Yo, Adrian: "Rocky" the Musical is Actually Ya Know Greatby Randi / May 22, 2014
Despite living in Philadelphia since Morimoto opened, I never ate there until after I became vegan. It might seem like unfortunate timing to many, but the vegan options are so wonderful that anyone, vegan or omnivore, would be more than satisfied eating fishless here. I called the restaurant when I was helping The Humane League make the new Philly Veg Dining Guide, and the person I spoke with was so excited to talk about their fantastic vegan options that it warranted inclusion.
It’s still milk! |
Now it’s tofu! |
I’ve tried many dishes and still not all of them. I started with the yosedofu, which I’ve heard is one of Morimoto’s most famous and beloved dishes for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike. Perhaps the most authentic dish on the menu, the yosedofu is a soft tofu that is made at your table. The server brings a clay pot of fresh soy milk to your table, stirs it with a flourish, and covers it for 10-15 minutes. When the time is up, the lid is lifted and you magically have a dish of solid tofu! It usually comes with a crab sauce, but the vegetarian option was some type of carrot-y goo. The tofu was insane, obviously the freshest you could ever imagine, but begged for a strong sauce. This goo was not that sauce. I ended up using a lot of soy sauce to give it the necessary kick. The video below shows the waiter stirring the soy milk for way longer than you need to watch it.
The tofu, now plated
Speaking of the soy sauce, the #1 rule for vegetarian dining at Morimoto is to ask for the vegetarian soy sauce! What kind of soy sauce isn’t vegetarian by default, you ask incredulously? Morimoto’s house soy sauce, that’s what. It’s ‘infused’, or some other fancy word, with fish sauce. E. Gads. Like I said, #1 rule.
Next I tried a dish that I have been craving daily ever since I had it, the cha-soba, which are green tea noodles, chilled, with scallions, wasabi, sesame seeds, and shoyu. I don’t know how these subtle noodles won me over but they did. I didn’t quite get the green tea – maybe I don’t actually know what the flavor of green tea is if it’s not over-steeped actual bitter tea – but there was a special, new taste to them that was lovely. I love noodles. Noodles noodles noodles. Watch them go down. Down into my belly.
Noodles. Every time you eat them, you get smarter.
See you tonight! Sushi! Sushi!
Surprisingly, the sushi rolls were less impressive, though of course delicious. At a place like this, you’d expect even their vegetarian sushi rolls to be as innovative and remarkable as the fishy rolls. But, although the seasonal vegetable maki and the shiitake mushroom rolls were great and I could eat 100 of them, they were basic. They weren’t noticeably better than anything I’d get from the local great but non-veg sushi place. Maybe I’m just super-spoiled by Beyond Sushi, the all vegan sushi joint in NYC, which I have pretty much every single weekend. Okay, I’m definitely spoiled by Beyond Sushi. But shouldn’t Morimoto be better than a counter in Chelsea Market? He needs to add some creative vegan sushi to the menu.
Two of the main entrees can be made vegan, and while I didn’t get them, I will need to next time because they both sound great. One, the ishi yaki bop, is rice cooked with vegetables and tofu (for the veg option) in a hot stone bowl that crispifies the components, like a bi bim bap. I know you are shocked I didn’t get something with the word bop in it. Next time. The other option was another rice and tofu-based dish that sounded wonderful.
Two of the main entrees can be made vegan, and while I didn’t get them, I will need to next time because they both sound great. One, the ishi yaki bop, is rice cooked with vegetables and tofu (for the veg option) in a hot stone bowl that crispifies the components, like a bi bim bap. I know you are shocked I didn’t get something with the word bop in it. Next time. The other option was another rice and tofu-based dish that sounded wonderful.
My favorite dish was the yasai ramen, an already vegetarian soup with vegetable broth, rice noodles, and Japanese vegetables. The vegetables were not as plentiful as I would have hoped (or cut small enough! It got messy), but there were lots of those stick-like mushrooms that I love. And more importantly, the broth was superb. It was the best soup broth I have ever tasted. Stuffed at this point, I still needed to finish this enormous bowl. I would go back and just get this ramen. I wonder if Morimoto does orders for pick-up. This huge bowl of perfect soup was only $12, too, so it’s pretty much the same price as any ramen you’d get from any street corner noodle shop. What a great deal! The rest of the menu is pretty incredibly expensive, but this ramen is so filling and delicious you’d be set just having this and proving to your friends that eating vegan can be cheap, even at four-dollar-sign restaurants! (Just don’t ever split the bill evenly. Ever. Always say, “Nah let’s each pay for what we got.” Jesus.)
