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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Veganizing “Friends”: Tartlets?…Tartlets?…Tartlets?…The Word Has Lost All Meaning
Tartlets!
“Well smack my ass and call me Judy!”
No, I didn’t say that! It’s from one of the best guest stars ever on “Friends”, Jon Lovitz! In Season 1’s “The One With the Stoned Guy”, he played a guy named Steve who came to the apartment to interview Monica for a restaurant job. However, as Phoebe reported, he got stoned in the cab on the way over and was just a rude mess. A corn-envelope eating, Sugar-Os throwing, Gummi-Bear stealing mess. Poor Monica’s big opportunity was lost because of drugs. See? Johnny Dakota was right: “There’s no hope with dope!”*
Luckily for us, his erratic behavior made for some great TV. Jon Lovitz is one of those actors with the ability to turn a stupid line into an absolute instant classic. My favorite line reading of his (in this episode, at least; his reappearance in Season 9’s “The One With the Blind Dates” provides stiff competition*) inspired this post’s subject: regarding Monica’s Onion Tartlets. For the past what, 15 years, every time I hear the word tartlet, or even tart, I react in this same way. I can’t help it! Watch and be awed:
No, I didn’t say that! It’s from one of the best guest stars ever on “Friends”, Jon Lovitz! In Season 1’s “The One With the Stoned Guy”, he played a guy named Steve who came to the apartment to interview Monica for a restaurant job. However, as Phoebe reported, he got stoned in the cab on the way over and was just a rude mess. A corn-envelope eating, Sugar-Os throwing, Gummi-Bear stealing mess. Poor Monica’s big opportunity was lost because of drugs. See? Johnny Dakota was right: “There’s no hope with dope!”*
Luckily for us, his erratic behavior made for some great TV. Jon Lovitz is one of those actors with the ability to turn a stupid line into an absolute instant classic. My favorite line reading of his (in this episode, at least; his reappearance in Season 9’s “The One With the Blind Dates” provides stiff competition*) inspired this post’s subject: regarding Monica’s Onion Tartlets. For the past what, 15 years, every time I hear the word tartlet, or even tart, I react in this same way. I can’t help it! Watch and be awed:
I’ve seen this about 100 times and I still love it. The word tartlet makes me laugh so hard!! I don’t know how Courteney Cox kept a straight face during filming, because I couldn’t have. I’d be the worst sitcom actor ever. I’d break more than Jimmy Fallon. Anyway, so Steve couldn’t wait a measly 8 1/2 minutes for the onion tartlets. He got all up in Monica’s pantry, looking for munchies.
“I was just being polite.”
“Hello Greeter Girl.” I love it. But he’s so rude! Not only did he take items off her shelf but he actually stuck his grubby hands in and ate some of the food! I would have snapped much earlier than Monica did. I can’t stomach fools! And I really can’t stomach grubby hands in my cereal boxes. I love cereal. Let’s have cereal! No, we’re here to make onion tartlets. And wow, guys, I must say, this shit is crazy good! I used The Vegg for the first time. If you aren’t familiar with it, The Vegg is a vegan, powdered egg replacer that is extremely, eerily egg-like. It even made my kitchen smell like sulfur! The people at The Vegg were nice enough to send me a free sample, and I think these tartlets (hehe tartlets) are a great way to experiment with a little bit of it. I am definitely going to be buying this in the future. If you don’t have access to it, I bet a mix of EnerG Egg Replacer, nooch, and black salt would substitute well (or even just the nooch and black salt if you use firm tofu). However, this concoction blew the minds of some real egg-loving omnivores in my house, so I suggest ordering the Vegg.
To make the little tartlet shells, I stole a recipe from this really cool blogger over at HelloGiggles and I don’t even feel bad about it. I’m taking her method too — you use the bottom part of your muffin tin (the smaller your muffin cups, the better for this!) to form your dough into cups! It’s genius! So, we’re going to make and semi-bake the little tartlet pie cups first, then fill them with the eggy mixture and bake again. Be careful that your crusts don’t burn (like some of mine did) as it takes a long time for the filling to cook. It might help to cover your pie edges with tin foil to prevent burning (I never do this because I love burnt edges). Weirdly, the uncooked filling tastes just like egg salad. I was always disgusted by egg salad, but the stuff without any actual eggs is pretty rad. Let’s make some tartlets! Hehe tartlets!
