh falafal sandwich with piping hot pub fries, I ordered a plate of roasted garbanzo beans and a plate of beets. The garbanzo beans were billed as Spicy Chickpeas with aleppo, cayenne, ancho & ghost chilis. Sounded awesome. The reality was more a drinkin' snack than a meal... they were very salty, very greasy, and very much not at all spicy. Between the aleppo, the cayenne, the ancho and the (for god sake!) ghost chili, I would have anticipated a little tongue warming and was disappointed when it wasn't there.

The second thing I ordered was a beet salad. I love beets, and this dish was advertised as roasted beets with parsley and cumin in walnut oil. Sounded Delicious. Unfortunately, the reality was mealy beets absolutely overwhelmed with a cumin paste so strong I couldn't eat the dish. Dang!

I should have ordered any of the number of other delicious sounding things on the menu... salads, braised greens, butternut squash soup, the afore mentioned falaful and fries, hummus, green olive tapenade, the list goes on. I am pretty sure the problem was, overall, my ordering choices. So it goes!

Open Water Swimming

2011-05-02T11:50:00.000-07:00

Alright, all you awesome, healthy vegetarian readers... who wants to go swimming this summer? Seattle Open Water has classes ranging from 1 session to 5 weeks and specialize in folks (many of whom are doing triathlons) who are just becoming acquainted with lake swimming.

Check out SeattleOpenWater.com for course listings!

Belltown Pizza

2011-05-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

So... I had had a long week at work, but maintained the noble intent to go home and cook up some dinner from the odds and ends already in the kitchen. As I dragged arse walking my tired self through Belltown with my dining companion, he busted past me and followed his nose right into the front door of Belltown Pizza, where the intoxicating aroma of fresh pizza pulled him off the street. By time I followed behind him, he had already ordered us each a couple of slices of this vegetarian delight and the idea of going home and cooking dinner was merrily on its way.

I hardly cared what else was on there... I was easy to please and 100% sold at the Jalapeno slices alone. Turns out the pizza was pretty darn good... thin crust, good sauce, etc. I guess I don't spend much time eating in Belltown, otherwise this might be a mainstay, especially because they sell by the slice. Pepped me back up!

Mandarin Chef

2011-04-25T22:17:00.000-07:00

I'd read that Mandarin Chef in the U-District had some of the best Chinese Noodles in the city. This was quite a statement, considering the output of Szechuanese Cuisine, Seven Stars Pepper, Szechuan Noodle Bowl, Shanghai Garden, and the Snappy Dragon and I was more than happy to do a little follow up research myself.

We started with some jiao zi, reported by the sassy older waitress to be a specialty. I am happy to report that they do have a vegetarian dumpling option, which our table ordered along side a order of meat. The savory, sharp, spicy dipping sauces and oils, one of my favorite parts of dumplings, were tasty but not especially spicy.

For a main course I ordered Mo Po Tofu (fantastically available in a vegetarian version, or with pork) and a side of stir fried hand shaved noodles. The ma po was great... rich, red and super savory (may have been a bit of MSG involved... I just kicked back and enjoyed it). The noodles though, with all of the emotional culinary buildup, were a bit of a disappointment to me. I've really come to love thick, twisty, chewy noodles, and these seemed to be more on the thin and delicate side. It's hard to come into a restaurant with really high expectations of anything.

I would go back for the MaPo, but might leave the more severe noodle cravings to some of my other noodle faves.

Senor Moose

2011-04-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

Senior Moose has long been on my list of restaurants to try, and I recently, finally, went there with company from out of town. We started with an appetizer of chips and guacamole and it was really outstanding. The chips were thick and salty and so fresh the grease burned our fingers, and their sturdy texture was perfect for the chunky homemade guacamole. In addition to this appetizer, there were other interesting looking starters too, including one particularly intriguing pile of roasted, cheesy corn also served with hot chips.

There were multiple interesting vegetarian dishes to choose from, including enchiladas in some sort of special salsa, and a vegetarian mole made from "25 ingredients". I chose a dish that was made from roasted chilis, roasted corn, potatoes and cream. It came on a plate split down the middle with tasty black beans on the other side, and a plate of warm tortillas wrapped in a cloth for scooping it all up. It was some heavy dense delicious food.

Many of the salads looked awesome too, and I wish we'd had room to try some desserts, including both a regular and a chocolate tres leches cake. Oh my, got to go back!

PS: My one complaint was that they kept the door wide open, likely to vent the kitchen in the small and somewhat crowded restaurant, but it was a nasty, rainy, cold night and I had to eat with my jacket and scarf on. A cozy, steamy, warm room would have much better suited the food!

Q Bakery

2011-04-11T21:36:00.000-07:00

The Q Bakery is located in the same complex as Viet Wah on MLK and Graham down in my neck of the woods in South Seattle. It's not hard to find a good banh mi in Seattle, but a good vegetarian banh mi a stone's throw from my house is cause for celebration!

To start with , the Q Bakery is indeed a real bakery and it pumps out baguettes and rolls at regular intervals all day. If you choose to eat in the small shop, you'll know the bread is almost out of the oven because the population temporarily swells with people eager to load up their baskets and bags with hot bread. So this means that the backbone of the banh mi, the baguette, is oh so fresh and tasty. Off to a good start!

I'm not sure if they actually remove some of the center of the baguette, but somehow the ratio of fillings to bread is way better than usual, and the sandwich feels packed with innards and not just a bread baby.
Another reason I especially love Q Bakery is the sauce on the table. I recently discovered that one of the little plastic jars of red seedy sauce is NOT the typical vinegary chili garlic, but chili garlic lemongrass. I loaded up my sandwich and was in heaven.

The prices are similar to banh mi elsewhere: amazingly low. And in addition to sandwiches, Q bakery has a wide and interesting selection of other foods and snacks that are largely mysterious to me. Definitely worth a stop in if you're in the area!

Seasonal Goods

2011-04-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

I recently had the pleasure of coordinating a catered lunch and chose Vince at Seasonal Goods to complete the task. Turns out he was a great choice: his bid was below our budget and his list of meals was huge, healthy and fantastic. The real clincher (for me) was that he routinely includes a fully-formed vegetarian version of the meal that matches it's meat brother.

The meal pictured below was szechuan chicken with noodles and asian slaw. Vince used a surprisingly tasty faux-chicken for the veggie version, and his sauces and salad dressings were all homemade and quite delicious. He also brought cranberry lemonade and a dense gingerbread cake with molasses whipped cream.

The next day we had enchiladas with chili roasted potatoes and cesar salad. Very satisfying for both the vegetarians and the meat eaters, and he was kind enough to, upon request, make a small portion of enchiladas without cheese for the lactose intolerant.

The whole scenario was cute too... Vince, a reticent somewhat gruff guy in chefs whites comes quietly blitzing in, sets up a little table, and serves up the eaters on nice glass plates and with real cutlery. Once done, he whisks it all up on a little cart and takes the dirty dishes with him.

I don't have many opportunities to employ a caterer, but he won me over with his menu variety and attention to vegetarians!

Seasonal Goods Catering
(253) 630-2233
14545 Se 261st St, Kent, WA 98042

Belltown Billiards

2011-03-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Belltown Billiards makes surprisingly good pizza. I was recently there on a stormy week night when the place was nearly empty aside from me and my pool shark friends. We ordered a bunch of pizzas through out the evening, including a tasty vegetarian pizza with fresh tomatoes and basil. There is a pizza oven and the back, and the thin chewy crusted beauties came out piping hot and surprisingly delicious. I had really low expectations, but am glad that I saved my appetite and indulged it here.

Belltown Billiards also has some good Happy Hour drink specials, including a $5 margaritas and Jack and Gingers.

King of Pho

2011-03-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

I have some very excited news about the King of Pho in Auburn: They have a full new vegetarian menu!! I wrote about The King of Pho a couple of months ago, but in the meantime they've had a complete shift in vegetarian priorities. What fantastic news!

I was temped by many of the items on the vegetarian menu, but decided upon the lemongrass tofu vermicelli bowl, and oh my god, it was a good choice.

Their rendition of this dish (one of my Vietnamese favorites) rivaled any other I've ever eaten. The tofu was freshly fried and coated in a spicy, richly flavored lemongrass chili paste and tossed with stir fried onions. Half the bowl was full of vermicelli noodles, the other half was packed with lettuce, shredded cabbage, cucumbers, carrots and fresh herbs. The whole thing was covered in a generous blanket of dark roasted peanuts, and the small cup of sauce (meant to be poured over the bowl) was savory and unsweet, just how I like it.

I am so excited about this new development and will definitely be stopping here anytime I'm coming through Auburn hungry. Sitting here right now, looking at the picture of the dish, my mouth is watering so much I'd almost be tempted to drive to Auburn just for this meal.

(On a meat note, my meat eating dining companion said that his dish was outstanding.)

How wonderful! South side vegans and vegetarians (and heck, your meat eating friends too) go check it out!

(I posted a picture of the vegetarian menu on urbanspoon... you can find it by clicking below).

Beloved Mexico

2011-03-03T08:58:00.000-08:00

Beloved Mexico is a taco truck in West Seattle that stands immediately apart in both appearance and conscience. The truck itself (more like a trailer) is shiny black with glossy cursive writing, and the family (owners) working inside pride themselves on quality ingredients and healthy preparations.

There are many vegetarian options, including a satisfying veggie taco with large, fresh corn tortillas, refried beans, and a big pile of grilled peppers and onions. They also have multiple cheese and potato dishes, burritos, tortas, etc. The salsa are freshly made, spicy and delicious. The pickled jalapeno that came with my taco tasted home-pickled with subtle hints of delicious spices.
My meat eating dining companion is especially thrilled to be getting his taco truck favorites from a place that uses good locally sourced meat, and as a vegetarian, I am happy to support businesses that make those sorts of choices too.

The prices are all taco truck cheap.

Stopping at Beloved Mexico used to be an occasional treat, but after hearing a KUOW radio show about people living "without a net" that featured Beloved Mexico's Guerrero brothers, we tend to stop every time we pass by, hungry or not. You can listen to the feature here: https://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=22719

I get complicated feelings around this... part of me wants to support the heck out of small, local restaurants making good food with good ethics. The other part of me feels like it's futile... that there are too many restaurants to each get enough of our city's collective "eating out" budget to survive. But then I think: But what the F about all the money spent at Applebees? And the Olive Garden? And the Cheesecake Factory?? These places aren't cheap, and every time I've ever had anything to do with them they've been packed with people complacently stuffing their pieholes.There is PLENTY of eating out budget, it's just being used in the wrong (IMHO) places.

It makes me angry that Beloved Mexico, with healthy, artful, delicious, reasonably priced food and carefully selected meat is just barely surviving (possibly headed to extinction soon unless business kicks up) while people will plunk down $13 at an Azteca for a mediocre cooperate meal without a flinch.

What the hell is wrong with us?? Go get some Beloved Mexico tacos before it's too late.

Aloha Ramen

2011-02-21T09:42:00.000-08:00

This is a quick update to a previous post about Aloha Ramen in Greenwood. I went again to test the idea that there was more vegan soup available than what the menu indicated, and made a very easy special order: vegetarian ramen with spicy sesame broth. Turned out it was no problem.
It was way more interestingly flavored than the "Veggie Ramen" I ordered last time. Vegetarians and vegans take note, you have options!

NW SnowBuddy!

2011-02-17T11:29:00.001-08:00

I've got a little public service announcement: My smartypants dining companion has been toiling away this winter making an iPhone app and it is now live and ready to go!
The app is called NW Snowbuddy, and it does a beautiful job of showing weather and telemetry data relating to snow conditions in the Pacific Northwest. If you're a skier, snowboarder, snowmobiler, snowshoer, mountain pass driver, snow hiker, snowman maker, snow lover, snow avoider... check it out!!

NW SnowBuddy in the App Store

NW SnowBuddy Website

The Snorting Elk

2011-02-15T19:16:00.000-08:00

I was recently at Crystal Mountain Ski Resort around dinner time and was thrilled to learn that it's possible to buy dinner at a resort restaurant for a decent price. My dining companion and I ate at the Snorting Elk Bar (which is, I believe, the only place to buy dinner at a decent price).

We started with a $7 salad that exceeded my expectations: giant pile of mixed greens, spinach and lettuce, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, shredded carrots, black olives and sliced red onions in a simple homemade vinagrette.

Next we had a cheese pizza for $17. It was a nice thin pizza with a surprisingly buttery crust. It was large enough that the two of us got full and still had a couple slices left over.

Henry's Taiwan

2011-02-09T08:16:00.000-08:00

Well, a recent trip to Henry's Taiwan in the international district was a roller coaster of disgust and delight. Dinner began with a powerful, immensely stinking smell that hit me like a wave of airborn vomit soon as I opened the restaurant door. I thought I was going to have to turn right back around, but instead made my way into a booth with my dining companion and discretely, laboriously attempted to close off my olfactory senses and gag reflex as my stomach turned.

I later learned that stinky tofu is a specialty at Henry's, and I can only assume that the offending odor was related to a high quality product. When my dining companion asked if I wanted to order some stinky tofu as an appetizer, every speck of my being knew the answer: NO. Perhaps if it had been offered on a windy seaside bluff the spirit of culinary adventure would have over powered the self preserving demands of my appetite. But not tonight.

There was just one vegetarian main dish on the menu: Rice with Tofu, and it sounded pretty boring. So I asked the waitress if they could combine a few items on the menu to make me the dish of my dreams: hand shaved noodles, tofu, vegetables. Her answer? No. You're a vegetarian? You can order rice with tofu.

And so it was. As I sat, doing my darnedest "mind over matter" stomach control I was prepared to really dislike my meal.

And then it came. And the moment the waitress brought it to the table, I knew I was going to love it.

What arrived was a nice size slab of silken custard tofu in a light, crisp batter, with a garlicky savory sauce, a pile of purple rice with some kind of pickled garlic on top, a pile of (mild in comparison) pungent kimchee, and a cute little stack of some sort of cold, slightly cooked but still fresh green leafy vegetable.

Everything was completely delicious and I cleaned my plate.

I realize that I had a pretty classic ignorant "I'm not part of this culture and am too weeny for it's specialties" reaction. I believe this was in large part because I was completely unprepared, unwarned, unaware of the potential smell. Uneducated about both stinky tofu and Henry's, I really wasn't sure what was going on... was I smelling a specialty dish? Or was there an old man with horrible breath throwing up beneath my table? The mystery wasn't a good mystery.

I believe that the power in going to Henry's is in KNOWING that, depending upon what your fellow restaurant mates are ordering, you may well be in the midst of a traditional Taiwanese stink-nado. If you're ready for it, maybe it won' t be such a challenge and you can fully enjoy your delicious meal!

Safeway

2011-02-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

And to finish off my tiny, frugal culinary tour of Maui, I've saved the best for last: picnic dinner on the beach.

My dining companion was really excited about eating some Poke (a raw fish salad that has all kinds of variations) on the trip, and we'd heard that the huge poke selection in the Safeway deli was actually pretty good, and so we went there to supply our picnic.

I was THRILLED beyond expectation to find that there was a vegetarian poke in the midst! It was made of marinated tofu, seaweed (very mild), green onions, garlic, and rich dark, savory toasted sesame oil and fresh greens of some kind. Oh my goodness it was good!

We also had a bagged salad, a warm sunset and a giant beer to round out the meal. (Well, truth be told, salad, sunset, and beer and a nice greasy bag of jojo potatoes. Somehow those didn't make the picture!)

Here's a close up of the vegetarian poke, yum:

Disclaimer: There was some (after the fact) discussion about this salad possibly having Oyster Sauce in it, which could explain why I was hit with an almost obscene savory deliciousness that I didn't recognize as I ate it. The mystery remains.

Thai Cuisine

2011-02-07T08:49:00.000-08:00

I usually count on Thai food in an unfamiliar city to have something that can be made vegetarian. On my trip to Maui, I looked up reviews of Thai restaurants and found high rating for Thai Cuisine, in the Maui Mall in Kahului.

Eating in a mall, even an open air mall like the Maui Mall, isn't usually a preferred destination, but in this instance is was a great way to eat a tasty, reasonably priced, non-tourism oriented meal.

Thai Cuisine has a nice large selection of "Vegetarian Lovers" dishes that are vegan. We ordered Evil Prince tofu, and Garlic Vegetable tofu.

The Evil Prince tofu was a spicy, rich, flavorful dish made with coconut milk.

The garlic vegetables were especially savory and delicious.

I found both of our dishes to be really tasty... not too heavy, greasy or sweet. What a find!

To add icing to the cake, they brought us a free dish of tapioca coconut pudding at the end of the meal. It was creamy, sweet, slightly salty, and a perfect finish to a wonderful vegan feast.

Aloha Mixed Plate

2011-02-05T10:53:00.000-08:00

The Mix Plate is a staple Hawaiian fast food. It's often served out of a truck or bus or shack or little restaurant, and usually consists of two scoops of rice, a scoop of mayonnaise-y macaroni salad, and some sort of specially cooked meat(s). It's honest, unprocessed food, but there's not much to be had for a vegetarian.

Aloha Mixed Plate is a sort of domesticated Mixed Plate eatery... the food and the preparation are similar to elsewhere, but the restaurant itself is located right on the beach in touristy Lahaina Maui and is geared for tourists.

We started with a passion fruit smoothie, which didn't feel like it had much real fruit in it.

While my dining companion mowed down his mixed plate with chicken, beef and mahi mahi, I had one of the few vegetarian options: house made chow mein with tofu in peanut sauce. It was OK enough, not gross, nothing to really write home about.

For dessert we had Haupia, a gelled coconut dessert (made with arrowroot or corn starch, not gelatin). For just $1, it's hard to say no!

Fresh Mint

2011-02-04T09:36:00.001-08:00

I just got back from a lovely trip to Maui- what a treat to be able to get a little mid-winter sunshine! Before I left, I spent a little time searching for interesting places to eat while there. As could be imagined, Maui has a lot of touristy restaurants, seafood/meat based restaurants, and expensive restaurants. One of the most promising places that I found was Fresh Mint, a vegan Vietnamese restaurant in the yoga centric town of Paia on the north shore of the island. In addition to everything being vegan, the prices were in line with what I'm comfortable spending (entrees were just under $10).

We started with green papaya salad:

Next, I ordered "Fresh Lemongrass Tofu," which was different from anything I'd ever seen before. It consisted of lemongrass seasoned fresh tofu wrapped in soft bean curd and a layer of crisp fried seaweed. The textures were awesome, and it was a real treat to discover a new preparation of tofu that I'd never had. Unfortunately, the whole dish was smothered in a super sweet syrupy sauce that really detracted from my enjoyment. The sesame sauce, meant to be dipped into and used as a salad dressing (in the little bowl), was delicious. If it were up to me, the brown sauce would disappear and the sesame sauce would take over.

My dining companion ordered spicy fake beef. He also described the sauce as too sweet, and the fake beef a little bizarre (it always is!), but overall a pleasant enough meal.

If you're a vegan or a vegetarian on Maui, I'd definitely pay this little spot a visit! My main advice though would be to try to avoid the dishes with the heavy sauce.

Cutting Board

2011-01-12T12:08:00.000-08:00

I have always coveted Bento boxes, the Japanese delight that comes with multiple foods tucked away in separate compartments on a luxuriously divided plate, but they are almost always meat based and I had only partaken vicariously until a recent visit to Cutting Board Sushi in Georgetown where I was thrilled to find a "Veggie Bento" front and center on the menu.