Someone remind me what my favorite kind of mushroom is called.
MORIMOTO, PHILADELPHIA
- Water speed: Decent, but the glasses are too small. What is it with fancy restaurants and tiny glasses? Give me enormous beersteins or something!
- Bathrooms: Downstairs and lovely, as expected in fancy restaurants. HOWEVER, my biggest gripe was that one sink was marked as ‘out of order’, but was just running nonstop. I talked to the hostess and she said “Yeah, that’s broken.” I asked if someone was called to SHUT THE WASTING WATER OFF, and she said yes but like, how long does it take to get a plumber to just shut off the water? How long did they let it run? Ughhh stabby.
- Service: It was fine at first, but then in the second half of our meal, our waitress was nowhere to be found. It got so bad that we were going to order dessert, and then too much time went by that it was like bedtime so we just asked another waiter for our check. When it was time to pay, our waitress came back and looked super out of it. I blame the rampant drug problem that occurs behind the scenes at fancy restaurants.
- Food: Delicious and interesting, for the most part. Great place to bring omnivores for a special occasion (it is expensive!)
- Bonus: Eating at an Iron Chef’s restaurant is pretty cool, even if he wasn’t there.
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“Secret” Vegan Supper Club at The Gate, Marylebone
Man alive do you know how much putting “Marylebone” in the headline is stressing me out?! I NEVER spell that forking fancy pants neighborhood (dammit, it’s so fancy it’s gonna require the ‘u’) neighbourhood correctly so I must be feeling BRAVE to put it in the headline. I think the correct mnemonic is remembering it as Mary Le Bone like it’s a person’s unfortunate name but it still looks wrong. Omg was Mary Le Bone a real person? Is it named after her? Was she chic af? OK that’s a ramble for another time. Suffice it to say Mary’s hood is chic af and we recently (like last night) went there to dine at The Gate, London’s classic vegetarian restaurant. The Gate has been serving up quality boutique vegetarian food in London since 1989, and they’ve remained a constant, dependable, classy, delicious mid-upscale choice for us throughout the quiet veg years and now in this remarkable vegan boom.
Once a month, The Gate in Mary’s the bone hosts a “secret” vegan supper club (which is cute to call it that I guess because you can’t actually find info on their website easily but obvs it’s not secret; they let me in). For £49.50, you get a decadent, beautiful 5-course meal PLUS matching wines. Five wines are included in that pretty decent price! That’s amazing if you drink/are British! I do not and am not, but I was taken care of too (more below). I believe the menu changes for every supper club event – or at least it should, because I’m gonna go every single month as often as I can, because it was wonderful. (I’m really enjoying this strikethrough feature today. I’ll never stop I will stop.)
Out of the 5 courses, 1 was just fine, 2 were good and could easily have been great, 1 was great, and 1 was forking phenomenal, so overall I call that a win, especially because if this was all phenomenal I’d have nothing to say except EEEEE! and you all know how much I like to say things. Let’s get to the food!
First up to bat was my absolute favorite of the savory dishes, the crispy shiitake wonton: shiitake duxelle (duxelle is a fancy way of saying you prepared mushrooms with onions and garlic and herbs and then mixed it all up into a paste or an almost-paste or just finely chopped), cilantro, lime sauce, alfalfa, enoki mushrooms, and shiso. At first I was like ‘I love me some sprouts but that’s a huge pile of alfalfa’, but it was actually well balanced in the dish on the whole, because the mushroom duxelle was so rich and SO delicious that you needed to even that intensity out with literally nothing threads. I loved the little herb sauce dollops, the random enoki on top, and all the flavors together. This was the dish that was great.
The second dish was avocado, mango, and shimeji ceviche. Shimeji mushrooms are the little cartoon-looking fuckers pictured. I love all kinds of mushrooms (except magic ones) (don’t do drugs (THERE’S NO HOPE WITH DOPE lol remember that episode of Saved by the Bell omg it was the best with Johnny Dakota???? and then actual NBC president Brandon Tartikoff did the actual PSA at the end? HILARIOUS) (also obvs I’m joking do whatever you want just don’t forking drive and DO NOT make me smell it FFS ALL MY NEIGHBORS)). This was a very refreshing, very fresh ‘ceviche’ of our three awesome stars (avocado, mango, cartoon mushrooms) covered in lime juice, chili dressing, soft cashews, and placed in leaves of chicory. As you can see, there are also some edible flowers sprinkled about which is a surefire way to please me. So fun! This was one of the dishes that was good but not great, and that’s because while the flavors were all fresh and nice, it was super limey without having the right amount of salt to bring it out in a nice and not overly sour way.
