A Casa Que Pasa

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

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

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

[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

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

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

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!