The Veggie bento box came with spinach filled potstickers and veggie croquettes on a bed of mixed greens, fried tofu with pickled sprouts, salad with miso dressing, rice, and a couple slices of tough pickled vegetable. All of the main items were deep fried, which was tasty but not sustainable. I was pretty excited as I munched my way around the little compartments.

The sushi list was huge and had tons of interesting vegetarian options including all sorts of unusual items like fried yams, wasabi mayo, mango and apples, in addition to a variety of usual veggie things: tofu, asparagus, peppers, avocado, spicy mayo, etc. I would love to try some of the rolls sometime.

All that said, the meat eaters were less excited about their meals. Two of them ordered fish sushi rolls and weren't stoked on what they got. The other meat eater ordered the house bento box and was disappointed that everything in it was so greasy and fried and later complained about how heavy it all felt.

So I guess the verdict is still out. It may be the case that the huge vegetarian variety (lots of vegan options too... just tell the person at the counter and they'll tell you what's possible) wins it over as a sushi restaurant for vegetarians, but maybe the regular sushi isn't the greatest. I'd love to hear other opinions on the place.

St. Dames

2010-12-29T21:14:00.000-08:00

I recently went to St. Dames, the new vegetarian restaurant in Columbia city, to celebrate my birthday. This means I was poised to order everything from drinks to dessert and I had my expectations set high. Upon entering the restaurant, I was excited to see that the owners had done a pleasing job of creating a cozy, stylish, hip ambiance with plenty of booths, art, and careful lightening, none of which was a given considering the location in the somewhat characterless new mixed-use buildings just north of the Columbia City Light Rail station.

We started with drinks, and I ordered the St. Cinnamon, one of many tasty sounding specialty cocktails offered in addition to a full bar. It was made with muddled pear, bourbon, and cinnamon infused simple syrup, and was just the sort of slightly spicy, slightly fruity cocktail that I love. And for a fancy bar drink, it was reasonably priced too at $8.

If you're a vegetarian or vegan, you are probably aware of the rarity of looking at a menu on which every item is actually available to you. The need to *choose* something off of a menu is an unaccustomed pleasure, and I scratched my head for a good long while as I debated the merits of just about every delicious looking item offered. I ended up choosing a butternut squash gnocchi with a side of braised kale, and my dining companion ordered a portobello cheese steak sandwich on homemade baguette. Both were delicious, wholesome and beautiful. YES.

Gnocchi with grilled vegetables, toasted hazelnuts and feta cheese along side a huge delicious mound of lightly braised, wonderfully seasoned kale.

Just about every item on the menu is either vegan, or can be made vegan. Many items are gluten free. They bake all of their own (deliciously gluten-filled) bread. They allow you to substitute side dishes however you desire, which is pretty exciting because I want to try just about every one of them: braised kale, whipped veggies, french fries, roasted vegetables, etc. AND, they are doing everything with an eye towards sustainability.

Marinated portobellos, grilled peppers and onions, melted provolone and lettuce on a fresh homemade baguette, along side fries and what tasted like homemade ketchup.

The gals running the place were so friendly and hard working it made me love it all even more. I get the feeling they are still refining aspects the menu and service, but they were completely sweetly accommodating to my requests (for example, butter for my bread).

Chocolate mousse pie (vegan, I think), with a nice optional dollop of real whipped cream.

I can't say enough good things about this place. The last time I got my hopes up for a new vegetarian restaurant was for Plum, which was so dissapointing on my visit I've not given it a second chance. The fact that St. Dames is in my own neighborhood is just icing on the cake.

When people ask me "What do vegetarians eat?" I'd like to steer them right on over to St. Dames, where the dishes are composed to stand on their own as complete, delicious, and not based around re-creating meat dishes with manufactured meat substitutes. It's the kind of food I would cook at home if I had endless time and skill to put into it, and I am absolutely thrilled to have these gals willing and able to do it for me!

I really really wish success for this place, go there and eat and let me know what you think.

Essential Baking Company

2010-12-23T09:03:00.000-08:00

I had lunch recently at the Georgetown Essential Baking company, where I was treated to the lamest Caprese sandwich I have ever had. It is hard to knock the place because the staff was so friendly, but really this was ridiculous.

The small sandwich cost around seven dollars, which isn't exactly peanuts. The bread was fresh, as it should have been in a bakery, but the laughable innards of the sandwich consisted of one extra thin slice of coldcut style mozzarella, a piece of mealy tomato, and a couple of soggy basil leaves. One side of the bread had a faint drizzle of balsamic vinegar, the other was dry. WTF.
I know it isn't exactly summertime, so it is unrealistic to hope for garden fresh tomatoes. But this doesn't excuse the fact that they couldn't muster a couple of slices of thick fresh mozzarella or some additional sauce (more vinegar? olive oil? a nice pesto?) for the bread. Plus, for the price, the danged plate could have used some chips.

King of Pho

2010-12-17T08:27:00.000-08:00

I am always interested in restaurants in the outer reaches of our area, especially those that make good post outdoor activity dinner stops. Post outdoor activity dinners hold tremendous amounts of promise: You are hungry, you are tired, and you've likely just used up a zillion calories and thereby feel indulgent. Yet many of the "on the way home" options turn out to be somewhat disappointing.

A recent ski day at Crystal Mountain prompted dinner at King Pho in Auburn, which came highly recommended by my meat eating dining companion.

I was pleased to see that there were indeed vegetarian options, including a tofu vermicelli bowl. I decided to order a little outside of my usual Vietnamese arsenal and got "Green beans and mushrooms with tofu". A quick chat with the waitress about not-frying the tofu revealed that she didn't speak English, and I decided not to engage on the "Is the Pho broth vegan? Does the bun sauce have fish in it? Can I have broccoli instead of mushrooms?" chain of inquiry. Those questions remain a mystery at King of Pho.

My dinner was somewhat blah. The quantity of real food was pretty small, though there was a hefty scoop of rice on the plate. The green beans were cooked nicely, but the sauce was nothing special.
That said, I can understand the carnivorous enthusiasm for the place. For the same price as my meager, boring plate, a duck eater received a giant steaming bowl of fragrant duck noodle soup, a plate covered in a beautiful plentiful pile of some sort of papaya salad , artfully composed with seared duck and caramelized shallots.

After dinner I was still hungry and demanded a sharp turn into a Dairy Queen, dethroned in Seattle but still reigning outside the city. I have childhood memories of the Peanut Buster Parfait as the only junk-food treat my mother ever showed interest in, and it was thus cemented in my mind as really top notch. Sure, the new menu requirements reveal the fact that a single Peanut Buster Parfait contains 700 calories, but I rationalized that I probably needed those calories and enjoyed the heck out of it anyhow.

Georgetown Liquor Company

2010-12-15T09:19:00.000-08:00

I'm going to take a moment here and say, again, how much I enjoy the Georgetown Liquor Company (I've written about it before, here). Every time I go I am thrilled with the breadth and deliciousness of the vegetarian (and very vegan friendly) menu.

On a recent trip, I ordered a Lowell Sandwich, which was a complete delight of vegetarian "ham", green chilies, cheddar cheese, tomatoes, baby greens and chipotle veganaise on a toasted whole wheat hoagie roll. I had a choice of sides: soup, salad, or chips and salsa, and chose the salad, which was large and perfectly dressed with homemade vinaigrette and shaves of Parmesan.
My dining companion ordered the Portobello Salad, which was the biggest salad I've ever seen in a restaurant. It was a beautiful, enormous pile of baby greens, gouda, sun dried tomatoes, pine nuts, and delicious marinated slices of portobello mushroom. I don't generally like mushrooms, and portobellos are no exception, but here they were so perfectly seasoned and marinated that even I enjoyed a taste.
The ambiance of the Georgetown Liquor Company is a little brooding, with black walls and dark themed art, and is the sort of place where I might be initially skeptical about the state of the kitchen. But I have been completely consistently impressed with the food that they make, and would even go so far as to say it's just as good as any other vegetarian restaurant I've been to in Seattle.

I love the Georgetown Liquor Company!

Kisaku

2010-12-11T10:33:00.000-08:00

Social restaurant feasts seem to involve sushi these days in my world, the most recent of which was a celebratory evening at Kisaku in the mysterious Tangletown neighborhood near Greenlake.

The group began with a bunch of appetizers, two of which were somewhat appropriate for a vegetarian: edamame and agedashi tofu, which came covered in bonito flakes. When I order agedashi tofu for myself, I'm always careful to specify that I'd like it without the bonito. On this occasion I simply scraped it off and continued to eat the lightly battered tofu.

While the rest of the table ordered platter after platter of creature based sushi, I secured myself a nice little supply of vegetarian goodies: Tofu Dengaku: tofu in a (surprisingly sweet) red miso sauce, a $1.50 Kobachi salad with a scoop of mashed potatoes, and a beautiful Devil's vegetarian role that had an outer skin of marinated, fried eggplant.

It can be tricky with Japanese food to get seemingly meat free options truly free of fish products, but these all seemed to be genuinely vegan (with the exception of the mashed potatoes, which might have had some mayonnaise in them). It was nice to have some unusual options!

Taqueria El Rinconsito

2010-12-05T01:30:00.000-08:00

In honor of a recent visit from my lovely out of town sister, my aunt and uncle treated us to a midday feast at their favorite Mexican Restaurant in Burien: Taqueria El Rinconsito. Off the bat, Taqueria El Rinconsito passed the first superficial test for Mexican Restaurant promise: the place was full of Spanish speaking patrons.

The menu is mostly meat based with only cheese enchiladas as a vegetarian option, but the staff was friendly and happy to oblige my request to put some beans in there too.