Next is another of the (very) good dishes that could so easily have been great. I really enjoyed this, but admit that a few tiny tweaks could probably make it incredible. Here we have zucchini rolls (I WILL NEVER SAY COURGETTE) (no I already do), filled with WONDROUS fava bean mousse and topped with sumac. These rolls were super delicious; I would buy tubs of that mousse and eat it instead of my regular hummus rotation for several weeks if I could. It was so mild and pleasant and delicious, and the sumac was an interesting and nice touch. However, the smooth mousse was a little geriatric/soft-food-diet, and one of my dining companions said it needed something in the roll-up that was a little more substantial so he didn’t think ‘nursing home safety.’
As you can see, it’s on a bed of couscous, with mint, pistachios, and pomegranate, which was fine, basic. And then there’s a blob of green garlic yogurt on the side. The yogurt did not do it for me; I left most of it where I found it. I don’t think it was necessary and it was too strong, overpowering the mousse flavor, to be worth it. I think if they adiosed that (maybe replacing with something proteiny since, as usual with vegan tasting menus, that was lacking) plus maybe added a few whole fava beans or crushed nuts or something solid-food to the mousse filling this dish would have been great.
The last of the savory dishes was the one I think was just fine. Don’t get me wrong, it tasted great, as everything did (except that yogurt glob), but it was just so ya basic, the dish vegans have been served since before people knew what vegetarian meant so now just feels uninspired and lackluster: the Mediterranean aubergine. This was a big old (nicely) grilled eggplant with Romanesco cauliflower, pieces of butternut squash, semi-dried tomato pesto (I guess because it’s not sunny enough in the UK to fully dry your maters), radishes, and a very welcome piece of baby artichoke, and some green herby sauces all over. All the components were good, especially the pesto and that artichoke (artichokes rock), but despite everything tasting good, (to paraphrase Husbo’s best restaurant review:) you’re still just an asshole eating yet another roasted pile of root veg.
BUT IT’S OK THEY MADE UP FOR IT WITH DESSERT!
The dessert was the PHUH FORKING NOMENAL dish. I mean. Wow. Guys, I think this has been added to my top five restaurant desserts of all time. OF ALL TIME! This chocolate tulip featured a lovely chocolate shell cup housing the most incredible chocolate mousse like EVER. You can see the mousse cup looks red, so I was concerned that they were trying some funny business of trying to ‘improve’ upon classic chocolate by making it chocolate-raspberry or some bullshit that we don’t need because classic chocolate is perfection, but that’s just a dusting of I’m guessing dried raspberry powder to match the lovely little bits of dried raspberry crunch on top and the real raspberries around the plate. IT WAS SO AMAZING. And even though this was amazing in its own right, that right there in green is a dollop of the MOST INCREDIBLE pistachio Chantilly cream you ever did see. I mean I’m just so grateful. This was THE BEST. You need to try this.
While my three omnivorous (they really enjoyed this!) dining companions enjoyed all the wine, I got to choose whatever soft drinks I wanted to accompany my dishes, for no added charge. I was a bit dismayed at first that the ‘soft pairing option’ they confirmed they had in the email wasn’t pre-planned, but it was nice to be able to choose my own drinks off their regular menu. I got a carrot, ginger, beet, and celery juice first, and then a ginger spritz (ginger, lemon, soda) mocktail next. They made it clear I could order more, but they brought me full-size versions so I was so full from liquid so fast, especially considering I’d gone through 3 liter carafes of water before long! And we had 5 courses to go through!
This supper club was a truly lovely experience and I was glad to be reminded of how great The Gate’s food is. Their next one is August 22, so book in now.
The Gate, “Secret” Vegan Supper Club, Marylebone, London, UK
Water speed: They brought carafes of water pretty regularly! It was good! I was so full of liquid!
Service: Very good. As usual with these sorts of events, with everyone in the room finishing at the same time, it’s a little difficult and stressful to pay at the end since everyone is trying to, and it was frustrating that the servers seemed to be cleaning up instead of seeing that we wanted to pay, but that’s my small quibble. Overall good!
Bathrooms: Three stalls in the women’s room with internal sinks, which always make me mad because when there’s a line you’re like ‘why don’t they just put the sinks outside the stalls so the line moves faster’ but this wasn’t the theatre, there was no line. So it was fine. And clean.
Food: Delicious! Overall it was really nice, and even the things that weren’t interesting were still well made and tasted great.
Bonus: I love a good supper club! I felt this was a great value for money, especially with all those drinks included. AND THAT DESSERT!
