We had a disappointing experience at Planet Raw restaurant in Pleasant Hill recently.   After 90 minutes of driving, we arrive to find Planet Raw tucked away in the corner of this shopping center in the suburbs.  Chris goes inside while I’m outside looking at the menu and taking a photograph of the exterior to help promote them in the Ultimate Guide.

Chris returns before I’ve even finished taking my pictures, as I had to wait while this woman exited, as we prefer pics without people for UG.

And he says they’re closed, I ask why, he says the chef has left.  And then, the woman who was leaving,  interrupts our conversation to identify herself as the chef and just erupts with this litany of reasons why she is leaving, in a very angry fashion, ending with “next time call before you want to eat here”.   Not one word of apology or even acknowledgment that now her restaurant is unable to fulfill its function of serving food to customers, because she is walking out mid-day.

I was totally shocked by her rudeness, and the very anti-customer tirade.   (It almost felt like I was in the wrong for wanting to spend money at her restaurant.)  Anyways, after she stormed off, our curiousity did get the better of us so we went back inside together to ask the staff who that was.  They said it was Valerie, co-owner and chef.  They were very friendly and apologetic, and did offer to try to make us something, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the very un-welcome greeting we just had.   Interestingly enough, Valerie contacted me through yelp (where I also posted a review) and said the staff made a mistake; it was Carol, the other co-owner, who was rude, not her.

Anyways, for anyone else who might be driving a distance to visit them, I just wanted to share our experience that they close unexpectedly, and beware that you may be treated rudely.

Personally, while I do want veg businesses to succeed, I don’t think it does them any favors to hold them to a lesser standard.  For any veg business to succeed, it must have the support of both veg and non-veg customers.

Side note:  This was most definitely our first and last visit to Planet Raw.  I might just give up on raw restaurants all together after this.  The last time that I dined at one, Cafe Gratitude in SF, the waiter (who knew I was vegan) felt compelled to tell me that he prefers to dine on animals because he feels closer to them.

Symphonie Restaurant, Richmond, CA

First impressions go a long way towards making it or breaking it for a restaurant. After all, if a restaurant doesn’t impress or at least show the potential for a good meal, customers won’t return.

The Symphonie Restaurant in Richmond, CA opened in February, 2009. Traveling through that area, we made a spontaneous decision to dine at Symphonie last week.

Inside Symphonie Restaurant

It was approaching dusk, so we couldn’t enjoy what appeared to be a charming and picturesque downtown. One nice point to dining outside of large cities — we did find easy and free parking in Symphonie’s parking lot.

The restaurant is a bit like the Doctor’s Tardis. It looms larger on the inside than it looks on the outside.

The restaurant is tastefully and pleasantly furnished. All the tables were prepared for the dinner crowd, complete with tablecloths, napkins, and place settings.

The only component missing were the customers. At 5 pm on a Sunday, we had our choice of seating in the restaurant.

The waitress seated us in the middle of the dining area, and explained that any items with the faux chicken were unavailable. When she asked, I shared it was our first visit to their restaurant.

Although it was only two pages, the menu was confusing. The first page was appetizers, salads, soups, fried rice, and noodle dishes. The second page was Lunch Specials (with soup, salad, and rice) and Specialties (with soup and salad). However, we could order from the Lunch Specials as a Dinner, but would not get the soup, salad, and rice and it would be a dinner portion.

We decided on an appetizer, Spring Rolls, and two entrees, Red Curry (from the Lunch Specials), and Mongolian Beef (from the Specialties), and brown rice.

Red Curry - Symphonie

The spring rolls were good (being vegan doesn’t mean I’ve lost my appreciation for fried foods), and interestingly, served with 2 dipping sauces. Only one of them appealed to both of us though.

The Red Curry was advertised as a curry and spicy, but neither of us found either of these qualities in the dish. The serving size was about average. The vegetables were well-cooked. I think the dish would have been better with a firmer tofu, rather than the big cubes of silken tofu. Unfortunately I saw potato with a big black spot right on the top. I know it happens with potatoes — it just needs to be cut-out before it’s cooked and served. It was huge, easily visible underneath the sauce. I guess the kitchen, in their haste to prepare 3 dishes for their only diners, missed it. And the sauce, it was about the right color for a curry but otherwise unremarkable.  (In fact, their curry came up lacking compared to a frozen entree dinner with a curry sauce we’d had earlier in that same week.)