To make the little tartlet shells, I stole a recipe from this really cool blogger over at HelloGiggles and I don’t even feel bad about it. I’m taking her method too — you use the bottom part of your muffin tin (the smaller your muffin cups, the better for this!) to form your dough into cups! It’s genius! So, we’re going to make and semi-bake the little tartlet pie cups first, then fill them with the eggy mixture and bake again. Be careful that your crusts don’t burn (like some of mine did) as it takes a long time for the filling to cook. It might help to cover your pie edges with tin foil to prevent burning (I never do this because I love burnt edges). Weirdly, the uncooked filling tastes just like egg salad. I was always disgusted by egg salad, but the stuff without any actual eggs is pretty rad. Let’s make some tartlets! Hehe tartlets!
MONICA’S ONION TARTLETS
HEHE TARTLETS
HEHE TARTLETS
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For the tartlet pie cups
Ingredients:
Directions:
For the filling
Directions:
Thanks Vegg people!
“Is it dry in here?”
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THE SHADOW FINGERS WILL GET YOU, PIE DOUGH!
Thiis is howw you dooo ittt
You could also just eat the pie crusts plain.
Onions overboard!!
“You know, I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
Don’t worry it’s not really egg!
Adding the onions. Onions, man.
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These are actually really good! If you take the time to roll your pie dough out and cut them more carefully than I did, you could totally serve these at a dinner party. Or any kind of party. New Years Eve? Nothing like ringing in the new year with the smell of sulfur! I hope you enjoy!
*What was your favorite Jon Lovitz quote on “Friends”, from either of his episodes? Don’t you love when he says, “And I’m pretty sure…I’m infertile” because I do.
*Do you know who Johnny Dakota is?!?!
*Do you know who Johnny Dakota is?!?!
original comments: https://laughfrodisiac.weebly.com/my-own-creations/veganizing-friends-tarletstartletstartletsthe-word-has-lost-all-meaning
Brighton, UK: The Great Moshimo Vegan Challenge More Challenged Than Great
Every year for the past countable number of years (four?), the wonderful sushi restaurant Moshimo in Brighton has held a special all-vegan dinner event in which chefs from other restaurants present their spin on vegan sushi. It’s called the Great Moshimo Vegan Challenge. And boy, was this year a challenge or what.
It’s a contest, and the diners vote for the winner. Jojo at vegan.in.brighton invited me to join her this year, and considering how envious I have been in past years, I was all for it. Sadly, my suspicion that I bring bad luck around with me like a personal storm cloud was reinforced, because most of this stuff was hella gross.
It’s a contest, and the diners vote for the winner. Jojo at vegan.in.brighton invited me to join her this year, and considering how envious I have been in past years, I was all for it. Sadly, my suspicion that I bring bad luck around with me like a personal storm cloud was reinforced, because most of this stuff was hella gross.
The restaurant itself has fantastic vegan food. It’s a regular mainstream sushi restaurant, but they have one of the most vegan-friendly menus I’ve ever seen in an omni place. Equally important, the management is very committed to providing sustainable sushi — short of eliminating fish altogether. (They did remove bluefin tuna from their menu early on though, so there’s that.) Hence their dedication to vegan sushi, the most sustainable kind, and this event for raising awareness and interest in this most excellent lifestyle.
Everything I have eaten that was actually made by Moshimo chefs has been wonderful. It’s this whole letting-other-chefs-use-your-kitchen-and-feed-utter-nonsense-to-unsuspecting-patrons thing that gets tricky. At this event, eight chefs from different Brighton restaurants and catering companies came in and shared a vegan dish that incorporated the vegan sushi theme and their individual restaurant’s style. It’s a chance for great local chefs to be really creative and exciting and impressive. Usually, they are. This year, due to my storm cloud (but mostly due to lack of effort, taste buds, and common sense), the dishes ranged from boring to inedible to almost good, the worst kind. Well no, ‘inedible’ is I guess worse than food that with a little more effort could have been solid, but the latter makes me angrier. Let’s see what went down!