Manchester, England (England): The Allotment Vegan Restaurant
Recently, we traveled to Manchester England (England) (you can’t not sing it, right?? well I can’t not) in order to dine at the famed vegan restaurant The Allotment. We spent the weekend in the city, but dinner here was our primary purpose for the trip. We’ve heard only amazing reviews about this restaurant, which was named the Best Vegetarian Restaurant in the UK several times over, and the chef is acclaimed for having delivered fancy vegan fare to Manchester (England England). When the restaurant moved from outside the city, in Stockport, to the Manchester city center, we booked in immediately, ready to be blown away, or at least to enjoy a great meal. I hate to say it, but I assuredly was not and did not.
The quality of the food at The Allotment may have suffered in the move, as they’re only two months into the new space. Maybe they’re still getting settled. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that two days before our dinner, it was announced that the head chef and the man responsible for all the restaurant’s success, Matthew Nutter, was leaving. It was unclear when he was leaving, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an immediate resignation, because I don’t think that acclaimed wonder of a chef was cooking my food. It was very nice to have a fancy dining option outside of London, and it was great to have a relatively affordable tasting menu (£65 for ten courses is prettay prettay amazing in the tasting menu world), but the food was not up to standard. In general, the dishes that tasted good were basic and uninspired, and the dishes that showed creativity and invention didn’t taste very good. It’s a disappointment and I hope that they find their footing again.
Before we get into the food, I’m gonna snob out and say that including the amuse bouche – usually a gift from the chef – as one of the ten courses is kind of bullshirt. At any other restaurant where we’ve had the tasting menu, the chef would send out amuse bouches (amuses bouche?) just to say hayy. Since this meal was quite cheaper than those, it’s fine and makes sense that we didn’t get extra dishes, but like don’t even call it an amuse bouche on the menu, seems a little ‘ya basic’ ya know?
Okay, speaking of that amuse, it was a yummy Fried Ball. Like a cheeseless arancini, made with wild rice. It was one of those times when you’d quote Jon Lovitz on Friends and be all “I could have 100 of those!” but you just get one, to amoos you (if I spelled it right you wouldn’t have understood how to say it okay), and you get over it because after all it was just a Fried Ball.
Fried Ball on a cool plate
Our first real course was roasted butternut squash soup, with a topping of porcini mushroom pieces and toasted chestnuts. This soup is the prime example of one of the dichotomies I stated above: it tasted good but basic, so basic I even said to it “ya basic…that’s devastating, you’re devastated right now.” Don’t get me wrong, it was a fine soup, but I’ve made the exact same thing (or more interesting) 100x. To make it worthier, there should have been 5x as much of the porcini and chestnut topping. But it was fine, and best of all it was served in an old-fashioned bowl with a handle that made us feel like we were on the Oregon trail or some such. Luckily no dysentery!
trail soup
I was very excited for the next dish, one of the intriguing, innovative items on the menu. It was listed as ‘baked plantain, jerk billtong.’ Biltong (apparently the proper spelling guyzzz) is a South African dried meat, so, gross. I love baked plantain so I was set to be impressed. Unforch, this is a prime example of the second main issue I stated above: it was inventive, but did not taste good. The first problem was that instead of baked plantain, it was plantain ice cream. I was not ready for ice cream, and the flavor was off – sweet but sharp and unpleasant. The biltong flavor was even more unpleasant, with a very sour bite that was hard to accept. The sauce that went along with everything was that same flavor and it was kind of hard to eat this dish. I commend them for the originality, but the execution is lacking. Even just losing the ice cream in favor of plain baked plantain would have improved this.
you owe me baked plantain
Another inventive but lacking dish came after the biltong debacle. The celeriac shwarma, with coconut, mint, and orange, could have been interesting but the three accompanying flavors – the coconut, mint, and orange – just did not work. It wasn’t ‘shwarma’ in any way, just hunks of celeriac, and there was way too much shredded coconut on top. I liked that there was raw spinach, because I like greens, but the flavors did not coalesce in any way.
shwarma?
