Zen Garden
Aug. 2nd, 2003 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioDani and I went to Zen Garden, the new vegetarian restaurant in Squirrel Hill, after Shabbat tonight. I've been wanting to check it out for a few weeks now.
It was good if unconventional. Most of the items on the menu seemed to involve fake meat (I noticed chicken, beef, ham, duck, lamb, and shellfish variations). Most of the dishes were "oriental-oid", though there were other things too. I'm surprised that they didn't raid the Indian cusine for dishes, a lot of which are traditionally vegetarian and wouldn't have required modification.
We started with an assortment of dumplings. Dani then had the "zen salad", which was a nice mix of veggies and fruit (including fresh mango) with a tasty dressing. I got the "sizzling special" (I don't actually remmeber what the noun was, but it was "sizzling" something and under the "chef's specials"). This was an assortment of conventional stir-fry veggies with crispy wheat gluten in an orange-szechuan sauce. It was tasty but not as zingy as the little "hot food" icon next to the menu entry implied.
I have never before encountered wheat gluten as a thing unto itself, and I don't really know what it was that I ate. (I haven't checked Cookwise yet.) It had the consistency of fried tofu, sort of, and was pretty good (though I think that was aided substantially by the sauce, as is tofu). I know that wheat contains gluten by default and that there are recipes for gluten-free bread for those who can't tolerate it, but I guess I had mentally classified "gluten" into the "chemical" bucket, along with things like sodium and caffeine and vitamin D -- things you might add or subtract from food, but not food in its own right. You learn something new every day. :-)
Naturally, I haven't a clue how to explain this meal to my nutrition-tracking software. On the possibly-faulty theory that the wheat gluten is probably meant to be a protein source, I treated it as tofu. (I asked, and they do not have any sort of nutrition information that they can give to customers.)
Oh, and dessert. I had tofu cake. I am not making this up. It resembled cheesecake, and came topped with blueberries. It worked.
I would happily go back there again. There are a lot of things on the menu that sound intriguing.
I think they are technically vegetarian and not vegan, unless the cheesecake on the dessert menu was a fake. (I didn't ask.) I didn't notice obvious animal products in most of the items on the menu, though -- the cheesecake may have been the only indicator of non-vegan status.
It was good if unconventional. Most of the items on the menu seemed to involve fake meat (I noticed chicken, beef, ham, duck, lamb, and shellfish variations). Most of the dishes were "oriental-oid", though there were other things too. I'm surprised that they didn't raid the Indian cusine for dishes, a lot of which are traditionally vegetarian and wouldn't have required modification.
We started with an assortment of dumplings. Dani then had the "zen salad", which was a nice mix of veggies and fruit (including fresh mango) with a tasty dressing. I got the "sizzling special" (I don't actually remmeber what the noun was, but it was "sizzling" something and under the "chef's specials"). This was an assortment of conventional stir-fry veggies with crispy wheat gluten in an orange-szechuan sauce. It was tasty but not as zingy as the little "hot food" icon next to the menu entry implied.
I have never before encountered wheat gluten as a thing unto itself, and I don't really know what it was that I ate. (I haven't checked Cookwise yet.) It had the consistency of fried tofu, sort of, and was pretty good (though I think that was aided substantially by the sauce, as is tofu). I know that wheat contains gluten by default and that there are recipes for gluten-free bread for those who can't tolerate it, but I guess I had mentally classified "gluten" into the "chemical" bucket, along with things like sodium and caffeine and vitamin D -- things you might add or subtract from food, but not food in its own right. You learn something new every day. :-)
Naturally, I haven't a clue how to explain this meal to my nutrition-tracking software. On the possibly-faulty theory that the wheat gluten is probably meant to be a protein source, I treated it as tofu. (I asked, and they do not have any sort of nutrition information that they can give to customers.)
Oh, and dessert. I had tofu cake. I am not making this up. It resembled cheesecake, and came topped with blueberries. It worked.
I would happily go back there again. There are a lot of things on the menu that sound intriguing.
I think they are technically vegetarian and not vegan, unless the cheesecake on the dessert menu was a fake. (I didn't ask.) I didn't notice obvious animal products in most of the items on the menu, though -- the cheesecake may have been the only indicator of non-vegan status.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-03 12:25 am (UTC)I agree: the "spicy" things were not spicy in the least.
Honestly, I think I like my vegetables to play vegetables. The fake meat didn't really turn me on.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-03 06:41 pm (UTC)I guess it's all in how you flavor it, but I don't know how they do it either. I didn't have any of the "fake meat" (except that one of the dumplings was trying to be seafood); I decided to go for something that didn't disguise any of the ingredients, to get a baseline. I figured that if a seitan/veggie mix tasted good in its own right that would tell me something, but if fake meat didn't it might only mean that I don't like fake meat.