Atlanta etc.: Marilyn Wolf's Food Blog and Restaurant Blog

Rutabagas is sufficiently tucked away that I walked by it several times before I noticed it. I'm glad I stopped by. The vibe inside is coffee house---inviting and casual. This is my vegan mac and cheese with faux bacon. The bacon was outstanding, the cheese is excellent. I do with that the pasta (eggless, I presume) would have been cooked a little less to be more al dente and provide some texture. But this lunch overall left me quite happy and satisfied.

A break in our meeting gave me the chance to try Leaf in Boulder, part of a group of very interesting restaurants. The atmosphere was elegant. My risotto was excellent and quite different from the typical presentation. The asparagus gave the entire dish a distinct vegetal taste that nicely complemented the cheese. The meal was hearty and satisfying.

Go Vegetarian moved down a few doors from their original location at North Druid Hills and Lawrenceville Highway. This gave me the excuse to revisit. Their new space is much larger and very pleasant. The staff is very nice. This is my veggie burger with cheese. It was satisfying in both taste and texture: good umami hit, good crumbly chew. No carnivore would mistake this for beef but I certainly enjoyed it. The fries were excellent as well.

I frequent Harmony for their delightful Chinese vegetarian food but rarely for lunch. This dish is a satisfying summary of their food: sesame "chicken", curry treat, brown rice. I also enjoyed a cup of won ton soup. A meal at Harmony is a lesson in the pleasures of expert vegetarian cooking technique. The faux-chicken sesame dish had all the pleasures of the meat version: savoriness, a little sweetness, crunchy outside and tender inside.

The food in the Petit Biotechnology Building is quite good and slightly offbeat. This is my veggie chipotle sandwich: rich but not heavy, slightly spicy, very tasty.

After arriving in Philadelphia, I walked to Rittenhouse Square in search of dinner. I quickly decided that Hip City Veg was worth a try. (I found out during my postprandial stroll that they have several locations across Center City.) I stood in line briefly with a very youthful crowd as I perused the menu. The vegetarian Philly steak sounded like a challenge that I had to try. It turned out to be very umami-ish and satisfying. The body contains tempeh steaks along with an abundance of very nice mushrooms. The sauce was plentiful to provide smoothness but not overwhelming or goopy. My sweet potato fries were also excellent. I asked for the sriracha aioli was an outstanding blend of heat and creaminess. My meal met all my expectations and more---definitely worth a visit or three.

I had a chance recently to enjoy one of my favorite breakfasts, the tofu scramble at West Egg. It includes tofu, mushrooms, and a veggie mix; I ordered potatoes on the side. This dish has plenty of umami without being overpowering. It's savory and filling but won't turn you into a lead balloon. The West Egg staff is always prompt and courteous even under the heavy strain of their ever-present breakfast crowd.

I just had a wonderful brunch at Go Vegetarian. Atlanta is the new melting pot and this restaurant is the perfect example. It's in a strip mall that combines Indian and middle Eastern stores with a huge Goodwill complex. Go Vegetarian itself is African American owned and boasts a typically American menu---burgers, fried chicken---made with faux meats and entirely vegetarian. I went with the fried chicken and waffles. It was delicious. The chicken itself was savory with a good texture that gave your teeth something to sink into. The coating was very crispy and fluffy. The waffle was exemplary. I tried the savory sauce but stuck mostly to good ol' fashioned syrup. Vegetarian food with this range of flavors requires special skill and care; Go Vegetarian is a treat.

Soul Vegetarian has been on my list for quite some time and I finally made it. I visited their original location on Abernathy Boulevard; they have another location on the east side of town. The restaurant is run by a religious group. Their reputation for excellent vegetarian food is highly deserved. Their reception was warm and very gracious. My main dish was jerk tofu. It was spicy but not overwhelmingly hot, with the rich mixture of spices and flavors that result from jerk marinades. I asked what was used as a substitute for ham hocks in the greens and was told that they used onion, garlic, and yeast. The greens were tender and very flavorful. The sweet potatoes were simple and delicious. The cornbread was very dense and rich; it was probably made with molasses as well as a good quality cornmeal. They offer a large selection of desserts and my cupcake was excellent. I think it was a carrot cake---very moist and rich. The icing was rich and tasty without being overly su...

