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: 2003-08-02 09:09 pm (UTC)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.)
This is pretty sensible to me. Wheat gluten is, after all, most of the protein in wheat, and the way one makes it is to rinse most of the starch out of the wheat, leaving a lump of mostly-protein-with-maybe-a-little-fiber-and-starch.
A.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-02 09:13 pm (UTC)Wheat gluten
Yes, it sounds odd, but wheat gluten (the protein part of the flour) really does taste like meat! Gluten can be made from scratch (by kneading dough in a bowl of water until all the starch and bran are removed), but quick-and-easy instant gluten flour and ready-made seitan are available in many stores. Naturally low in fat, seitan can be roasted, baked, or broiled like meat or sliced thinly to make super-healthy sandwiches—add lettuce and tomato for an “SLT” or brown gravy for hot “roast beef.”
so yes, it is a protein source and does work much like tofu, but the product itself has a meatier texture than tofu has.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-02 09:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(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)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-03 08:49 am (UTC)The fake-meat thing is not that weird in the context of an Asian vegetarian restaurant. See, mainstream Chinese culture eats meat, right? But buddhist monks don't. Simultaneously, they have this hospitality compulsion. So what's a buddhist monastery to do if a bunch of meat-eaters visit? The fake meat dishes are the result, and have been done for hundreds of years in China. They tend to use tofu-type-stuff to make something approximating the look/texture of the meat, and then use spices to flavour it in a way which would seem (assuming to same cultural background) like the original thing
I'm usually very anti-fake-meat, preferring vegetables and tofu to just *be* vegetables and tofu, but I make an exception for buddhist-style fake meat stuff because it's *good*. If you ever come to Ottawa, I'll take you to the place here that does it best. The menu is about 30 pages long, with hundreds of vegetarian options.
K..
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-05 09:08 am (UTC)We went there with the vegan sister of a friend a while back. I loved it -- I was thoroughly impressed that they managed to simulate everything from duck to pork in ways that were at least recognizable, if not wholly convincing. She was totally freaked, though: even though she knew intellectually that it wasn't meat, the fakery was good enough that she couldn't comfortably deal with it...