| Mad cow disease. Chicken flu. Carcinogens in farm salmon. The number of foods we’re able to eat these days without crossing our fingers is becoming increasingly slim. Pesticides and genetically engineered tomatoes aside, it looks like this girl’s eating vegetables.
Since Fast Forward readers have voted Buddha’s Veggie Restaurant (5802 Macleod Trail S.W., phone 252-8830) the best vegetarian food in Calgary for the past four years, I wanted to check out this interesting hybrid – Chinese, vegetarian and kosher – for myself. My friend and I showed up on a Monday night, without a reservation, to a full, 70-seat dining room. Since the restaurant’s busy times can be unpredictable and there’s not really a waiting area, it’s best to call ahead for a table.
At first, I was disappointed that we weren’t able to sit under the bamboo thatches entwined with grapevines, but I became quite fond of our glass table with its pattern of colourful lentils. The Chinese instrumental background music, the Buddha shrine and the soft blinds drawn over the windows create a soothing, insular experience, shutting out the more abrasive sights and sounds of Macleod Trail.
The restaurant features 140 different dishes, free of MSG, garlic, onion and egg. Its alternative to chicken, pork and beef is a type of soybean and its substitute for seafood is a plant extract. If you’re having trouble visualizing your order of pineapple with smoked goose or lotus root pancake, the menu provides four pages of photographed dishes.
We began with slender, crispy veggie rolls ($6.50 for three, $10.90 for five), with a tasty filling of mushrooms, carrots and lettuce. I then ordered an additional appetizer of taro veggie crab rolls ($7.50 for small, $12.90 for regular), which are flat, oval-shaped seaweed rolls in a light, crispy batter. Through no fault of the cook, I couldn’t eat this dish. I found the fish flavouring too overwhelming and even the accompanying plum sauce didn’t disguise the taste.
Our next two dishes were delicious: stir-fried mixed vegetables in a lovely, subtle black bean sauce ($10.50) and veggie ginger beef ($10.50). The veggie ginger beef was crispy and quite spicy and it was truly amazing how its texture, appearance and flavour so closely resembled the meat version. No longer does veggie food have to look like vegetables, let alone taste like them. We ordered steamed rice ($1 per person) and coconut rice ($2.30), the latter being quite bland in comparison to Thai-style coconut rice with its sweet coconut shavings.
My only complaint about dinner was that we waited awhile for the first dish and then a little too long between each subsequent dish. I can’t hold this against the restaurant, however, because of the ever-so-gracious owner. Noticing I didn’t enjoy the crab-roll appetizer, she removed it from the bill and twice she dissuaded us from ordering unnecessary additional dishes. Such gestures of goodwill ensure repeat customers – now that’s good business sense.
Buddha’s Veggie Restaurant sells dry bags of veggie pork and veggie beef, refrigerated veggie pork buns and jars of black bean sauce, satay sauce and homemade chili oil. It’s open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily and closed on Tuesdays. Dim Sum is also served for lunch on weekends. |
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