Viet Tofu is an example of what seems to be a trend on Buford Highway. The format is homemade take-home food. They might have one table but you really aren't supposed to eat your food at the restaurant. As you can see, Viet Tofu has a wide variety of foods. Much of it is tofu with various flavorings---that's the back row in the photo. The front row of the photo shows some of the other types of buns, etc. they serve. This photo doesn't show yet another row of food that was behind me. Many of the signs, but not all, have both English and Vietnamese. I took home a bun with me and enjoyed it later. I thought the sign said vegetarian but I could have been wrong. In any case, it smelled great when I heated it and it tasted great as I ate it. A very good snack at a reasonable price.

Saigon Tofu is in the newly renovated shopping center on Buford Highway that also houses City Farmers Market. I really enjoyed my lunch. For some reason, I didn't take the words "To Go" on the sign seriously. I expected at least some tables. But these folks mean what they say. As you can see, the store has two long counters of serve-yourself food. Some is hot, some cold. Some is vegetarian, some is meat or fish. They also serve made-to-order sandwiches. I took my food home and enjoyed it at my table. My vegetarian spring roll was good but the fried spicy tofu was the real hit. A sign in the restaurant explains that they make their own tofu fresh daily; several gallon jugs of soy milk attested to their diligence. Tofu has an often well-earned reputation for blandness but this tofu offered a complex of interesting flavors: milky from the soy; a bit of heat from the chilis sprinkled through the tofu; and savoriness from the frying. Really great stuff and so fil...

I just had another outstanding meal at Harmony. Harmony continues to be, in my view, the best vegetarian restaurant in Atlanta. (And it's remarkably cheap, too.) I had Schezuan pork and mango chicken. In both cases, these are tofu preparations in the style of meat. Don't be thrown off by the names of the food in the menu---all that beef, chicken, and pork is really vegetarian. Harmony's food has a full complement of flavors that is often hard to find in a vegetarian restaurant (yes, I'm looking at you, Moosewood) and its textures are equally impressive. The textures really help to sell the meal as satisfying. Truly remarkable stuff. Harmony has become one of my more regular restaurants.

In need of lunch while at a meeting at the Navy Yard, I stumbled across Jharoka. It's a small, mostly vegetarian and coffee spot in the Urban Outfitters complex, but it's open to everyone. I had the dal for lunch. It was spicy enough to have zing but not overwhelming, overall quite tasty. My coffee was excellent. They also have a large collection of designer chocolate bars. I picked one up for snacking on the plane back----it was very rich and intense, a real treat.

Green Sprout is on Piedmont across from Ansley Mall.  Hyesoon and I stumbled across it on my way to Top Spice and we decided to give it a try.  It's a vegetarian restaurant that specializes in faux meat dishes. They are generally vegetarian versions of Chinese-American classics but they did have a few surprises, such as a potato dish. I ordered the twice-cooked pork and Hyesoon went for Hunan beef and shrimp.  In both cases, the dishes were labeled as spicy but they just had a little bit of a twang---this is not where you go to cauterize your esophagus.  But I decided that I would rather enjoy the flavors and too much heat would have detracted.  Both taste and texture are important in vegetarian food.  Both our dishes had satisfactorily savory taste and the texture of the faux meats was good.  They don't really have the mouth feel of meats but they are different and interesting, which is what counts. Overall, I would put this below Harmony but still ...

