A Vegan in Seattle: the good, the bad & the ugly

My love don’t come easy. But Mighty O had me at “hello, what can I get for you?”… Knocking my socks off was their simple perfection- that they’re actually donuts: not just circular. New York has no answer to Mighty O. In a rare feat, coniferous trumps deciduous.

Just how do they make heaven on Earth? Now I know how Belinda Carlisle felt.

Further onward with more vegan sweet treats! I had high hopes for Flying Apron bakery in Fremont. Their extensive selection was overwhelming, but taste and texture-wise, I wasn’t wholly impressed. Their items were sweet but dense, wet and heavy like 90’s takes on vegan baked goods. The vegan baked goods market has reared significant improvements since the then and so has my own kitchen.

Vegan eats in Seattle are far too frequently Asian. We checked out Araya’s in the University district for lunch. The cream cheese spring rolls (top left) were kind of interesting but the pineapple curry (top right), and its pile of veggie proteins, was haphazard and imbalanced. I opted for the lunch buffet which had me filled with mediocre lukewarm Thai food on the instant. Bottom left and right is my old favorite: Bamboo Garden. When I lived in Seattle, this was my hot spot. Not so much for the textured soy protein balls (or what come to be known as “the balls”), which satisfied some texture urges (and some tactile urges as I apparently drunkenly squeezed them in my hands one night in a bar, smearing them on the booth. w.t.f.?), but for the creamy corn chowder soup. This soup is preserved in my memory and supported with years of nostalgia. Like many things in Seattle. It’s a simple corn-starch thickened base with chunks of “chicken, button mushrooms and corn kernels, but it tastes like me at 23.
I also hit Jhanjay in Wallingford. My entree, the Monk’s noodles, was very tasty. On a whim, I opted for veggie fish in it. I scarfed it down quickly to order my dessert. The sweetened sticky rice and mango was truly authentic and took me back to South East Asia. I foraged the day and night markets for this dessert, up and down the country. Amazing.

More vegan Asian at Vegan Garden: