Restaurant: Zen Gardens

I used to be a card-carrying vegetarian. The card was from the University of Western Ontario's Purple Veggie club. The card was, appropriately enough, purple and offered a 15% discount at, inter alia, Zen Gardens. Much like Simon's Wok the focus is on fake meat dishes. Simon's Wok has, I think, better food but Zen Gardens is a far more elegant restaurant.

Normally, I'm not a huge fan of restaurant elegance but I needed to find a place for a big family dinner in London and I thought it would fit the bill. The restaurant is not licensed, but has a wide variety of teas. The tea was excellent and was stored on top of candles to keep it hot. We started with an order of dumplings and then ordered for the table.

We had two different fried rices: one curried and with avocado. The Curried Fried Rice had a solid curry flavour, very different than everything else on the menu. While it was somewhat unusual, I liked the Avocado Fried Rice though several of my aunts loved it. Kung Po Soy Chicken were chewy and tasty and came with a nice medley of vegetables. The Schezuan Style Spicy Tofu were good, but not as spicy as the title might imply. There were also other dishes not displayed in the photo above. The Lo Han Chai Chow Mien had the right mix between crunchy and savoury and I am informed that the Spicy Eggplant was good (don't care for that vegetable myself). Finally, there was the Veggie Fish with Black Bean Sauce which was beautiful enough for its own picture:

I can't really remember what fish tastes like, but the meat eaters and the pescatarians at the table said this tasted like fish. It seemed so realistic I half expected to find fake bones. I liked it, but not as much as some of the other food.

I realize it's been a while since I've posted an actual recipe; hopefully now that I'm settled in and the traveling has paused I'll return the blog to its roots.

Zen Gardens Vegetarian Restaurant
344 Dundas St., London

KD Spicy Szechwan [sic] BOLD Snack Cup

On my way to see Avatar, I was given a gift. No, it wasn't the gorgeous-but-vapid movie – but some food pressed into my hand in a booth inside the Scotiabank (née Paramount) Theatre. To be more specific, it was Kraft Dinner Spicy Szechwan [sic] BOLD Snack Cup. Actually, I got another flavour as well – but I discarded that one after reading the ingredients and discovering various meat products.

The Snack Cup sat around a for a while, until one day I decided to try it. Now, I'm no stranger to KD. Gosh, in my precooking days I packed away a lot of it. One of my patented tricks was to use Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup instead of milk! (It's slightly painful to write that – though, of course, now I just eat lentils all day which is bad in a different way). Still, even to me the idea of putting a cup in a microwave for a couple of minutes and then eating the chemicals inside seemed a bit sketchy. The over-exuberance of the KD website didn't help as they rhapsodized: "any time is the right time to make Kraft Dinner the highlight of your day." I have my problems, but if Kraft Dinner is ever the highlight of my day, you have permission to shoot me.

So how it did actually taste? I would definitely disagree with their oddly capitalized "For snacking, it's Gotta Be KD BOLD Snack Cups" slogan, but then again I wouldn't go as far as this blog which termed it a "culinary horror" that was the food equivalent of Mao's Long March. My verdict is "meh". It wasn't awful, but it certainly wasn't good. Nor was it remotely spicy. It was unassumingly bland, with a hint of soy sauce. I've put "Chinese" as one of the tags in this post entirely ironically. Although, it is possible that this product is a piece of conceptual art wickedly satirizing the problematic nature of Chinese industrialization.

Restaurant: Simon's Wok

Vegetarian restaurants scare me. It's the choice, you see. At a (quote/unquote) "normal" restaurant, I can pick the vegetarian option (or chose between a couple). At a place like Simon's Wok there are over a hundred different things I could eat. But the deer-in-a-headlight feeling is well worth the deliciousness. It's also worth the trek, it's located east of the DVP.



Despite the temptation of ordering randomly off the menu, we decided to pick using our human logic. Simon's Wok has lots of fake meat items, so we made sure to get some of those. We started with some mock duck appetizers, which are quite nice. Next up were the Szechuan Fake Shrimp (seen at bottom right on the picture below). I don't remember what shrimp taste like, but apperently they were a pretty good proxy. Whatever their flavour-replication accuracy was, they were delicious. We had got one of their specials before on a previous visit, so we ordered the broccoli and king mushroom again (also excellent). My parents enjoy eggplants (I don't) so we got an eggplant dish (I still enjoyed the peppers, mushrooms and tree fungus in it). We finished off with a fried noodle and veggie dish, which was quite nice.



Remember to bring cash, Simon's Wok doesn't take anything else.

Simon's Wok Vegetarian Kitchen
797 Gerrard St. East, Toronto