While no vegan cheese steaks were consumed, I ended up eating some seriously good food. We brunched at FARMiCiA, where I indulged in their lone vegan brunch item, scrambled tofu and vegan chorizo with a sopapilla, refried black beans and avocado salsa. The tofu could stand some major improvement, but the meal itself was well balanced and left me feeling refreshed – high praise for a mexican brunch item.
Dinners we took at nearby Han Dynasty, a traditional Sichuan restaurant. My hosts eat there frequently and are friends with the owner, Han. The menu doesn’t explicitly cater to vegans, but after talking with Han he provided us with a feast the likes I’ve never seen before. It was so much goodness we had to go back a second night for a different selection. Here’s some of what I ate:
Cucumbers in chili oil. This was one of the best dishes I’ve had this year. Incredibly hot, but with the coolness and crunch of the lightly salted cucumber.
Homestyle tofu. I’ve had a dish like this many times, but never as good as here. A mild heat, mostly from ginger, and none of the gloopyness that comes with chinese-style sauces.
Pressed tofu and long peppers. Seriously, that’s all that was in this dish, and it was incredible. A powerful heat that subsides quickly.
Tofu in a chili broth with toasted pine nuts. This was by far the hottest thing I’ve eaten in recent memory. The chilis where accompanied by Sichuan peppercorns which numbed the mouth and provided a fierce peppery aroma to the dish. The tofu was of the soft and wiggly variety which soaked up the broth.
Also, I was quick to catch this little boo-boo by the New York Times on a recipe for Vegan Vietnamese Noodle Salad (which looks delicious, as a note). It’s been since corrected, but look at the first ingredient. Not vegan!
I started with a veggie burger based on a recipe from Bittman’s How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, made with yams, black beans, broccoli rabe, and panko. I made the burgers right before cooking them, so they were soft and juicy. This was topped with some roasted hatch (or big jim) chiles, skinned, chopped and fried again, and some red pickled onions (courtesy of Terry Romero’s amazing Viva Vegan). I spread just a little Tofutti cream cheese on the top of my toasted bun to add another creamy element to the dish.
Doubles were last night’s dinner, thanks to the old standby Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian. I had two, which might mean quadruples.
Idlewild’s Mango Cucumber Salad
Salad:
2 small tasty yellow mangoes, peeled, diced
1 cucumber, peeled, diced
1/2 serrano pepper, seeded, or to taste
Dressing:
4 tbsp canola oil
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
Juice of two small limes
3-4 tbsp rice wine
3 tsp raw sugar
1-2 tsps salt
Combine dressing ingredients to taste – whisk and taste and adjust as needed for salty/sweet/sour. Pour over mango, cucumber and serrano and refrigerate for ten to twenty minutes.
Serve on bed of mixed greens, dressing the greens with the combined dressing and mango juice from the salad bowl.
The yellow peas required some pressure cooking as well, and I’m proud of myself for finally using it. I’ve been irrationally afraid of pressure cooking, but no longer!
This is a relatively new restaurant, and the successor to Vej Naturals in Malden. It’s all vegan, and the chefs know their stuff. I had the rancheros, which was a cold red quinoa and lentil salad and some fantastic grilled tofu topped with a thick ranchero sauce.
Dr. Apricot had a full BBQ platter with seitan, cornbread, collards, and coleslaw.
Not pictured were the vegan nachos which didn’t last long enough to get photographed. I was impressed by The Pulse, and am very happy to have a place that really caters to vegans in the area. I look froward to going back and sinking my teeth into the deserts.
Tastiness rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Vegan-friendly rating: 5 stars
Not Your Average Joe’s, Watertown MA
Speaking of places that don’t cater to vegans: I heard that Not Your Average Joe’s had reformulated their menu and since I enjoyed eating there when I was a vegetarian back in the day decided to see what they had on offer. The answer, unfortunately, was the “salad without cheese & fries” option, which is the bare minimum effort. There were a ton of vegetarian options (good for them!) but most of them featured cheese or pesto so prominently that when they were removed the dish was supremely unbalanced. And their not vegan veggie burgers were served on brioche! Come on, NYAJ, step up your game. Your offerings were embarrassing. A little tweaking and many of your vegetarian options would knock my socks off.
Tastiness rating: inconclusive (out of 5)
Vegan-friendly rating: 0.5 stars
I recently put some of these together and using the powers of Mixing and Mastering produced my new album, Ten Directions. Some kind person said that it “sits at the intersection of dreamily intuitive and intellectually engaging.” If you might want to hang out at that intersection (there’s definitely a good coffee shop there, and probably tapas), you can get check it out on iTunes, Amazon.com, or CD Baby.