I almost feel bad talking about the next dish, but the public deserves to know. This may have been the worst dish I’ve ever eaten in a restaurant. I really do applaud the creativity here, but the result is NG. The chicory terrine was a great idea in theory, because terrine is usually a French pate, full of gross meats, so to make a vegetable version of that shaped dish was an interesting goal. However, it tasted like Jewish deli at the end of the day. It was just the taste of pickle, of vinegar, of raw pearl onion. I couldn’t finish it. The main part of the terrine was too vinegary and off, while the giant onions took up half the space. The pickled cauliflower on the side was more of the same flavor, so I don’t know what it adds.
green emoji face
Thankfully, the rest of the savory dishes all tasted fine, even delicious, but they were regular, unexciting kinds of food. However, after the terrine incident, I was happy to have some basic af food for moving on. First we have the slow roasted squash, with fried oyster mushroom rosti and smoked aubergine. There was also surprise tenderstem broccoli and amazing little tiny cubes of fried tofu. It all tasted exactly how you imagine, since no doubt you have eaten regular broccoli and a big old chunk of roasted squash in your lives. It was good, and plain. To make it better, the big old chunk of squash should have been tofu – for a vegan restaurant, there was surprisingly little protein, to our dismay. We always complain about nonvegan restaurants’ giving me tasting menus with no protein, so I expected better at an actual vegan place.
i mean ya fine, but ya basic
The last of the savory dishes was confit potato, with black olive, pickled daikon, and crispy kale. This was by far my favorite dish, because the layer of black olive tapenade added a new and interesting flavor to the other basic ingredients. The only real disappointing aspect was the freaking GIANT baked potato. There’s the mashed potato on the bottom, you see? and then the mushrooms (yum!), and then the tapenade layer, and then that big hunk of a yellowish thing is BAKED POTATO. It was so much! Like why not tofu, or seitan, or beans, or anything but baked potato on top of mashed potato? I mean in a city famous for its chip butties I guess I’m not surprised but duuuudes. The crispy kale was a nice addition though, and while the daikon was wholly unnecessary and felt supes random, overall this dish was the best and I’d happily eat it again – without the giant potato.
you say potato, I say potato
Another kind-of-cheating-to-count-this-as-a-course thing came next, the ‘pre-dessert,’ or what you might call the palate cleanser. Kind of a cop out, right? It was a decent water ice situation, but it was made with gin, which was disappointing. I maybe should have told them that I didn’t want straight alcohol in my food but who would have ever known that was going to be a problem.
The first of our two desserts was ‘apple noodles, yuzu sorbet, and cumin pastels.’ I know what you’re thinking – apple noodles? that sounds interesting! And I was intrigued, before I realized – oh dip, this is literally raw apples in noodle-ish form. Like how spiralized zucchini makes ‘zucchini noodles’. So this was a gigantic pile of shredded raw apple. Don’t get me wrong, I love apples, but like, a dayum. The sorbet was decent, and I loved that they tried something creative with the little cumin gummies and the dusting of chili pepper throughout the dish, but yeesh, straight cumin in a dessert is kind of gross. I appreciate the risk but it would have been better with say ginger gummies. This is the actual conversation my husband and I had during this course; I took notes so I know it’s accurate:
Me: How do you feel about the cumin? I think it’s weird.
Husbo: Yeah but I do think you need to liven things up, otherwise it’s all very same same.
Me: But they could do that with like crystallized ginger or something, some flavor that’s more desserty and less curry.
Husbo: Yeah. And they would need to mix something all through the dish, not just on top, because otherwise you’re just sitting here like an asshole eating a pile of apples.
it looks like a normal amount of apple shreddings but it was literally at least two whole apples
Lastly was the warm whiskey cream over chocolate mousse, with chili and hibiscus. This dessert was pretty delicious. The chocolate mousse was wonderful, sturdier than your average mousse which I liked. The tangerine slice was random but I’ll let it slide. The ice cream I think was the hibiscus? It’s hard to gauge that one, but the honeycomb bits and the mousse were good enough. The best part was that it came with a little pot of the whiskey cream, which did not taste like whiskey (yay) really, but just like warm vanilla-y cream sauce with a punch. It was really good!
chocooo
So, overall it was a very interesting meal, with a few delicious dishes, a lot of weirdness, and some questions, like, what are they smoking back there? Is anyone trying the dishes as they make them? Or oh, is this like when Sookie didn’t know she was pregnant and her tastes were all over the place and all the food she sent out of the Inn’s kitchen was a mess like some were overly seasoned to the point of inedibleness and some were unsalted and it was all off and then she was like NORMAN MAILER I’M PREGNANT that might have been a different pregnancy, Sookie was preggers a lot, but you get what I’m saying. Something was off, and I am disappointed to have missed out on a visit to The Allotment that was on par with its illustrious history. Maybe next time, maybe next time.
The Allotment, Manchester, England (England)
Water speed: They brought carafes and were pretty good about it.
Service: Pretty nice. I thought the dishes were well timed.
Bathrooms: Fine, clean and bright (small and whiteeee)
Food: Decent, but finding its footing.
Bonus: It’s amazing to have an all vegan restaurant outside London, and one with a fancy tasting menu to boot.