The taqueria also gloriously passed test number two, the salsa bar. I am an absolute salsa bar fiend, and was immediately swooning (discretely) over what I saw:
Four types of delicious, spicy, varied blended salsas ranging from sweet to smoky, some sort of pico de gayo that was cabbage based and outstanding, pickled carrots and jalapenos, fresh radishes and lime wedges.

Next was the third test, the agua frescas:
I have yet to see a more complete display of these sweet tasty beverages. Taqueria El Rinconsito has horchata (rice milk with cinnamon), Tamarindo (tamarind), Guayaba (guava), Jamaica (hibiscus), and mango. I had a taste of each, but ultimately decided the creamy horchata would best sooth the burning mouth I was so looking forward to from the salsa bar.

My meal was huge and delicious. I'm still not sure what to call this style of Mexican food... it is usually referred to as "family style" but that doesn't say much. On my plate of 3 enchiladas made with fresh tortillas and delicious rich red sauce, I also had a scoop of well seasoned yellow rice and a pile of whole beans (made without lard).

Taqueria El Rinconsito isn't exactly classy-date in ambiance, but it is full of natural light, clean enough and the food is fresh, delicious and inexpensive.

Thanks K & M for the wonderful afternoon!

Thai Tom

2010-11-30T09:21:00.000-08:00

Thai Tom is the tiny, cramped University district darlin' where the food is fast and delicious and the air is smoky with the flavors of Thai delight.

The concise menu includes tofu as a meat choice, and it seems the brisk staff is used to dealing with the fitful culinary whims of university students and didn't bat an eye when I asked for my spicy noodles (more or less phad kee ma0) made vegan.

I'm not sure Thai Tom is necessarily the best in the city, but it is consistently tasty, fresh, and hot. A seat at the bar (sometimes a necessity if you wish to be seated ahead of the giant hungry line) is an entertaining peek into the madness of flying hands, flames and sauces as the sweating cooks blast out order after order.

Add all of that to the inexpensive prices, and it's no wonder the place is so popular.

Six Arms Brewery

2010-11-24T11:32:00.000-08:00

I was recently on east capital hill looking for dinner around 9:30pm, just past the witching hour where regular restaurants close their doors and late night establishments reveal themselves. I ended up at Six Arms, a brewery with the sort of late-night food that makes me glad to live in a city like Seattle. Not only did the menu have all sorts of tasty vegetarian appetizers like hummus, roasted corn black bean salsa, and goat cheese torta (if you like that sort of thing), and multiple vegetarian mains like a grilled smoked mozzarella sandwich and a tofu burrito, they had two different types of vegetarian burgers: boca burgers, and garden-type burgers made with their own Hammerhead Ale and malted grains. Holy crap, yes please on the latter.

The burger comes with a choice of sides including fresh cut fries, tater tots, salad, etc.

Long gone are the days of vegetarian choices limited to brewery nachos!

PS: Happy Hour starts at 10pm, which I unfortunately missed. Had I made it, my garden burger would have cost just $4.

Aoki

2010-11-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

A recent cold, rainy evening inspired a night of sushi with some friends at Aoki on Capital Hill. Aoki has a couple of simple vegetarian rolls, but no real clincher on the menu and I decided to order non-sushi items for my dinner instead of requesting anything special from the sushi bar.

Many sushi restaurants have a delightfully low-priced simple salad on their menu, and Aoki is no exception. For $1.50, I received a nice size bowl of crisp ice burg lettuce with thinly sliced red onion in a delicious sesame dressing.
I also ordered my Japanese restaurant standby: Agedashi tofu. If you are a regular reader, you may have noticed that I tend to special order my tofu non-fried. This is because I generally find fried tofu to be a less delicious, unpleasing textured, excessively greasy version of what it could be fresh or steamed, not because I have an aversion to eating fried things. Agedashi tofu is an exception to my general tofu rule in that good agedashi tofu (and I've never had it bad) involves all the best of both worlds: fresh, custardy, smooth tofu on the inside with a delicate but crispy, salty, crunchy crust on the outside. It is an example of deep frying done with a a concerted culinary aesthetic rather than as a default, and it is exquisite.

I also ordered a plate of Yakiudon with tofu. The price for this plate was $6.50, and at that price I wasn't sure if it was going to be a tiny sampling, consistant with what $6.50 tends to get you at expensive sushi restaurants, or a full meal. I was extremely pleased to receive a huge plate of steaming noodles. It is unusual to feel that a sushi restaurant delivers good quantity value for the price (no doubt because all of the non-vegetarian items are so precious), but Aoki absolutely did. Nice.
It was a lovely evening out, just what I needed. Thanks P & B!

Mayuri Bakery

2010-11-18T13:23:00.001-08:00

A couple of years ago I visited Mayuri, a delicious east side Indian restaurant, and have since heard rumors of other avenues to experience the Mayuri empire including a deli, a grocery store, and a video store. A recent quest for a cricket uniform set me off on voyage to the Indian flavored area of Redmond near the Microsoft campus, and while driving around I came across what I thought was the Mayuri deli and decided to head in for dinner.

After entering and getting a feel for the place, I lost confidence that we were in the deli. This particular location was dominated by a case of colorful desserts and seemed to be the Mayuri Bakery instead, but there was a savory dinner special written on a board, and a lovely selection of savory condiments on the tables, so my dining companion and I decided to go ahead with dinner. The special was poori, a deep fried flat bread, with some sort of saucy dish to eat with it. I got curried chick peas, and my dining companion got some sort of spinach with potatoes.

Under the fried bread was a pile of chopped fresh red onion, some fresh chili peppers and a wedge of lime. I doused the whole thing in some nice spicy garlic chili vinegar and scooped up bits of everything with the greasy bread. It was tasty enough, but certainly not outstanding.

Our specials also came with some really good, really creamy and sweet mango lasse, and a square of double-layered cake that was so boring even this dessert lover didn't bother eating it.

I guess the slow search for the real Mayuri Deli continues.

Mashikos

2010-10-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

Recent out of town company inspired an indulgent dinner at Mashiko's Sushi Bar in West Seattle. Mashiko's had me charmed right off the bat with three things done delightfully: pretty water glasses garnished with cucumber slices, table set with a bowl of rice cracker snack mix, and a claim to be Seattle's first fully sustainable sushi restaurant.

The menu is large and has a variety of vegetarian items mixed in (marked with a radish icon) with the fish, in addition to a dedicated vegetarian sushi list. There is even a vegetarian "Chefs Choice" sushi assortment that includes a couple vegetarian rolls and a selection of vegetarian nigiri.

I started my meal with a "Deep Forest" roll, which included tempura asparagus, avocado, tomato and Cajun spices. I really enjoyed the flavor and spice of this roll, but found the overall texture of the innards to be a bit on the homogeneously soft side.
Next, I ate Agedashi Tofu, special ordered vegetarian (menu indicates that it can be made veggie upon request). The order included a hefty quantity of fresh tofu in a surprisingly thick, deep-fried crust bathed in some delicious savory broth.
As the meal continued and more details emerged, the restaurant revealed itself to be even more awesome. I found our waitress to be especially wonderful. For starters, she acted neither bitchy nor judgemental about having a vegetarian to wait on (not always the case at sushi restaurants). Second, she seemed to really know her sushi and used an impressive array of descriptors (including swimming speed) when describing what a certain fish might be like.

I was also really impressed with the bathroom, which was complete with high tech Japanese toilet seat that was not only exquisitely electrically prewarmed, but had multiple bidet/shower options that came with a multitude of adjustment to suit any mood.

Really everything about this place was fantastic: food, ambiance, spirit, staff. Not exactly cheap, but there was no reason it should have been.

Bent Burgers

2010-10-21T13:54:00.001-07:00

I am happy to report a change for the ol' Seward Park (Columbia City, Lakewood, Genesse, etc) neighborhood: The oft changing restaurant on the corner of Dawson and Wilson might have finally found a long term resident, Bent Burgers.

This poor corner has long had the taint of unsuccessful bistros and breakfasts joints, and somehow the idea of a reasonably-priced burger place just feels right. It's about time!

The decor is well coordinated with lots of handmade urban art and a super hero theme.
The staff was friendly, the owner was hanging out in the shop, and Garden (as well as beef, chicken, turkey) Burgers are featured on the menu. I enjoyed the list of additional toppings and added jalapenos to my burger for $0.50.

They also have hot, fresh fries, both potato and sweet potato. The fries came with fun house-concocted sauce: Mae Ploy Ranch (ranch with sweet chili sauce and spices).

I've got my fingers crossed for this place!

Wrap O Roll

2010-10-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

On the way out of town recently some friends and I stopped at Wrap O Roll hoping to grab a quick dinner. The restaurant looks like a chain, but I don't believe it is. There were various vegetarian options on the menu, and I ordered a spicy lemon grass vermicelli bowl.

We were the only ones in the restaurant, yet our order took a really surprisingly long time to arrive. Considering we were hoping to make this a quick stop, it was sort of a nuisance.

The food that I got was so-so. The tofu (special ordered fresh) was tasty, and the veggies and noodles were nice, but the sauce was so disgustingly mega-sweet I couldn't eat it. A dining companion who ordered the same thing but did eat his sauce later complained of a stomach ache that felt like he'd eaten a massive amount of sugar. Not surprising.

The "rolls" are supposed to be the specialty here, so perhaps those are more inspiring than the overall meal that I got.

Anthony's Pier 66

2010-10-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

Dear readers I apologize for a second post in a row without pictures. I'll try to keep this short. I was recently forced (a rather pampered use of the word) to eat lunch at Anthony's Fish Bar down on the waterfront. The choices for a vegetarian at this establishment are limited to sides: french fries, coleslaw, chocolate chip cookie, or fish taco sans fish (tortilla with coleslaw in it). Essentially: NO GO unless you eat fish.

