SF Weekly: Enjoy Vegetarian excels in mock meats

[Guest guest]

Excerpt from

http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-03-03/restaurants/enjoy-vegetarian-soy-on-soy-actio\

n/

 

Poon's original Enjoy Vegetarian on Kirkham at 12th Avenue, with its bright

tangerine walls and big metal statue of the Buddha, has been a destination for

vegans since it opened four years ago. For her second restaurant, she picked a

strategic (if not symbolic) location on the border between the Financial

District and Chinatown, aiming for a more polished, if colder, look: buttercream

walls, jade-colored tilework accents, slate floors, rosewood-stained chairs.

The new Enjoy seems to draw Chinese Buddhist and Western vegetarian diners in

equal numbers. The waiters fluidly switch between Cantonese and English, and the

100-item menu appeals to multiple subtribes of the veg nation: lemon chicken and

pepper steak for the tentative, fatty pork with cabbage and lotus root with lily

bulb and gingko nuts for everyone else. . .

Enjoy takes two simple proteins — tofu and wheat gluten — and smokes, presses,

deep-fries, braises, seaweed-wraps, and forms them into shapes both familiar and

strange. (Poon says that her cooks prepare some of the proteins themselves and

import others from Taiwan.) A appetizer combo plate ($5.99) showed off the range

— ribbons of dense pressed tofu scented with five-spice powder; sweet and sour

gluten puffs, braised down into sauce-saturated sponges; thin slices of soy pork

basted in barbecue sauce; and vegetarian goose, a dozen sheets of tofu skin

rolled around one another and cross-sliced so that they seemed to flake away in

the mouth.

The fake meats could approach outright mockery. An appetizer of fragrant crispy

chicken ($5.99) resembled every factory-formed nugget you've ever heated up for

your six-year-old's dinner. On first bite, I would have sworn the thin strips of

soy beef stir-fried with green beans ($8.50) were flank steak until I zeroed in

on their flavor and noticed they lacked that gamy, farm-funk undertone. The

award for sheer ballsiness went to the sliced fatty pork ($8.50), or mock pork

belly: The lean half was made up of pressed tofu, the translucent fat half

yam-starch jelly. The strips were scented with five-spice powder and braised

with cabbage and finely chopped mustard greens — not as good as the Hakka

classic, to be sure, but good in its own right.

Enjoy's spareribs ($8.50), braised with daikon and carrot, were a remarkable

facsimile of beef. The chunks of dark-brown wheat gluten broke down into long,

chewy strands seemingly held together with filaments of fat and gristle. But it

wasn't the illusion of meat that most intrigued me about the dish — it was the

sauce, which hinted at black mushroom, a little cinnamon, a pinch of sugar. It

had richness and more depth than I expected.

The dishes that best compensated for the lack of " strong-smelling foods " were

the ones that substituted other strong-smelling ingredients. Iceberg lettuce

cups filled with a confetti of finely chopped tofu, carrots, cloud ear, corn,

and pine nuts ($13.95) tasted dry until we smeared on a spoonful of

penetratingly aromatic, molasses-black hoisin sauce. The fermented bean paste

and chiles in the satay sauce coating a dish of eggplant and tofu ($8.50)

collided with the perfume of the fresh basil leaves tossed in, casting sparks.

And it was hard to imagine how the strongest, spiciest dish of them all, smoked

gluten stir-fried with pungent preserved mustard greens and salty fermented

black beans, wouldn't excite the senses.

In fact, the black bean sauce was potent enough that I cut it with swigs from

Alice Poon's one concession to her non-Buddhist customers: a bottle of Tsingtao

beer. There's only so much that a human, religious or no, can do without.

 

Yelpers (http://www.yelp.com/biz/enjoy-vegetarian-restaurant-san-francisco)

recommend:

Fried Curry Potato Triangle Samosas (#6);

Fragrant Crispy Chicken (#9);

Chicken Nuggets (#10);

Veggie Shark's Fin Soup (#16);

Black Pepper Sauce w/Steak Meat & Green Vegetable (#29);

Veggie Tri-Spice Chicken w/Napa Cabbage & Basil in Clay Pot (#31);

Taro, Sesame Veggie Chicken Cooked w/Coconut Sauce (#39);

String Beans w/Beef w/Chinese Satay Sauce (#46);

Eggplant w/Sea Bass (#53);

Lettuce Wrapped w/Shredded Mushroom, Veggie Chicken, Vegetable & Pinenut (#55);

Eggplant, Tofu & Basil w/Satay Sauce (#58)

Lotus Root, Lily Vegetables, Peas & Ginko (#63);

Kung Pao Chicken (#80);

Mongolian Beef (#84);

Curry Chicken Pot w/Napa Cabbage & Potatoes (#86);

Bean Curd Rolls stuffed w/Cabbage, Mushroom (#90);

Spinach & Pine Nut Fried Rice (#120)

 

Card-carrying SFVS members receive the following discount

(http://www.sfvs.org/discounts.php):

Enjoy Vegetarian Restaurant

754 Kirkham St./12th Ave., SF 94122, 415-682-0826 & 839 Kearny St./Washington

St., SF 94108, 415-956-7868 (www.enjoyveggie.com) 10% off menu except lunch

special