SFBayStyle

A Vegan Vists Chaya Brasserie

Last month, I spent the weekend in San Francisco for my birthday. The entire weekend turned out to be a vegan gastronomic delight, and today I'm going to share with you my wonderful vegan meal at Chaya Brasserie on the Embarcadero down by the Ferry Building.

There's nothing vegan about Chaya. It features an extensive sushi menu and a hearty array of carnivorous options on its menu. But what Chaya does provide is quite a number of vegetarian rolls, if sushi is your thing, and a willingness to custom build an amazing vegan platter for you out of the many seasonal and local vegetables that are available as side dishes for the rest of the patrons. It didn't hurt that our waiter was a former vegan himself, so immediately understood the ramifications of that dietary choice.

A Vegan Visits Betelnut

 Betelnut, located in the Cow Hollow neighborhoodof San Francisco, purports to serve food one might find in the streets of Asia. While there might be some familiar dish names on the menu (samosas, satay, dumplings) Betelnut pulls them off with a kind of finesse and polish I somehow doubt the average street cart matches.

Betelnut has plenty of food for vegans, including Tofu Cakes, Happy Buddha (i.e.vegetarian) Dumplings, Empire Fire Noodles and several veggie side dishes. It was quite a meal. Not only were there plenty of choices, but the options were each flavorful and interesting. No Pasta Marinara or Steamed Vegetables for vegans here at Betelnut!

New Vegan Restaurant in Palo Alto: Loving Hut

There's a new vegan restaurant South of San Francisco and West of Berkeley...and that's big news for veg*ns from my neck of the woods. Last week, this vegan visited Loving Hut at 165 University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto.

Now, I'm still waiting (and wishing) for a veg*n restaurant that's more along the lines of Greens or Millennium...more gourmet, more than vegan Chinese food...and I can keep hoping that someone will open that kind of restaurant South of, say, San Mateo.

But in the meantime, restaurants like Loving Hut (think Garden Fresh in Mt. View or Happy Bamboo in San Jose) are also really welcome.

At Loving Hut you order at the counter from a still-small selection of menu choices. Don't be fooled by the menu on their web site [PDF]...it is way more extensive than the choices offered in Palo Alto.

A Vegan Visits Lavanda

When the evening started out one rainy night a couple of weeks ago I had big plans to try a new vegan restaurant in downtown Palo Alto. Named Loving Hut, it is like many of the other vegan restaurants around the Bay Area: fairly low key, and very focused on Asian-style cuisine with faux meat readily available. The S.O. and I were meeting another couple who had agreed to drive all the way down from San Francisco in the rain to eat vegan food with me. I was pretty excited.

You can imagine my shock and dismay when a little hand-written sign in the window told me that Loving Hut had decided to close early that day. This on a Saturday night!

My friends were already waiting at the bar in Lavanda Restaurant on the corner of university and Emerson, a half block from Loving Hut.

Feeling a bit put out and not a lot like walking around in the rain I asked the hostess at Lavanda if they could accommodate a vegan. Two minutes with the chef, and she was back...of course they could take care of me. And she said the absolute magic words: he can make a vegan version of the risotto.

Sold!

A Vegan Visits Vin Santo (Willow Glen)

Vin Santo in Willow Glen used to be one of our go-to restaurants for a nice meal back when I was only a vegetarian.  But two years ago a less than successful attempt at finding a vegan meal (and an unfortunate incident involving two melting down nephews and a really long wait for food for them) resulted in a long absence from the restaurant.

Recently I went back with a couple of girlfriends for dinner and found a whole new vegan-friendly Vin Santo waiting...

A Vegan Visits A Bellagio (Campbell)

Sometimes I walk into a place and feel certain they will never accommodate my vegan-ness, and that I’m bound to have a culinarily disappointing time. It’s not that I’m never right, but sometimes, restaurants can actually surprise you.

We were meeting friends for dinner last weekend in Campbell and I was the one who picked the restaurant, mostly based on location and figuring Italian food is often a safe bet. To be honest, once we walked in I didn’t have high hopes for A Bellagio.

A Vegan Visits Destino

Destino, a "nuevo latino bistro" opened in 2000, is found on a rather unprepossessing block of San Francisco's Market Street between Guerrero and Valencia. If you dig a little deeper, there are gems to be found in this part of town. For example if you're hankering to sing yourself a song, but want nothing to do with karaoke you can scratch that itch at The Octavia Lounge or Martuni's. Of course the venerable Zuni Cafe is just another block or two away. Destino is destined, no pun intended, to remain a dining destination, no pun intended intended again, for me whenever I hit this part of town.

Unlike many Latin restaurants which like to offer even meat with a side of meat, Destino goes out of its way to accommodate my kind...the veg*n kind. They go so far as to have a vegan choice in every category of their prix fixe menu, which is very unusual indeed.

A Vegan Visits Le Colonial

Le Colonial is tucked away in a little alley not too far from the Union Square area in San Francisco. It's not the kind of place that gets walk-by traffic. In fact I doubt anyone just stumbles upon Le Colonial: You're there because you're one of the cool city folks who knows it's there. I was surprised my new car's navigation system even recognized the address. Once there, the tucked-away-in-an-alley location adds to your feeling of being transported to another time and place...in Le Colonial's case, French Colonial Vietnam.

Normally Asian restaurants, no matter how fancy or modern, do pretty well by vegans like me. After all, tofu was an Eastern food staple centuries before it made its way onto Western plates and into our Safeways. but I was attending a large group dinner on Monday night, and those always make me worry about leaving as hungry as I came. Large groups get served set menus, and some restaurants are extremely prickly about going off that plan. It always helps to give the kitchen a heads up, rather than just showing up to foil their well-laid plans, but it doesn't always guarantee a good veg*n meal.

And the set menu laid at every place Monday night was decidedly non-vegetarian, let alone vegan. Everything from the salad to the side dishes had a little something for the omnivore, and nothing for the veg*n. My heart sank.