The exceptionally nice cashier suggested that I check around the corner at Anthony's Pier 66 proper (white table cloth), and it was there that I found a few vegetarian options: grilled cheese, grilled bowl of veggies, spaghetti with marinara. Still not exactly the garden of Eden but I asked to combine the bowl of grilled veggies with the spaghetti and had a somewhat decent vegetarian lunch.

This actually wasn't the first time I'd found myself hungry at Anthony's fish bar with a table full of fish-eaters. In the past I'd just abstained and pilfered unfinished fries from my dining companions as they made their way to the trash. It was a good discovery today that I could go around the corner and buy an entree to-go from the main Anthony's and bring it over and partake a little more wholesomely with my greasy-lipped dining companions at the fish bar.

2100 Bar and Bistro (Marriot Hotel)

2010-09-28T19:15:00.000-07:00

I was recently at the Marriot Hotel on the waterfront for a business lunch of sorts. I was initially excited to have a fancy lunch on somebody else's dime, but was totally disappointed when I got a look at the menu.

There were four vegetarian choices:

1. Grilled cheese sandwich
2. Oven fired cheese "flatbread"
3. Butter lettuce salad with goat cheese croutons
4. Tomato soup

These options might sound like fun little meat-free interludes to an omnivore looking to vary it up, but for a vegetarian, the cheese+bread option can be tiring and incomplete.

I ordered half a grilled cheese with the house salad. What came was an expensive joke in proportion... a tiny sandwich and a pile of full-size butter lettuce leaves with sliced red onion. Sandwich was delicious, but with enough butter and good cheese and fresh bread it's not hard to make a tasty grilled cheese. Salad was nice too, it's hard to go wrong with butter lettuce, but I would have appreciated it if somebody in the back could have cut it into manageable size before it hit the table. I felt like a tool cutting my salad with a knife and fork like it was a piece of flimsy watery steak.

But the main problem was the tiny quantity. One of my dining companions ordered a Cesar salad, and when she too was done screeching her knife across her meager plate of full-size Romain leaves we nearly crashed knuckles reaching desperately for the last bread in the bread basket.

This place isn't worth the money for a vegetarian.

Dante's Inferno Dogs

2010-09-24T16:23:00.001-07:00

Dante's Inferno Dogs has a cart in Ballard that is open late to feed the drunken masses. I recently went on a dark and rainy night and was quite pleased to see that they have two veggie dog choices: Spicy Chipotle and Apple Sage. I chose the Spicy Chipotle, and from a nice list of toppings selected cream cheese, grilled onions and peppers, banana pepper and jalapeno slices as my toppings. My 3 other dining companions got the same dog with their individual topping choices.
I inhaled mine, enamoured by the toppings and not paying much attention to the dog itself. My dining companions, all of whom were of the "conscientious omnivore", sometimes vegetarian persuasion, were not exactly enjoying theirs. One went back and got himself a meat dog. The other two ate their Chipotle dogs, but felt pretty immediately gross and had lingering upset stomachs that lasted into the next day. These friends all love spicy food, yet there was talk that the Chipotle dog was just too danged spicy to be enjoyable.

I seem to be winning this hotdog race

It is kind of a mystery that I didn't experience this myself, especially considering mine was covered in hot peppers... I'm thinking that maybe I was so relieved and thankful to have a vegetarian option to shove in my piehole I didn't pay enough attention to whether it was actually good or not.

Gustav's

2010-09-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

A lovely weekend in Leavenworth to loosely celebrate a friend's birthday recently landed us at Gustav's, one of two burger joints in town, for dinner. We chose Gustav's over the no-frills Heidleburger because it has an awesome rooftop deck that is just perfect for hanging out in the evening sun.

It had been many years since I'd eaten at Gustav's and there were some changes, most notably that fries now come with the burgers.

I ordered a pepper jack veggie burger, which was composed of pepper jack cheese, roasted red pepper and chipotle mayonnaise.

The burger was tasty, but in a serious "grass is greener" moment I found myself a little disappointed about the french fry situation. The past annoyance of having to buy a separate order of expensive fries to accompany a somewhat expensive burger at least ensured a giant, piping hot basket of french fries. The new "fries included" scheme instead provides just a meager few luke-warm french fries along side the burger.
Now I know I probably sound sort of gross being so concerned about the french fries, but dinner in town in Leavenworth usually comes after a physical day and the french fries are a highly anticipated event. That and on this particular evening, the birthday boy was really looking forward to the feeling of over-eating with an emphasis on fried potato variations, so I felt especially sensitive.

As much as I love kicking back with a beer on a rooftop deck, and I think my Leavenworth burger preference is definitely Heidleburger, where the veggie burgers are just as good (and way cheaper), they have both tatertots and fries, and you can eat outside on picnic tables, on the grass, or wherever you want with whatever libation you have. AND, as we discovered on the way out of town the next day (still on the bday boy's quest for the fried potato overload), Heidleburger now has a "Chipotle" option for it's burgers that was spicy and delicious.

Sorry Gustav's! I want to love you but your little nemesis Heidleburger keeps getting in the way!

Cortona

2010-09-07T08:09:00.000-07:00

A friend who lives in the Central District recently invited me to check out a cool looking new cafe in the neighborhood: Cortona. We went for breakfast on one of these gift-from-the heaven's type of sunny summer mornings and dined outside.

At first glance, the Cortona is awesome. Somebody with a nice sense of design put in some effort in the form of rough timbers, big windows, and clean, light spaces. We both had waffles from a delicious looking Belgian waffle menu that included varieties like: cinnamon sugar, banana, tiramisu, fruit, etc. I ordered a plain Belgian waffle with butter and maple syrup. It was tasty and fresh and made with nice organic ingredients.

The Cortona also sells empanadas the size of the mothership, including a vegetarian variety (served with Sriracha).

So this is all fine. But there is another element here that needs attention and is definitely tricky: On the one hand, the Cortona is a great feeling neighborhood coffeeshop and breakfast spot in a neighborhood that could really use one, and for that reason, I feel good about supporting and encouraging it. On the other, it turns out that Cortona is owned by a volunteer pastor at the Mars Hill mega-church, a church that has some strong views about hot topics such as homosexuality and evolution. Stuff to think about!

Ras Dashen

2010-09-03T08:35:00.000-07:00

Instead of going to my usual Ethiopian standby Assimba, a friend and I recently decided to branch out a little and try another of the many Ethiopian restaurants on Cherry between 23rd and MLK (I have also reviewed Meskel in the same stretch). Our basis for choosing was more or less gut feeling and curb appeal, which is pretty danged low for almost all of them. When we spotted Ras Dashen, we instantly chose it due to the simple fact that there were no bars on the windows.

And it was a good choice! Though not apparent from the outside, the inside of Ras Dashen was spacious, clean, light and modern. The restaurant smelled wonderful and there were reed curtains over the floor to ceiling windows that let in lovely light but blocked out the street.

We ordered beers, a Harrar and a Hakim Stout, which is my definite new favorite. It was nutty and flavorful without being too bitter. It made the regular Harrar, my usual choice, taste pretty lame.
For dinner we split a veggie combo, which was made with Canola Oil instead of the oft used (and non-vegan) Niter Kibeh. Everything on the combo was delicious: two kinds of lentils, okra, green beans, salad, potatoes, greens and plenty of injera. We added on a side order of Lab, the mild Ethiopian cheese, and we both waddled out of there beyond satisfied.

I might have a new favorite on Cherry Street!

El Paraiso Mexican Grill

2010-08-23T06:07:00.000-07:00

I was recently in Everett at dinner time and stumbled upon El Pariaso Mexican Grill. I was initially a little skeptical about vegetarian options at a "grill" but a quick glance at the menu calmed my fears and excited my appetite.

While we waited for a table, the host encouraged us to go over to a corner of the restaurant that was occupied by a little old Mexican woman cranking out fresh hot tortillas. In an unexpected and totally awesome move, she pulled two off the hot griddle and slathered them in butter and fresh salsa, rolled them up and handed them to us. Off to a great start!

Goodness gracious the fresh tortillas were delicious

The next excellent move was the presentation of the hot tortilla chips with good homemade salsa AND a dish of refried beans. We were giddy with pleasure and surprise.

The vegetarian portion of the menu was varied and had nearly a dozen options on it. I was stoked to have the unusual (for a vegetarian) dilemma of having to choose between multiple excellent looking dishes. I ended up getting a combo that included a Gordita (also called Sope), an extra thick corn patty covered in beans and other delicious toppings, and a spinach enchilada in tomatillo sauce.

The Sope was outstanding. I've had versions of these in the past that were pretty lame due to an excessively greasy deep fried flavor, but the sope at El Paraiso was just a thick version of their super fresh, super delicious tortillas. The spinach enchilada, also made with the fresh tortillas, was fantastic as well.

This style of non-region specific Mexican food can really be hit or miss, and El Paraiso is really a hit. Everything that came our way was super delicious and fresh, and all of the tortilla based dishes especially really shone.

It's also worth mentioning that the wait staff is exceptionally friendly, seamless and fast. So good in fact that I felt compelled to tip way over normal just they were doing their job so well.

Great place!

Qwest Field

2010-08-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

I recently went to a football game at the surprisingly lovely Quest Field. It was a gorgeous warm evening and the views from the stadium were awesome. There were some particularly poignant moments in the game:

When a live hawk flew from one handler to the next amidst fireworks as the Seahawks entered the field
When a member of the Army sang the Star Spangled Banner
When the SeaGalls first entered the field in their tiny sailor suits

However, I have a personal message to Quest Field: You suck for vegetarians!! I was all set to eat myself an expensive, junky but still somewhat complete dinner and walked every level of the stadium looking for something satisfying to fit the bill.

What I found that I could eat:

Garlic Fries
Pretzels
Popcorn
Crappy small, pre-packaged cheese pizza slice
Nachos with just chips and cheese sauce
Pre-assembled veggie burger with JUST bbq sauce and a whole wheat bun. Gross.

This list might look like a lot of options to a vegetarian in a small town someplace, but for Seattle, for a new stadium with slew of *restaurant* type food establishments, it is dismal.

Some suggestions (because I'm sure Quest food officials are big Tofu Hunter readers):

Kid Valley: Put a tasty veggie burger on your menu! You have one at your restaurants, why not at the stadium?
Mexican Place: Make bean burritos! Make bean tacos! Beans are cheaper than the chicken you have in everything you make.
Thai Place: Make something, anything, without fish sauce. Ideally have a few veggies in it and some tofu if you're feeling crazy.
BBQ Place: This is actually where the veggie burger is. My suggestion: Put something on the veggie burger other than BBQ sauce. Some tomatoes? Salsa? Cheese? Lettuce?
Sausage/Hot dog places: VEGGIE DOGS. The vendors outside the stadium all have them! I would have gone apeshit for a veggie dog covered in cream cheese and sauerkraut.
Noodles of the World Place: How about Italian style vegetarian pasta? Spaghetti with marinara? Fettuccine Alfredo with steamed veggies? How about Chinese style noodles stir fried with veggies? Pasta is the go-to-item for vegetarians in a non-accommodating meat world, why does every pasta dish you make need to have meat in it???
Stadium Fare: Add veggie dogs to your hot dog list, and add some beans to your nachos.

I realize that the typical football crowd might not be especially interested in tofu and beans, but we are a progressive, diverse city and I am pretty sure that of the 60,000 people in the stadium not every single one was a meat chomping tofuphobe.

For now, I'd advise a vegetarian who is going to the stadium and wants to partake in the food culture of the game to get yourself a veggie dog from one of the dozens of well appointed hotdog stands in the streets outside the stadium. I wish I had. Instead I worked my way through a beer and a 3 foot long bag of kettle corn and went famished to my late night savior, Rancho Bravo on Capital hill, after the game to eat a burrito.

Mae Phim

2010-08-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

I had heard good things about Mae Phim, the inexpensive hole in the wall Thai place near the viaduct downtown, and went recently for lunch.

The restaurant is small but cute, and my dining companion and I ordered tofu Phad Prik King, green beans in chili sauce, and Phad Kee Mao. We ordered it all vegan, with soft tofu.

And therein, I believe, lay a problem. The dishes we ordered were supposed to be, by nature, spicy and chili pepper oriented. The waiter didn't ask for a spice preference, and I forgot to mention it. What arrived was incredibly bland and totally void of nearly any interesting spice or flavor. I think the waiter made a common assumption: A picky vegan who comes into a Thai restaurant and removes all sorts of elements of Thai food (fish sauce, egg, etc), and then special requests their tofu unfried, is probably going to be a big complainer baby who doesn't like spicy or complex tasting food. I understand why that assumption is often made, but it just isn't always true.

Phad prik king before

I had to gather chili sauces from all corners of the restaurant to add some much needed heat and flavor to this dish: Sriracha, chili garlic paste, and my favorite dry roasted chilis in oil.

Phad prik king after, ahhh, much better

Similar story with the Phad Kee Mao.

I really don't feel like I got a fair assessment of this place. I would like to go back and tell the waiter to make my food good and spicy. I would also like to go back with a meat eater and hear what they say about the un-veganized dishes. If you've been there and have an opinion, I'd love to hear it!

Papaya Vietnamese Cafe

2010-08-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

My dining companion recently rode his bike around Mt Rainier, and as we were driving back home to Seattle he had some pretty specific food desires to balance his calorie deficit and the fact that he had been chowing down carbs all day: fresh, simple, hearty, vegetarian. I also had some pretty specific desires to balance the fact that I had also been chowing down on carbs all day, but had had about zero exercise: fresh, healthy, vegetables.

Vietnamese food is my favorite standby for food that is both fresh and light but also filling and savory. We decided to stop at The Landing in Renton and give Papaya Vietnamese Cafe a try.

We started with some tofu coconut salad rolls. They were awesome... tofu, strips of fresh young coconut, and some bits of crunchy fried something that really gave the rolls some nice texture.

For a main dish, I ordered something I've never seen anywhere before: Vegetarian Tofu Pho, with shredded zucchini and enoki mushrooms substituted for the noodles. It was the PERFECT solution to my desire for a bunch of veggies, and was a pretty dang impressive bowl:

Look at those beautiful shredded zuke/enoki "noodles"!

The quantity was huge, the broth was vegan and highly flavored (described on the menu as a "fruit and veggie broth") there were tons of herbs and they have the option (upon request) of fresh tofu instead of fried.

My dining companion ordered spicy lemongrass tofu bun. If you order this, be sure to specify that you'd like vegan sauce, or else you'll get fish sauce. If they say they don't have a vegetarian sauce, request a bowl of the vegan pho broth to dump on top.

The downside was that it wasn't exactly a cheap meal, especially since we're kind of spoiled on cheap Vietnamese food around here. Mine was $8 for veggie pho, plus $2 for the substitution of the vegetables for noodles (they call it the "DLite" option), and then an additional $1 for "spicy". All said, it was an $11 bowl of soup minus tax or tip.

But wow, what a nice thing to get such a huge and tasty vegetable hit!

The Landing has the very definite feel of a manufactured, new, planned by executives, "community hangout." That said, it was successful at being that and was a super pleasant place to eat... very clean and safe feeling and with tons of families and well behaved folks strolling around, eating, shopping, etc.

Sam's Sushi

2010-07-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

Sam's Sushi in Ballard has a vegetarian sushi option that strays from the standard avocado, radish, tofu, carrot type: The Green Leaf Maki, which includes asparagus, avocado, cream cheese and shiso leaf. Much as I enjoy more typical veggie rolls, it was exciting to try something different and variety is a sweet gift for a vegetarian at a sushi restaurant.

Sam's didn't seem to have a tofu roll, so I ordered agedashi tofu for a little protein. I specified that I wanted it without bonito, and they were happily able to prepare the meal vegan. Woohoo!

The gently fried tofu with the smoky delicious dipping sauce came with a couple of exciting bonuses: a little pile of finely shredded radish, and a large piece of fully battered and fried broccoli. Yum.

Paseo

2010-07-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

I've written favorably about Paseo in Fremont before, but there is a second location that has opened near Golden Gardens Park in the last few years and I recently stopped by for what I can pretty confidently say is just about best sandwich in the city.

First I should mention that the new location is simple, but gets the job done and is great for summertime: You order your food from a bright pink shack, then eat it outside at some covered picnic tables.

What I love about Paseo is that they have an awesome vegetarian sandwich that absolutely lacks in no hedonistic way. It comes on a toasty hot baguette and is filled with marinated grilled tofu, amazing (somewhat pickled?) grilled onions, lettuce, and my favorite part: grilled jalapeno slices that have had some sort of magic infused in them that make them addictingly fantastic. All of this is slathered in some kind of deliciously flavored buttery mayonnaise-y sauce (I try not to think too hard about this part), and some lettuce and the result is 100% pleasure.

611 Supreme

2010-07-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

I am not usually excited about crepes, but recently went to 611 Supreme for a social engagement with some classy ladies. I was pleased that amid the somewhat fancy menu, I was able to piece together a nice little reasonably priced dinner: buckwheat crepe filled with walnuts and roasted red peppers (under $5), washed down with a whisky ($6).

In addition, there were good looking salads and other vegetarian crepe options (various cheeses, veggies, mushrooms, etc), as well as a really tasty looking cocktail menu. I was feeling like a cheapskate and didn't indulge in any of that, but it's good to know it's there.

Columbia City Bakery

2010-07-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

I recently went to the Columbia City Bakery for a late breakfast. I had been there before to pick up their wonderful pastries (the almond croissants are a favorite around my house), and sat and drank a cup of tea, but hadn't ever stayed to eat a meal. They have a daily menu that changes a bit and sells out as the morning progresses, including many vegetarian items like quiches, fritattas, etc.

By time we got there, there were two vegetarian savory foods left: a veggie sandwich with goat cheese (strike: I don't like goat cheese), and a Caprese sandwich. I tend to view the Caprese as a greasy vegetarian standby that works, is good enough, but is often too bready and just not all that notable.

And for this reason, I was blown away when I bit into my sandwich and found that it was *really* delicious. The bread was well textured, salty and oily, and had an amazing subtle bit of mint in the herbs across the top. The pesto was fresh and layered on thick (I think this is what made the sandwich so good!), and the mozzarella and tomato were perfect. I savored every bite!

We also ate a pistachio snail, a delicate sort of tender flaky roll with a marzipan-like paste inside and crunchy, caramelized pistachio bits on the outside.

I don't generally drink coffee, but felt indulgent on this day and ordered a delicious mocha. I love a mocha made with real quality chocolate, and this one was awesome.

Going to have to remember the bakery as a good place to get more than just pastries!

Aloha Ramen

2010-06-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

I have long fantasized about Aloha Ramen up in Greenwood because it is one of the two (far as I know, the other being Samurai Noodles in the ID) ramen houses in Seattle that has a vegetarian ramen. I finally had the chance to eat there, and ordered the one clearly vegetarian ramen: Veggie Ramen.

The bowl came with bamboo shoots, broccoli, some sort of greens, corn and tofu squares. The simple broth tasted vegetarian, and the corn added a surprising nuttiness.

Overall, I could have used a little more excitement in the bowl... some ginger or garlic, or spice, and the tofu had the rough texture of raw extra firm tofu, instead of the lovely slippery texture of poached tofu that I prefer.

There were many other tasty sounding meat ramens on the menu that had vegan bases (spicy sesame paste, creamy tofu, miso, etc), and the waitress told me that many of the soups could be made vegan upon request. I think my inclination would be to do that next time!

