I meant: All the vegan food you can eat. Indian style.
Sara some non-bloggers but Very Important People friends, and I met up at a local Indian restaurant for a vegan buffet. In her post about it, Sara summed up the event's cause: "some weird vegetarian/Ghandi/peace-love-animals thing...yes I went to an event for a cause I can't even explain just to eat the vegan food...don't think less of me!" Those are her words, but I felt the same way about it!
I have eaten at Indian restaurants my fair share of times before, but this place was the best Indian I have had, ever. Normally this place's menu is not completely vegan (it is a totally vegetarian restaurant, but they really love to cheese/dairy up their food), so we'll just have to wait until they have another vegan night to return. Now on to the eats:
Plate 1:
Clockwise, starting at the bowl: Spicy tomato soup, mattar tofu, yellow daal, a fried puffy thing (pani puri?), icky roti
Plate 2:
Clockwise, starting at the long tortilla thing (which I started to demolish before I took the picture): Masala dosa, channa saag, more mattar tofu, something yellow and unidentified
Plate 3:
Clockwise, starting at the small bowl: Sheera (also called halwa), canteloupe, honeydew melon, a different fried puffy thing, vegetable biryani, some green bean things
Some of the stuff was exceptionally good, and several things were bland and not-so-great at all. The yummies of my selection were:
- Mattar tofu (as you can see, it was so good I got seconds; consisted of tomato gravy, garlic, ginger, peas, coconut milk, and very firm tofu. This was my favorite of the bunch)
- Masala dosa (the long tortilla thing, it was nice and greasy and rich and fatty, similar to a crepe and stuffed with potatoes, onions, curry, and spices)
- Spicy tomato soup (So good! I could eat this every day. It was really simple, thin and light without being watery, and had a nice little kick of spice.)
- Sheera (a.k.a. halwa)
- The juicy melons!
The sheera was the dessert and was exceptional! It is a sweet, slightly creamy semolina pudding studded with cashews. Yum! Normally it is made with ghee, so you probably won't find many Indian restaurants with a vegan version. But fortunately, the online world is here to help out should you have any cravings for vegan sheera: recipes here and here. I kind of wanted a second bowl of it...