As soon as we saw the Mongolian Beef , we realized we’d made a mistake in ordering it. We double-checked the description; it’s one of those dishes that restaurants bundle with rice automatically. So, priced at $11.50, with half the dish being rice, it was very overpriced for what it was. Taste-wise, it was okay but forgettable — nothing outstanding that made either of us crave to return anytime soon.

As for the actual rice that we ordered, not listed on the menu we received, I even have something to say about that. Quantity-wise, it appeared more like a serving of rice for one person, but cost-wise ($2.50) it was priced like rice for two. The rice served with the Mongolian Beef dish was larger than the amount of rice we ordered separately, so we had enough rice.

Vegan Mongolian Beef - Symphonie

Frankly, though, after all that, the food wasn’t the most disappointing part of the meal. Or, maybe that should read instead

Surprisingly, though, after all that, the food wasn’t the most disappointing part of the meal.

It was a combination of the overall service and ambiance. The waitress did a good impression of a bad covert agent throughout our entire meal by fiddling with the existing place settings at the tables next to us — repeatedly adjusting the place settings, moving them back and forth between the same tables, straightening forks, and refolding napkins.

The cloth napkins are folded into a fan shape and decoratively placed on top of the plate. The plate is on a woven mat, on top of the tablecloth. Cutlery is placed directly on the woven mat. On my way to the restroom, while still in the main dining area, I walked by a laundry cart. It was holding a hamper filled with discarded table linens and a package of new ones. I didn’t see any discarded or fresh mats on the laundry cart. Since it’s woven, it’s easier for food particles to get caught within the slats. And it would be too incongruous for a restaurant promoting ‘Go Green’ to be treating them as disposable mats. At that point, I didn’t want to think too hard about how/if they clean the mats between diners.  I just wished they placed clean cutlery on the napkins, as most restaurants do.

The restaurant is nicely furnished inside, and very big. On the main dining floor, there is a separate bar area, as well as another empty counter/bar area. The furniture is all dark wood. When we were there, they had soft music unobtrusively playing in the background. But (you knew it was coming) that was completely drowned out by the lively conversation and light footfalls of two young children affiliated with the restaurant staff. The kids were, well, kids in their playful and creative banter and shouting, which was easily overheard throughout the entire dining area.

The Check - overcharged by 6%

We had already agreed that if the waitress asked us at the end of the meal how it was, we would be truthful with her. But perhaps she had already (over)heard enough, because she didn’t ask when she presented the check.

As we got ready to leave, we noticed we were still the only customers in the entire restaurant.

Interestingly, the saga with the meal didn’t end when we walked out. The next day, after reviewing some of the photographs I’d taken of our dinner there, I discovered Symphonie had overcharged us by $1 on the spring rolls, and there was another unexplained 0.75 charge on the bill. The real total was $32.82 (tax included) but the restaurant charged us $34.74.

I wanted Symphonie to impress me, to be a wonderful vegan restaurant that I could rave about and encourage everyone to visit, but they didn’t. Instead, I left wondering how on earth they’ve managed to stay open for nearly a year.

Menu - Appetizers

Menu - Entrees

Menu - Entrees

Scallion Pancakes

Scallion Pancakes. Just those two words are enough to completely grab my attention.

If you’re veg and live in the San Francisco Bay Area (anywhere not under a rock), you’ll hopefully know exactly what I’m talking about.

Garden Fresh, a popular vegan restaurant in Mountain View, serves scallion pancakes as an appetizer.  It’s a fried pancake (yum) served with a brown sauce on top of another fried pancake (double yum).

One day, I was at my local library and browsing the cookbook section.   Although I have the world wide web at my fingertips, and close to two dozen vegan cookbooks at home, I do like to occasionally check out a vegan cookbook at my local library so that it keeps them in circulation.