Portage Bay Cafe

2010-06-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

I recently went to the Portage Bay Cafe in South Lake Union for lunch. I wasn't super hungry and was looking for something light. There were a few good looking vegetarian options including a portobello burger (assuming that you, unlike me, actually like the fungal beast), a quesadilla, many salads including a grain salad and a tofu noodle salad, etc. There were also vegan options, including a hummus burrito.

Everything cost a little more than I tend to favor. All for good reasons, no doubt, as the Portage Bay Cafe takes the idea of organic, local, properly fed/grown/harvested to heart, but still, it gave it all a fancy feel that automatically upped my expectations into the realm of nearly inevitable disappointment.

I ordered the soup of the day, which was creamy broccoli. Came with a delicious gluten-y sour slice of bread with soft butter.

The soup was fine. Nothing to write home about.

My dining companion got the portobello burger and enjoyed it. It came with a hearty serving of tasty spicy oven potatoes.

Not sure what exactly stuck in my craw about this place, but I'm not totally sold. It appears their main attraction is brunch, maybe if I liked brunch and I went I'd get it. In the meantime, I'd be interested in hearing other impressions.

Araya's Vegetarian Place

2010-06-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

If you are a vegetarian or vegan in the Seattle area, you probably already know about Araya's vegan Thai restaurant in the U-District. And if you don't, woah gentle readers, consider this your lucky day!

Simply put: Araya's has a full delicious vegan menu and an awesome lunch buffet. For the most part, every dish I've ever had there has been a complete winner, the prices are good, ambiance is pleasant; I love this place. Araya's is a great restaurant to visit with a couple of friends so that you can order a bunch of dishes. Here is what we had on a recent, exquisite, vegan feast:

Tofu Larb: Little, garlicky lime covered tofu cubes sprinkled with roasted rice powder and served with thinly sliced veggies. You scoop it up and eat it with the green cabbage leaves.

Tom Yum: Delicious, fragrant hot and sour soup.

Spicy Noodle: rice noodles stir fried with tofu and misc veggies and chilies.

Lemon Tofu: This was the only dish that sort of flopped for me. The sauce was mega sweet, like poured corn syrup, which wasn't what I was expecting or wanting. I probably should have known better.

Thank goodness for Araya's! I hope they never go out of business.

Coastal Kitchen

2010-06-01T05:58:00.000-07:00

The Coastal Kitchen, with its rotating global menu, is a restaurant that intrigues the heck out of me but always gets the red light due to a real lack of vegetarian options (eh, and the fact that it is outside of the monetary realm that I usually patronize). But a recent special occasion, coupled with a gift certificate and a "New Orleans" menu, inspired me to go.

My dining companion and I started with two appetizers: a tasty arugula salad with grilled pears, shallots, candied nuts and Parmesan cheese, and a really delicious spicy, sweet, rich, jalapeno cornbread slathered in honey butter. Both were enjoyable.

Next came the main dishes, which were the low point for me. They had only one vegetarian main: mushroom stuffed tomatoes in a cheesy bechamel sauce. The fact that I don't really like mushrooms coupled with the fact that the dish arrived a wee bit on the cold side (film on the plated sauce), made it unappealing. It did come with a choice of sides, and I got the beans and rice (plain) and the cheesy grits (buttery and rich).

Luckily the dessert, Chocolate Turtle Bread Pudding, was quite delicious. I generally shy away from bread pudding because I don't like the egg-y custard-y stuff, but this was not like that at all. Instead it consisted of fresh pieces of Le Panier baguette lightly coated and baked til gently toasted in a delicious caramel sauce with warm melty chocolate chips and slightly sweet whipped cream. Oh my goodness it was good.

I'm glad to have finally checked this place out and I can possibly see the appeal if you are a wealthy meat/fish eater. However, from the perspective of a frugal vegetarian, there isn't much that makes me want to return.

Burger King

2010-05-28T16:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, let us skip the part about how Burger King isn't exactly a great place to eat and just say this: It is important, as a vegetarian, to know where you can find reasonable sustenance even in less than ideal settings. And Burger King, bless its tiny beefy cooperate heart, has a veggie burger.

I don't know why the bottom bun seems to have disappeared, I am sure it was there.

And you know what else they have? A strange and possibly innovative idea called Apple Fries, which are fresh apples cut to look like french fries. With an order of Apple Fries, you can trick a kid into eating a boring hippie apple by disguising it as something fun and awesome. I was intrigued by the decadence of eating a nice supply of peeled apples and got myself an order.

This is what the Apple Fries are supposed to look like:

This is what the fresh order actually looked like, complete with caramel sauce in a ketchup packet:

My snobbery dials were turned way down. I was not being an elitist foodie and was aware of my choice in eating where I was. And still, those apple sticks tasted like total crap. How Burger King managed to take a sweet, fresh, delicious apple and process it and impregnate it with additives to the point where it tasted like a small stick of poison is a sad truth beyond me. I ate one thinking maybe I just needed to get used to the flavor, but there was a chemically bitterness in those apple sticks that I couldn't get past.

I did manage to salvage some worth from the caramel packet.

El Siete Mares

2010-05-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

I was recently in a full car driving through Yakima on the brink of many things: extreme hunger, fatigue, and the 9'olock restaurant closing hour. While two of us in the car were frantically poking and shaking an iPhone trying to get restaurant recommendations, the driver made a sharp turn into the first promising place he saw: El Siete Mares, Mexican/seafood restaurant and late night lounge. Fair enough.

We were seated in a booth and given chips and salsa. The salsa was tasty and different from the norm in two ways: it was honestly spicy, and it was tomatillo based. It also came to the table with a plate full of fresh lime slices.

The menu had a variety of unusual items, including a $56 feast and some kind of meat wrapped in different meat wrapped in different meat and garnished with different meat. For the vegetarian there was just one thing: Cheese Enchiladas. That and the unfortunate words on every page of the menu: NO SUBSTITUTIONS.

Congratulations in order!

And so it was cheese enchiladas for yours truly. And honestly, I'm not sure if I was responding to the bittersweet joys of hidden lard, the easy replenishment of salt, the high intensity mariachi band playing full strength trumpets a few feet away, or, to quote my dad, the fact that "Hunger makes a mighty fine sauce for any meal," but they tasted delicious.

Vegan choices were non-existent.

Thanks to P for the pictures, and congrats D on the successful completion of the 30PBBC!

No shortage of entertainment at El Siete Mares late Sunday night!

Homestyle Hong Kong Cafe

2010-05-21T08:58:00.000-07:00

My dining companion and I were recently in the International District looking for something interesting for dinner. We walked past many noodles shops without good vegetarian options (one unfortunate aspect of having a vegetarian in the midst... the casual restaurant search can go on for longer than feels fun. Thank you to everybody who has ever undergone this process with me!), and stopped in front of the Homestyle Hong Kong Cafe to read the menu. Turned out Rice Stone Pots are the specialty at HCKC. I had read about this unusual dish and was intrigued. It felt like amazing luck that amid the list of over 50 meat options (minced pork, salted fish, sausage, squid, frog, chicken, scallop, duck, etc) there was #121: Vegetarian Rice Stone Pot. YES!!!

Building excitement with the condiment tray: chili sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, salt, pepper and sugar.

A stone rice pot goes like this: Inside a very hot foil covered stone bowl nestles another very hot stone bowl. Inside this inner bowl is a layer of rice covered in whatever topping you choose. The idea is that the hot bowls cook the outer rice into a delicious, toasty, browned crust that you get to slowly scoop out and eat with the toppings.

A little bowl of sauce comes with the meal, and it is best to wait a few minutes before dumping it over the top in order to really let the rice brown. Those with patience are well rewarded in the world of stone pot rice!

A prize bite: look at that delicious brown rice crust.

The vegetarian bowl came with tofu, peas, carrots, spring onions and sliced asparagus.

In addition to the stone pot rice bowls, there were a few other vegetarian options including a vegetarian stone pot congee, and the most intriguing: House Special Noodle A La Carte. The Noodles A La Carte involve choosing a noodle type (egg noodles, rice noodles, chow fun or rice vermicelli), and then adding on toppings, $1.50 each, to your taste. The vegetarian/vegan topping options are: radish, tofu, vegetables, mushrooms. I'd love to try this some day.

The prices are reasonable. The vegetarian stone pot was $6.80, and my dining companion's minced pork with pickled cabbage stone pot was $7.20.

The restaurant is small but clean and friendly. Nice find!

Kimchi Bistro

2010-05-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

I love Korean food, but most of the love occurs in my mind. It is so tremendously appealing with all of its spicy red sauces and soups and pickled fermented everything, but meat (and I'm including the meat and shells of sea animals in this definition), sneaks in just about everywhere rendering it a generally untouchable cuisine for vegetarians and vegans.

And so it was a wonderful day when a friend came raving to me about Kimchi Bistro on Broadway, where she had come from eating a spicy, delicious bowl of vegetarian Soon Doo Boo (a soup made with uncoagulated soft tofu). My interest was aroused and off we went, for her, the second bowl in so many days.

First to the table were six small dishes of various fermented and pickled condiments. Daikon, fresh cabbage, kim chee, potatoes, sprouts, etc. Each had a distinct delicious flavor and pushed the always surprisingly fine line between the smell of something delectable and the smell of the unmentionable.
Next came our soup, arriving boiling in a ttukbaegi, a kind of Korean unglazed earthenware pot. It was deep red and full of chopped leeks and other veggies and the softest most silken tofu.

The broth was spicy and extremely savory in a way that shook my belief that it was actually a vegetarian stock. I'd never had a vegetarian (or vegan, as I was hoping) broth quite so savory. I became somewhat internally convinced that it was a pork or beef based stock.

