Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Vegetarian Food So Good, You'll Consider Becoming a Monk!

I proud to say today was an amazing day. Not only did I wish eternal damnation onto my worst enemies with the help of this old granny (Click here to see actual video of it), but I also had an amazing vegetarian meal that was so good... I'm considering becoming a nun just to be able to eat vegetarian all the time. Thankfully, even without being a nun I can still have vegetarian food everyday if I wanted to. I have a favorite vegetarian place in Wan Chai in Hong Kong. It's owned by a crazy lady that my sister & I think is the awesome and insane person ever. Only problem with her place is that they have set meals per person and give way too much food-which normally isn't a problem but it is when you are not going home right away and are forced to carry bagfuls of food you were not able to finish. She literally makes you around 10 dishes or more of huge portions. Love her awesome food and her craziness nonetheless. Well last time I was in Hong Kong in December, the fam bam and I went to try out a new vegetarian place called 心齋 (See previous post here) to see if we could find another really good vegetarian place other than "the crazy lady place". The place wasn't bad, but it could not match the place that "crazy lady's restaurant" had in my heart. But today, I am happy to report that that I have finally found a place that will match her. Behold, 大自然素食 in Causeway Bay. I didn't see an English name but 大自然 means Nature so I'm sure the English name should be something to that extent.
We got inside and were greeted with this appetizer of pickled cucumbers and a tip to take our time to order because in 30 mins, everything would be half off! Awesome! Really? Yes! Cheap & Good? Really? Yes!
I was so excited! They had an assortment of vegetarian hand rolls! Remember Gourmet Vegetarian-the vegetarian place I went to in L.A. where I said they had amazing vegetarian hand rolls? (See here) Well this place's hand rolls knocked theirs outta the park! This was their "abalone" hand roll. So good!!!
Left is a fruit salad with walnut roll and right is one of my personal favorites-Salt & Peppered Eggplant. The eggplant dish is supposed to be made with lots of garlic but because this was a vegetarian place they used more bread crumbs to mimic the garlic texture. According to Buddhist, garlic is one of the goods that one should keep away from so therefore this place opted for no garlic to appease their Buddhist customers.
Left is their stir fried peas dish. It's supposed to be made with meat. So this place used some fake meat to give it the right texture. Super good. Tasted as if it was the real dish. I couldn't help it at this point. I wanted more hand rolls! Here's my "salmon" hand roll. It tasted very good. You could tell it was not salmon but it didn't taste like spam or fake meat so I was pleased. The other hand roll is a mango & avocado with brussel sprouts hand roll that does not have rice. My mom didn't want to use up her food quota for the day and convinced herself that eating another hand roll that does not have rice will not make her full.
At this point, we were beyond full. Just then my aunt looked over at another table and spotted something that looked tasty. So obviously we had to get it too! This was toasted bread with cheese and avocado! Delicious!
And then the bill came. It really was 50% off! Our bill came out to $300 something HK dollars, so we only paid $100 something which is a little over $20 U.S. for 3 people! We ordered a lot of stuff too! Most places also charge you per person for drinking tea. They didn't even do that! We'll definitely be back. Finally! A place that matches my "crazy lady" place.
We ended our day with dessert. Remember yummylicious dessert place 石魔坊 ? (Click here) We tried this yam pudding on the left. Right is some sesame tangyuan aka glutinous balls that gramps brought home.

If you're in L.A. and want some good vegetarian food, my fav place there is at Gourmet Vegetarian but of course food in Hong Kong is way better!
Happy Eatings!

1 comment:

  1. I'm so jealous. Looks delicious. But what's bad about garlic? It's a vegetable.

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