While in that general area, I randomly picked up this cookbook called Quick & Easy Chinese. I was flipping through it, looking at the color pictures. When, suddenly, I spotted scallion pancakes!  Okay, so the author calls them “Green Onion Pancakes”. The picture looks exactly like the scallion pancakes at Garden Fresh.

So if you also love the Scallion Pancakes at Garden Fresh, and want to try and make some at home, go look for this cookbook Quick & Easy Chinese.  I took a quick look through the rest of the cookbook, and it didn’t strike me as particularly veg-friendly.  So, you may just want to get it through your local library.

I’ve read many Dick Francis novels over the last decade. If I had to put a number to it, probably over 25. Yet, this one was a first in two ways – it mentioned vegans, and I actually learned a real fact about a food that I eat regularly.

The story involves a chef who caters two meals at a horse racing track. There is a nod to preparing food for vegetarians and “one vegan who had preordered grilled musthrooms to start, roasted vegetables for main course and a fresh fruit salad for dessert”.

Yeah, I can relate to being the vegan who has to preorder special meals. He got that part right. But then in an interesting twist, someone later dies, and the suspect is food poisoning from kidney beans. Francis says “Every chef, every cook, every housewife, even every schoolboy, knows that kidney beans have to be boiled to make them safe to eat.” (chapter 6)

Hmmm .. well, that is everyone except me! I finished the book last night, and this morning did a quick google search on “kidney beans toxic”. And it’s true, a few undercooked kidney beans can make you sick in just a few hours.

And I quote from the FDA

Phytohaemagglutinin, the presumed toxic agent, is found in many species of beans, but it is in highest concentration in red kidney beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). The unit of toxin measure is the hemagglutinating unit (hau). Raw kidney beans contain from 20,000 to 70,000 hau, while fully cooked beans contain from 200 to 400 hau. White kidney beans, another variety of Phaseolus vulgaris, contain about one-third the amount of toxin as the red variety; broad beans (Vicia faba) contain 5 to 10% the amount that red kidney beans contain.

The syndrome is usually caused by the ingestion of raw, soaked kidney beans, either alone or in salads or casseroles. As few as four or five raw beans can trigger symptoms. Several outbreaks have been associated with “slow cookers” or crock pots, or in casseroles which had not reached a high enough internal temperature to destroy the glycoprotein lectin. It has been shown that heating to 80°C may potentiate the toxicity five-fold, so that these beans are more toxic than if eaten raw. In studies of casseroles cooked in slow cookers, internal temperatures often did not exceed 75°C.

The onset time from consumption of raw or undercooked kidney beans to symptoms varies from between 1 to 3 hours. Onset is usually marked by extreme nausea, followed by vomiting, which may be very severe. Diarrhea develops somewhat later (from one to a few hours), and some persons report abdominal pain. Some persons have been hospitalized, but recovery is usually rapid (3 – 4 h after onset of symptoms) and spontaneous.

I’ll still eat and enjoy cooked kidney beans. But it gives me a new appreciation and respect for these powerful little beans.

Red Bean Salad

I grew up eating the sad Standard American Diet, consuming animals by the mouthful.  Green Salad was one of those foods, as a young carnivore, that I  liked only when it was smothered with a creamy Thousand Island dressing and crunchy croutons on top.

As a vegan, I’ve educated myself and now enjoy a variety of different salads, from bean salads to green salads to fruit salads.

Recipes for three bean salads abound.  I basically use the one from Peaceful Palate by Jennifer Raymond.

I still don’t like green beans though.  So in my version of a three-bean salad, I replace the green beans with red bell pepper.  In this version photographed, I used both red and yellow bell peppers.

I brought this bean salad to a vegan food party (aka potluck) in Pacifica.  Purely by coincidence, I found this went well mixed with a green salad that someone else had brought.

And, thanks to Saucy Vegetarian, I can make my own creamy salad dressings for my green salads.  For crunch, I add walnuts instead of croutons.

Watermelon Flower

Downtown Santa Cruz is a great place to people watch and window shop.  During my last visit there, I spotted this beautiful edible “flower”.

This certainly gives new meaning to the concept of playing with food, eh?

Watermelon Carved into Flower

Yes, Bravo TV is casting for season 7 of “Top Chef”.  It would be totally awesome to have some vegans on the show who choose BEANS as their protein! There is an open call in San Francisco on October 18th.

Here is the info, taken from the Top Chef website:

Chefs with a passion for food, creativity, a thorough knowledge of cooking techniques and trends and oodles of charisma are what we’re looking for. We want talented, experienced chefs with that flare that puts you over the top.

SAN FRANCISCO
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
10:00am – 2:00pm
The Parlor, 2801 Leavenworth Street, San Francisco, CA 94133

There are other open calls on various dates in  Miami, Chicago, Washington DC, New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles  through November 15th so spread the word to all the vegan chefs you know.

Or, even if you’re not a great chef, it might still be fun to bluff it with your fabulous personality and favorite vegan message t-shirt. Tell them to eat beans, not beings ….

Air Fries with Fresh Garlic

Earlier this Spring, I was on a day trip through Berkeley with a friend.  We had trekked across the Bay on BART, and were on a quest for vegan pizza at Bobby G’s. Everything else in between that and home was by random chance or grumbling “feed me” messages from our stomachs.

Smart Alec’s was one of those stops.  We happened to be across the street, realized we were hungry, and thus decided to refuel on the most delicious vegan “air baked fries”.

Fresh Garlic on Air-Baked Fries

Catering toward Cal Berkeley students, Smart Alec’s is cafeteria-style food (burgers and soups), with many vegetarian and a few vegan options. There are still a few folks who are long-time members of the veg community in the SF Bay Area that begrudge Smart Alec’s decision to stray away from being an entirely vegetarian restaurant.

The order shown here was a large, all for the princely sum of $1.99. Fresh garlic is an optional choice, and is a must-have for those of you who like garlic, or are worried about vampires. Side note, Saturn Cafe, a veg restaurant open until the wee hours in Santa Cruz, also serves fries with fresh garlic.

In all honestly, and hindsight, I should have gotten a small, or split an order. But sometimes those “feed me” messages from my tummy overwhelm the rational part of my brain that should be responsible for making decisions like portion control.

Vegan Sri Lankan curries

Asian Rose was a restaurant in Santa Cruz, popular for its delicious and rich Sri Lankan cuisine.  It’s just over an hour’s drive for us, down beautiful and scenic Highway 1. We made it a point to visit at least once or twice a year.

Over the recent Labor Day holiday weekend, little did we know that it would be our last trip. The food has always been entirely vegetarian, with many vegan choices. For example, all of the curries on the menu were vegan, and the prices were incredibly reasonable: one item was $6, two items $6.50, 3 items $7, and 4 items $7.50.

Another three Item Curry - Asian Rose

The first two photos shows two typical plates of three item curries – a deal at $7, including rice and a papadam. I opted for the Mixed Vegetables Curry, Spinach Yam Curry, and Basil Eggplant Curry shown in the first photo.

My biggest regret, every single time I’ve eaten at Asian Rose, is that there is a finite amount of food on the plate and I eventually reach the end.

As dire as my title sounds, Farewell Asian Rose, it’s really not that grim.  We are not facing the end of vegan Sri Lankan food (yea!!)

Sri Lankan Spicy Potatoes

It’s sister restaurant, Malabar Cafe in Santa Cruz, remains open for dinner only, serving much of the same delicious cuisine.  They’re now open daily from 5 pm to 9 m, and to 9:30 pm on Friday and Saturday evenings.  And when I talked to the owner/chef during my most recent visit, he was going to be adding crepes.  When we told him we were vegan, he assured us there would be vegan ones available, too.

So, whether it was Asian Rose or the remaining Malabar Cafe, it’s well-worth the journey to Santa Cruz for vegan Sri Lankan food.

iPod Bay Area Vegetarian Guide

An updated version of Bay Area Vegetarians’ handy Ultimate Guide is now available for your iPod.  This lists all the vegan and vegetarian restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, great for locals, tourists, and everyone who enjoys dining veg.

It’s easily installed by downloading a file and moving it content to the ‘Notes’ directory of your iPod. The Guide does not programmatically alter your iPod in any way: it’s simply a collection of documents organized for easy browsing.