As we paid for our delicious meal, the cook was in view and I asked the waitress what the stock was made out of. She consulted with the cook in Korean, and came back with the answer again that it was made with vegetables, not made with meat. So there you go?

The Kimchi Bistro was a wonderful discovery, and possibly a purveyor of a delicious, satisfying, spicy vegetarian Korean soup. I love a meal with many tiny interesting condiments, and Korean food is probably the master at such a dining style. Thank you L for the successful intelligence and the always delightful company!

Seattle Open Water

2010-05-11T11:00:00.001-07:00

Hello dear readers! Once again it's spring (yay!) and I'm working on swim classes for Seattle Open Water.

Do you like swimming but dislike the chlorine, crowds and expense of the pool? Are you looking for an awesome full body work out that is easy on the joints and good for your back? Would you enjoy getting your exercise in a serene natural setting? Are you doing a triathlon but nervous about the swim?

Check out Seattle Open Water!

We offer open water swim sessions ranging from 1 day to 6 weeks and provide excellent training and techniques for the open water.

Spread the word for your faithful vegetarian internet buddy! Thank you :)

Peaks Frozen Custard

2010-05-10T08:45:00.000-07:00

I had been really skeptical of the new Frozen Custard trend. I dislike egg-y desserts: meringue, lemon bars, custards, no thank you. I don't even generally like "French Vanilla" flavored ice cream because it has too much yolk-y flavor. So it was a rather huge surprise that I totally enjoyed the frozen custard at Peaks in Ravenna.

There are just three flavors at Peaks, chocolate, vanilla and a flavor of the day. (You can read all about why they have just 3 flavors here, but it is more or less because they make and serve all of their frozen custard *really* fresh, within 2 hours, and since they aren't storing the custard, it would be really hard to have a ton of flavors). But they have a large variety of toppings that allow you to angle the flavor whichever direction you fancy.

There was an ordering snafu ahead of me in line which resulted in me getting a good deal on the mistake order. It might not have been what I would have ordered on my own, but it was delicious: vanilla in a waffle cone bowl with milk chocolate sauce.

And I must say: frozen custard is the silkiest, most velvety, exquisitely textured frozen dessert I've ever had. Even more than the flavor, which is creamy and pure, the texture was like beautiful art on my tongue. Amazing. And I was shocked to find and delighted to report that the custard was absolutely *not* egg-y tasting.

Plus, they serve some some darn good chocolate sauce! It was evidently made of good quality milk chocolate and didn't have a hint of the overly sweet nastiness often present in artificial chocolate syrups. All components here were WAY better than I had anticipated.

Dining companion got vanilla with fresh strawberries.

The Peaks website has a nice FAQ section about what frozen custard is. You can read it here. But it sounds like the gist is: Frozen Custard is ice cream that is: frozen very quickly so has very little ice, has very little air incorporated and is thus really dense, served very fresh, served a little bit warmer than regular ice cream, has more than the minimum butterfat and egg yolk.

I am a (surprised) fan!

(Should mention: nothing there for the vegans, unless you just ordered a bowl of fruit.)

Thai Palms

2010-05-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

I live in the south end of Seattle and have been on a somewhat casual mission to seek out and patronize the restaurants in my local neighborhoods instead of always defaulting to Capital Hill, the International District, Fremont, Ballard, and all the other foodie heavy (far away) stand-bys.

The search for Thai food that is delicious, vegetarian/vegan friendly, reasonably priced and located down south is a pretty tall order. I recently discovered Thai Palms, which is located just south of Holly Street on MLK, and it caught my attention as potentially fitting the bill.

The restaurant isn't located on the most inspiring stretch of MLK, but it is clean and calm inside, and has convenient access to the Light Rail (Othello Stop). We placed an order to go, and the staff was friendly and understanding of making food vegan. While we waited for our meal, there was a steady stream of people coming to pick up their orders to go too.

We ordered three things: phad kee mao, spicy green peppercorn, and ginger with vegetables. All were made, at my request, vegan and with fresh tofu. We ordered 5/5 spice stars.

Two dishes that looks the same, but taste quite different!

And again, considering my mark of a good Thai restaurant is based upon the removal of many key Thai ingredients, these guys made some very good food. I am excited to try some more dishes. I should also mention that I found the 5/5 stars to actually be hot, which I considered a real bonus.

Phad Kee Mao

The prices were very reasonable, more in the $7-9 range than in the "fancy Thai "range of $12-13. So give them a try, and let me know what you think!

Turnpike Pizza

2010-04-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

I recently went to Turnpike Pizza on Greenlake for a birthday party.

We started with a spinach salad. It's hard to complain about a pile of spinach, but the dressing on this one was only mediocre.

Upon receipt of the pizza, I was a little surprised, in this day of pizza snobbery and discretion, that a pizzeria in a popular neighborhood could get away with this sort of product. I found the crust to be so-so, the sauce to be overly salty, and something (the sauce? the crust?) to be way too sweet. Plus, it came to the table, theoretically fresh from the oven, with the appearance of having been sitting somewhere cold for too long. Maybe something in the system (me? them?) was having an off night.

This photo makes the pizza look misleedingly good

There are plenty of vegetarian options, and vegan pizza options too, but I don't think I'd waste the calories on this place again unless it was for a specific social function.

Pies and Pints

2010-04-24T09:34:00.000-07:00

Well, it is starting to look like the Tofu Hunter might have to start watching her figure if the trends continue. Went tonight to Pies and Pints to see some old friends, and ended up in yet another avalanche of french fries.

I started off with a graceful cup of split pea soup and a spinach and feta pie that my dining companion and I split. The "pies" in reference are individual sized pot pies baked in the most delicious, buttery, flaky, tender golden crust. They are the specialty of Pies and Pints, and come in a variety of savory flavors both meat and vegetarian.

After this small feast my dining companion declared a lingering hunger and ordered an appropriately social plate of nachos. What arrived, to our surprise, were french fry nachos. Yes, a giant (way bigger than the picture looks) pile of french fries covered in cheddar beer sauce, tomatoes, olives, green onion and jalapeno slices.

I have to admit, it was a hard plate of food to turn down. The cheddar beer sauce is a brilliant addition to a plate of fries, and the rest of the toppings were pleasant. Earlier in the day I had gone on a hike and eaten a nice raw lunch of zucchini "noodles" made by my hiking companion, and my healthy vibrant self was having a great angel/devil battle with that plate in front of me.

Pies and Pints has quite a few tasty vegetarian options, including multiple vegetarian pot pies, salads, a variety of french fries, mac and cheese, hummus, fried cheese, etc. Probably a less than ideal place to take dieters, but a good place to take drinkers, the iron-willed, and the calorie deprived!

Heidleburger

2010-04-21T09:01:00.000-07:00

Well, the unintentional Tofu Hunter veggie burger quest continues, this time in the outdoor sports heaven and pseudo-Bavarian vacation spot, Leavenworth, WA.

There are a couple of places to get burgers in Leavenworth (plenty of people wanting burgers after their varied and vigorous recreating), but Heidleburger is my favorite because it is cheaper and less of an ordeal than the others. They have a reasonable menu with multiple vegetarian options: plain garden burger, south of the border garden burger, Teriyaki garden burger, and grilled cheese. I got the south of the border garden burger which comes layered with a couple of slimy slices of roasted mild pepper.

It's not the greatest burger I've ever had. It is definitely a little heavy on a sweet mayonnaise sauce for my taste, but I was hungry enough that it was absolutely still edible. (Got to remember to make a special request for no sauce next time!).

In addition to fries, they also sell tater tots, which are mighty tempting in their grease ball glory.

One thing to be aware of is that later in the evening, close to closing time, they can run out of gardenburgers. I was lucky enough to get the last one.

Greenlake Bar and Grill

2010-04-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

After a recent swim at Even's Pool, a friend and I took advantage of the early spring sunshine and went for afternoon happy hour on the patio at the Greenlake Bar and Grill.

The Greenlake Bar and Grill has an extensive happy hour menu, with vegetarian items ranging from $2.99 (french fries, hummus, rice and beans) to $5.99 (veggie burger with fries). In between items are salads, $3.99, pie, $3.99 and grilled cheese and soup, $4.99. There is a one drink minimum per person.

We made quick work of retrieving the calories we'd left a the pool. I had a veggie burger with fries and a well-tequila with strawberry lemonade ($3.99), and she had a salmon burger with fries ($5.99) and a different type of fruity drink.

I found my meal to be about average, but the ambiance was delightful, both entertaining and calming in the sunny afternoon. I don't spend enough time hanging out at Greenlake, and was a little surprised by the reality of the parade of fit, clean, fashionable exercisers doing their thing all around. We were surrounded by elements of urbanity, restaurants, bars, cars, lots of people, etc, but all of the dirty stuff had been scraped away leaving just a gleaming, safe-feeling, eco-conscious bubble of Lulu Lemon, coffee-to-go, and high-class jogging strollers. Nothing to say here that isn't already well ingrained in the minds of the stereotype-aware Seattleite, but it felt both wonderful and weird and left me thinking long after I left.

Thanks J for the great swim, lovely afternoon, and food photography skills!

Blue Moon Burgers

2010-04-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

Blue Moon Burgers is a great burger option for a mixed vegetarian/omnivore group. The menu goes like this: there is a large list of burgers with catchy names and varied flavors, and you can get any of them made with a beef patty, chicken patty, salmon patty, veggie patty, or black bean veggie patty. Nice!

I had a Southwest burger with a black bean veggie patty. It came covered with pepper jack cheese, battered and fried jalapeno slices, spicy mayo sauce, lettuce, tomato, and sweet red onions, and pickles.

My dining companion and I split an order of fries, which were also quite delicious. They were skinny, well seasoned, and greasy as little crusty oil filled straws.

Blue Moon Burgers is an easy win for a mixed group, assuming nobody is offended by a fryolater.