Everything I have eaten that was actually made by Moshimo chefs has been wonderful. It’s this whole letting-other-chefs-use-your-kitchen-and-feed-utter-nonsense-to-unsuspecting-patrons thing that gets tricky. At this event, eight chefs from different Brighton restaurants and catering companies came in and shared a vegan dish that incorporated the vegan sushi theme and their individual restaurant’s style. It’s a chance for great local chefs to be really creative and exciting and impressive. Usually, they are. This year, due to my storm cloud (but mostly due to lack of effort, taste buds, and common sense), the dishes ranged from boring to inedible to almost good, the worst kind. Well no, ‘inedible’ is I guess worse than food that with a little more effort could have been solid, but the latter makes me angrier. Let’s see what went down!
First, let’s look at all the wonderful food that Moshimo sent out between contest dishes to keep us happy. Seriously, these dishes were the best part of the night. Moshimo is a conveyor-belt-style sushi place, so it was really fun to pick the best looking plate coming down the belt. And it was really smart to keep diners happy and full with actually decent food.
The sampler dish sent out first was heaven. Roasted squash, seaweed salad, and a warm crunchy dumplingy thing I want some of right now. All good. We also got loads of edamame, dumplings, and maki rolls coming down the conveyor belt during the night. Moshimo’s sushi is fantastic. It’s simple yet still interesting.
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DEVIL BE GONE
All right, fine. Let’s get to the contest. First up was a dish called Fancy Nancy, which we learned at the end (it’s anonymous because of the contest) was from the fancy upscale restaurant Terre a Terre. I have been dying to eat at this restaurant, but now? Now I’m iffy! See what one bad showing can do? You always have to be on your game, people! Fancy Nancy featured pickled lotus, kimchee, cilantro, lychee — all of this sounds great and very sushi-like, right — but then these great ingredients came on top of Mexican cheesy rice. Oh my god I am going to throw up again just thinking about how ridiculous this was. Cold, fresh, fruity ingredients over HOT SPICY VOMIT RICE??? What? It was like the rice that comes in a burrito, but two days later. And then with fruit on top of it. I DON’T KNOW. So gross.
This is not sushi
Next up was Mochi Mochi (what a freaking creative name, people!) from the catering company Cashew. This was actually one of the three that I liked. However, it had nothing to do with sushi. They described it as mixed mushroom and edamame stuffed mochi, with ume, horseradish, pickle, cherry sauce, cucumber, and beetroot and carrot crisps. Okay, this was a potato croquette but made of rice. That’s it. A warm, comforting, mild croquette, without a sign of any ume or horseradish or anything aside from warm beigeness. But it was good!
“My chicken brings all the boys to the yard, so I don’t really have to put in any effort”
Coming up next was the Sprouting Maki, from VBites, the winner every year apparently and the winner this year as well! Good job…putting faux teriyaki chicken on a ball of rice. That’s what this was. It was one piece of all-rice “maki” (that’s just a rice ball) with a dollop of vegan caviar (horseradishy tiny balls), and then one piece oh so small of maki with the chicken on top. And then there was a teeny tiny square of papaya, randomly. It won because that teriyaki chicken is amazing. They should have given everyone a bowl of the stuff over rice, but that would have been costly. Or at least the chicken should have been inside the maki to make it more interesting. Oh well. This was everyone’s favorite but I wanted it to be better! Don’t just drop the main/best part on top! And that one plain rice ball was like a boring plain slap in the face. I do want some of that chicken now, though. That Heather Mills knows her stuff.
WHAT ARE YOU
Next was my favorite! I don’t mean favorite like this was delicious, or creative, or anything positive, but I mean it like holy crap, this was the funniest thing all evening. I mean what in the world. This Wasabi Canopy, I think it was called, was from Indian Summer, a catering company that didn’t even show up or send a chef, but just dropped off a tray of these and was like “Hey, other people who don’t work for us, put this shit on a plate and throw it in people’s faces.” It was a gram flour roll that was somehow like jelly. Gram flour, or chickpea flour, is one of my favorite food items ever. I use it all the time. Never in my experience have I discovered how to make it gelatinous and disgusting. I just…HOW??? How do you turn something as benign and wonderful as chickpea flour into a weird cold eggy roll? It felt like the devil’s work.
The dish from catering company 64 Degrees was at least properly named. It was called Gotcha, which is mean but it’s honest. And yeah, everything about this felt like trickery. It wasn’t bad at all, as a snack, but it was odd as a meal. Who thought of this? I wish I could have been in the room when the following conversation undoubtedly took place:
“We should take those small square Japanese rice crackers that everyone knows well from bulk bins and are generically named “Asian Snack” and soak them in a sweet sauce until they get chewy. BUT NOT SOFT.”