I've always been impressed by food cart culture in Philadelphia. I think they have the best and most diverse range of food carts of anywhere that I've visited. The food cart scene is best on the U Penn campus, particularly around the medical school. I was always impressed by the carts that offer bowls of fresh fruit, but you can get all sorts of international foods in a very small radius. My colleague Rajeev Alur took me to his favorite, Magic Carpet Foods. I had the Dervish Delight, which ncluded falafel, hummus, taboulli, tossed salad, and pita. The proprietress was extremely nice and explained my choices. She recommended sesame seeds, which were wonderful. The falafel, hummus, and taboulli were all of excellent quality. The range of textures and tastes in this style of food is a constant source of enjoyment. Rajeev is a regular at Magic Carpet and if I lived there, I would be too.

Harmony is in a strip mall near the intersection of Buford Highway and Chamblee Tucker Road. They do have a menu of vegetarian dishes that goes well beyond the standard Chinese restaurant, including a number with faux meats. I tried two dishes. Both of them were fried and both were pleasantly salty.  When you don't have meat to work with, you have to add palate interest some other way.  First was the fried stuffed eggplant, which came with a sauce that physically resembled plum sauce but was more salty than sweet.  The very crispy crust made a good contrast to the soft texture of the fried eggplant.   My main dish was fried and salty bean curd.  The tofu was cut into longish rectangles, coated with a batter, and fried.  No sauce for this one, but once again, the crust contrasted with the soft tofu.  The crust also had a good dose of salt that brought out the salt monster in me.

Stone Soup Kitchen is in Cabbagetown, a few blocks from Oakland Cemetery.  The outside of the building is modest, but inside the restaurant is very nicely appointed.  It's a vegetarian restaurant; some of the dishes are vegan. I tried three things today.  I enjoyed the Cuban black bean soup.  That was perhaps unfair after having had a meat-rich chili at Taqueria del Sol yesterday; it's impossible to fully replicate the qualities of meat.  But my soup was very tasty.  It was nicely spiced but not what I would consider hot. I actually got quite a zing out of my salad, thanks to the balsamic dressing.  The entire salad was excellent---nice cheese, very fresh lettuce and other vegetables. I'm glad that I listened to my inner glutton and got the peach cobbler.  The biscuit was outstanding.  Some cobbler biscuits are hard and tough, others are mushy.  This was just right.  They served it warm with cool whipped cream.  Who says vegetarian food can't be decadent?

I've been to Saravanaa Bhavan twice now. It has a huge reputation among my Indian friends as a premier south Indian vegetarian restaurant. Because of the awe in which they hold it, I expected it to be fancier, but it is casual in both decor and presentation. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised by this. In my experience, south Indian food is designed to work with casual social situations. The restaurant is in a nondescript strip mall across from North Dekalb Mall, which is itself a fairly nondescript mall. Atlanta has many excellent restaurants in strip malls, but Saravanaa Bhavan is the best restaurant in the seediest mall that I've seen so far. I've tried several dishes thanks to combinations, all of which were excellent. The bread that I had on my last visit (aargh, I can't remember its name) really hit the spot. On my first visit, I sampled the roti among other dishes, which I remember as being filled with a cool minty filling.

Several people had suggested Cafe Sunflower to me, so when I ran across it on Peachtree, I dashed in to try it. Vegetarian food is an interesting challenge for a chef because of the limited palette. With meat not an option, the chef has to work harder to keep all the dishes from tasting alike. Cafe Sunflower showed impressive skill in touring cuisines of the world vegetarian-style. I went a little crazy with my lunch, consoling myself with the thought that it was, after all, vegetarian. I started with the soup, which was billed as minestrone-like. It was, in fact, good enough to pass muster as Italian food. I then had a goat cheese salad. Let's face it, the upside on a salad is small---at best, it's still rabbit food. But the downside for a salad can be very low. This salad was quite well done, with very fresh ingredients. My main course was a kung pao dish with soy chicken. It was quite Chinese to my Causasian palette, something that I would be happy to have in many a Chinese ...