Vegetarian sushi?

I love sushi - it's weird coming from a vegetarian's mouth, but true. I always think how fortunate I am to live in San Francisco with so many restaurants that cater to, or atleast recognize vegetariansm. And I have not one, but two favorite sushi places that have so many vegetarian options that you feel like a kid in a candy shop.

The first one is Cha-ya, there was a point when I ate here so often, I guess because it only serves vegetarian food. Here was a place that I could eat, literally everything on the menu ( and I'm saying this because they don't have a single dish that has eggplant in it... hehe). So, I have my staples at Cha-ya that I would recommend to anyone - start with the miso soup and an order of the gyoza for appetizers. Next, order some rolls to share, I love the kappa rolls, the Shattuck and the tempura rolls. I also loooove the Cha-ya Delight, it's this wholesome hearty rice dish, with almost spice or salt, but it is still so flavorful. I don't know what it is about this dish, when it's served to you it looks like a bunch of boiled vegetables sitting on a bed of brown rice - almost too healthy looking to be tasty. But one bite of it and you know you were so wrong in judging this awesome dish - the vegetables are cooked to perfection, I think they marinate them in something because although there is no visible sign of spices, there is a certain subtle flavor to them. Moving on... the only thing I haven't had at Cha-ya is dessert, I'm usually so full and happy by the time I'm done with dinner that I never have room for dessert - and I think all their dessert options have B-fruit in them :)

So my second vegertatian-friendly sushi place is one that I recently discovered thanks to Siddharth. It's called Minako, and is in a pretty grimy part of the Mission. This place has attitude! And I mean that in a good way. As soon as you enter the small space, the individualism of the owners and the patrons is evident - the menu has caricatures and poems wirtten over the years by customers of the restaurant. That's a pretty novel concept according to me. The menu is pretty exhaustive - in addition to the regular menu, they had this little board on every table with 10 specials for the day. Pretty cool! So anyway, I was pretty impressed with how much character this place had... but what about the food?

It was a tough choice deciding between so many vegetarian and fish options (Minako is not an only-veg sushi place, but it still has more than enough vegetarian options). We ended up ordering the almond encrusted tofu, seaweed salad, gyoza, kappa rolls (of course), and my favorite - the vegetarian spicy eel roll. The soup is entirely passable - so don't order that. Instead the sushi options and the noodle options are safer bets. The fish-eaters on the table ordered some hamachi and Ashish's usual inari. Overall I think everyone was really happy with the food - we ordered too much, but surprisingly finished almost everything. I think the highlight for me though was the personalized touches - the menus with the customer drawings, the owner (?) of the place who chatted with us after dinner, and the little metal board with smart comments and the specials of the day. This is the kind of place you want to be a regular at - if only it was closer to home.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/cha-ya-vegetarian-japanese-restaurant-san-francisco
http://www.yelp.com/biz/minako-organic-japanese-restaurant-san-francisco

Moki's Sushi

People always look at me weird when I tell them I love sushi. I know... I don't eat fish, so the whole sushi experience is probably a little (ok, more than a little) incomplete for me. But still... I love sushi, I love how fresh and crunchy the cucumber roll is, how subtle the flavors are, I love the pickled ginger, and I love the kick of wassabi mixed in in soy sauce. So.. when Lalitha suggested we go to Moki's in Bernal Heights for dinner, I was excited! The only other place I know that is great for vegetarian sushi is Cha-ya, which I really should review some day because I eat there a lot!

Bernal Heights is a cute little neighborhood. with some decent restaurants. It's really quiet, and even on a Saturday night, the streets were pretty deserted. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you want to go somewhere happening, where you can hang out at a bar or go dancing later, then Bernal is not the neighborhood for you. If you are looking to enjoy a nice, relaxing meal though, it's got a few places I would recommend - Little Nepal, Piqueo's, and Moki's to name a few.

So anyway, back to Moki's... Moki's doesn't take reservations, but when we got there around 7 pm on a Saturday night, it was a breeze to get seating. The place did get crowded as the evening progressed though, so I would suggest getting there early. Our server was really nice (meaning cute!), and took good care of us. Fran and me drank sake (I forget the name, have to check with Lalitha), it was really really good, definitely recommended. For appetizers we ordered the edamame, seaweed salad and the spicy corn cakes. The flavors in the seaweed salad were really good - just a subtle hint of spice, salt and some sesame.. yummy! The corn cakes... fried and with a tangy dipping sauce, you can't go wrong with that. Or edamame for that matter :)

On to the main course then... we ordered the Moki rolls, the tempura roll, spider rolls and of course the cucumber rolls. I was pretty happy with all the vegetarian options available... we actually had a tough time deciding what we wanted to get, which is awesome for a sushi place. They also had nigiri sushi with vegetables, something I haven't seen before. The moki rolls and the tempura rolls were really good - definitely recommended. The moki roll had mango, tofu and macadamia nuts - ummmm delicious. And the tempura roll had a spicy sauce, tempura'ed tofu, coconut and macadamia nuts. Both were pretty unique, I never would have imagined coconut could taste so good in a sushi roll. And ahhh... cucumber rolls, how can anyone not like cucumber rolls, so crunchy, so fresh... yyummy! I didn't bother to check but I think the spider rolls were good too... anyway, who cares... this is a veggie blog :)

After stuffing ourselves with all the rolls we ordered (not to mention we had already stuffed ourselves with nachos at the movies before) we very politely declined dessert. And then we undid all the good of skipping dessert by walking down the street and getting ice cream from a local ice-cream store - Maggie Mudd, which was nothing to write home about frankly, but hey, I'm all for promoting local neighborhood business, so if you are in the area, by all means try the ice-cream here. But Moki's - I think it's worth making the trek to Bernal to try their sushi. The food, service, atmosphere, and the sake was definitely worth it!

http://www.mokisushi.com/