Last night I had a lovely dinner with two long-lost friends (20 year reunions & Facebook help you find those folks!) at a lovely vegetarian restaurant, Sunflower.
Now, when we made plans, I had no idea it was a vegetarian restaurant, and it was only mid-day yesterday did a light bulb go off in my head that it might not be a meat-lovers establishment. One of my two friends is a vegetarian, and I am SO proud of her for it, because she has held hard to it since we were in high school. (I remember how happy she was when she came to school one day and had made a ratatouille for her family and they really enjoyed it.) So, I checked online, and sure enough – vegetarian. A good thing to know ahead of time lest you go into dinner thinking, “Wow, I am SO in the mood for a bacon cheeseburger!”
Now, I do love my veggies, but I am a full-on carnivore. Meat is AWESOME in my book. But, I can handle a meat-free evening. Sunflower has a heavy Asian influence on their menu, which does lend itself to good (and familiar) foods that are certainly enjoyable for even the most meat-loving chick.
We started with soups, as it was rainy and kinda chilly. I got the Miso soup – it was outstanding. I spent 3 years in Japan as a kiddo, and I know good Miso soup, and this was good. (However, I don’t eat the tofu. Never have. Just LOVE the broth & onions. The tofu & mushrooms are always sitting at the bottom of the bowl when I’m done.) My compatriots went for the spinach-wonton soup and seemed to really enjoy it.
Then we split an order of the Rainbow rolls – 9 almost-bite-sized pieces. (I made the error of trying to down one in a single bite. Take two bites, trust me, or you’re going to be chewing a lot longer than you’d planned.) I’m not even a big fan of sushi, but these were great. Carrots, pickled daikon and cucumber. Might have been the lack of chewy seaweed that made it extra-good, but it was very tasty.
Three entrees to share. I ordered the Mizuni Sansai Noodles in Miso-Tahini soup. My friends got a curry and a “Songbird” which was stuff in a Kung Pao sauce. This is where I get a little lost in being a vegetarian. I had to ask my companions, “Um, it says that it’s chunks of wheat gluten – what on earth is that?”
“You’ve never had fake meat, have you?”
“Pretty sure I haven’t.”
“It’s fake meat.”
“OOOK.”
All three items had either wheat gluten or soy gluten in them. (Which I only recognized as something my gluten-free compatriots would not be allowed to eat, but had no idea what on earth it could be otherwise.) I’ll admit it, I was beyond skeptical that anything could take the place of meat – but my Mom’s words echoed in my ears: “Just try one bite.”
Now, the noodles had a ton of well, noodles, and veggies, and if there was fake meat in there, I missed it. The curry & kung-pao had the fake meat as the main ingredient. I tried the curry first. Unfortunately, I rediscovered that I don’t much like curry. I remember having it for the first time when we lived in Japan, and it was a Chinese/yellow curry, but it didn’t sit terribly well with me. But this was a lovely orange/red curry! It was different! Sadly, it was still curry. I really wanted to like it, but I just couldn’t. Had nothing to do with the quality of it, but curry simply still isn’t my thing. The kung-pao was lovely and spicy and very…kung pao.
But the fake meat just eludes me. It was a bit chewy and tasted like a distant cousin of chicken, but it was certainly no substitute for meat, at least for me. The mouth feel wasn’t like anything I’ve ever had, and while I won’t say it was unpleasant or terrible – it just wasn’t particularly close to being meat. Given that there are multitudes of spectacular vegetables out there that can be cooked up in a myriad of spectacular ways – why even bother with fake meat?