— “Um, Pete, that’s really weird. We’re trying to impress people with how good vegan sushi can be.”
“F%*# vegans! All good sushi has fish in it. So let’s just take something that’s already vegan – rice cracker thingies, they don’t have a name – and serve it like it’s dinner.”
— “But that will be really…weird. It might be a decent snack, but that’s not a good meal. We’re trying to win a contest here by presenting dinner food.”
“If we win, then vegans win.”
— “What?”
“Do you want vegans to win?”
–“I…what?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
And that’s the story behind how we were served bowls of those crunchy rice crackery things soaked in a sweet miso glaze until they became unbelievably chewy and caramelized, and how we all lost teeth and gained future cavities.
SAD FACE FOR EVER
The dish that came around next was probably the meanest food I’ve ever been served. It was a ‘Frida Kahlo’. I mean. wtf. That’s what the Mexican restaurant La Choza named this dish. It was a Freedom Rolls tortilla wrapped around habanero chiles, squash, adobo, and avocado wasabi sauce, cut into a maki-sized roll. So it was a little revolting burrito shaped like a piece of sushi. It was extremely hot because of the chiles, but with absolutely no other flavor besides hot public bathroom. Not only was it disgusting like bland vomit air, but it made me lose brain function for a minute and inexplicably I ATE TWO OF THEM. I was sick for weeks. Hell I’m sick now just thinking about it. Why would I waste room on two of these abominations? What on earth came over me? Did the first one not disgust me enough? Was a part of my stupid, stupid brain thinking, “Wait, was that thing I just ate disgusting, or am I making that up? Am I making that up? Did I forget so quickly what that tastes like? Here, let me try again.” NO!
SO WANT
Luckily (or unluckily because I was almost too full from the two pieces of turd I had just eaten), the next dish was my favorite. It was a play on fish and chips and sushi at the same time, and it was definitely the most creative of the night, as if the chef had actually listened to the instructions. It was Unfish and Chips, from the catering company Egg & Spoon. The dish was a big fat piece of quinoa and pickled tofu stuffed maki with tempura tofu wrapped around the outside. A few spots of yuzu ketchup and wasabi mushy pea puree dotted the plate, along with a wakame rice chip. I wish I ate two of these instead. There was a lot of quinoa here, and it was a bit hard to eat, but so is all good sushi, or something like that. The taste was pretty much ‘tempura’, and it was delicious. However, one of the purees, I think the yuzu, tasted like hot empty trash sweat to me. Like a rotten piece of wood. Others thought it was fine, so maybe I had a bad batch or maybe I am allergic to dumb things like pureeing a yellow fruit and calling it ketchup. That was not delicious, but the main part of this dish was indeed, so it’s cool. They came in second place and rightly so. This was the kind of thing I was expecting every round to feature: something creative that actually tasted good.
NO
Sadly, no one saved the best for last here. The last round was not even good. From caterer Sam’s, another terrible competitor who failed to send a chef in and just dropped off trays with no instructions and hardly even a how-do-you-do, came a kohlrabi and shiitake ‘salad’ with toasted sesame oil. I put salad in quotes because this looked more like soup given the amount of oil the kohlrabi was swimming in. So. freaking. wrong. I was so excited for some cool fresh veggies and I was given a full cup of sesame oil instead. The mushrooms were entirely too salty to enjoy, and the kohlrabi was freaking hard to eat with chopsticks because of how oily it was! So gross.
Luckily, the good people at Moshimo gave us their wonderful chocolate mousse for dessert. Can’t go wrong with simple chocolate mousse.
Man alive, can you believe this showing? Do I dare attend next year? It can only improve, right? Even though a lot of the dishes were gross, I’m really glad I went this year. I now know so many businesses to avoid! But seriously it was a lot of fun, and it’s always good to get Moshimo sushi! Even if I had to eat a lot of other crap as well.
Man alive, can you believe this showing? Do I dare attend next year? It can only improve, right? Even though a lot of the dishes were gross, I’m really glad I went this year. I now know so many businesses to avoid! But seriously it was a lot of fun, and it’s always good to get Moshimo sushi! Even if I had to eat a lot of other crap as well.
