Borough Vegetarian

An Choi - Great, Vegetarian-Friendly Vietnamese Restaurant Downtown

I love Vietnamese food, particularly rich, velvety vegetarian pho.  I also love vermicelli bowls and fresh rice paper rolls.  Banh mi, for some reason, have never been the top of my list, but I digress from the purpose of this post - the delicious vegetarian Vietnamese fare served by An Choi on Manhattan's Lower East Side.  

An Choi is a pretty small restaurant packed among several other LES spots, and I didn't fully know what to expect from it as I hadn't heard of it when I first visited.  The meal started off pretty slowly, with standard drinks and appetizers like a vegetarian fried egg roll.

The meal really hit it stride during the entrees, when I was able to sample a delicious vegetarian pho broth.  I am generally not a fan of mushrooms, but the An Choi vegetarian mushroom pho broth was really fantastic.  Rich, sweet, salty, garlicky - yum!  

My only complaint was that there wasn't enough broth!  I really look forward to trying this delicious broth again - in a city where vegetarian pho broth isn't as ubiquitous as it should be, one has to really hold on to the good ones!

An Choi

85 Orchard Street, btwn. Broome and Grand Streets

Lower East Side, Manhattan

A few blocks from the F train at Delancey, and maybe 7 - 10 minute walk from the J/Z trains at Bowery and the B/D trains at Grand St.

Bun-Ker Vietnamese - Lives Up to the Hype!

Bun-ker Vietnamese has become one of the most talked about restaurants in the Borough Vegetarian world.  Not only have friends raved about it, and the restaurant has become a blog and reviewer favorite. 

When we finally went to Bun-Ker, found on an isolated stretch of Metropolitan Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens, I have to admit my expectations weren’t that high.  We arrived just after their 5pm opening time, and the restaurant was already packed with many young, “new Brooklyn” patrons.  The restaurant also had the hallmarks of some of the Brooklyn over-hyped eating places, with the self-serve water cooler in one corner and wooden rustic decor.

When we started getting our food though, which came in waves, I was definitely blown away.  I was also pleased with how nice our server was, and accommodating of my nut allergy and vegetarianism.  

The garlic tomato fried rice (pictured above) was pungent, sweet and salty - I don’t know if I have ever had anything like it before.

The otherwise simple sauteed Chinese broccoli with garlic was also a winner with perfectly salted greens.

The only potential low point was the vegetarian main course Bun-Ker offers, the grilled zucchini and eggplant with noodles, though I think the lack of flavors is mostly my fault.  When given the sauce to accompany the vegetable/noodle dish, I didn’t know if the sauce was fish-sauce based so didn’t really eat it.  We found out after I was done though that the sauce was completely vegetarian and probably would have jazzed up the dish.  **UPDATE:  The dish is much more flavorful with the sauce and has become one of my favorites in the city!

Thankfully, we ended the meal another very, very high note - the coconut tapioca pudding with jack fruit and palm seeds.  It was so sweet and tasty - and I am not a huge tapioca fan.

While Bun-Ker isn’t the cheapest place to eat (entrees from $13 - $25, and appetizers in the $8 - $11 range), it is definitely a Borough Vegetarian must visit!

Bun-Ker Vietnamese

46-63 Metropolitan Avenue

Ridgewood, Queens

10 - 15 minute walk from the Jefferson St L stop, or accessible by the Q54 Metropolitan Ave bus that goes through Queens and Brooklyn

Cyclo - Surprisingly Good Vietnamese in Long Island City, Queens

Long Island City (Queens), the neighborhood next to where I live now, has an amazing array of restaurants.  However, the truism that quantity does not equal quality seems to be true in this rapidly growing neighborhood, and I would roughly say that we have had more misses than hits in the neighborhood to date.  

We were thus extremely happy to have a great, simple meal at Cyclo, the new Vietnamese restaurant in the neighborhood opened by the owners of the popular neighborhood Thai spot Tuk Tuk.  What brought me to Cyclo was the vegetarian pho and tofu banh mi, as well as several vegetarian entrees and appetizers (in addition to a full range of meat options).  From at least from my days in Brooklyn, it seems much harder than one would think to find vegetarian pho in NYC.  

(vegetarian pho)

Thankfully, the food lived up to the hopes I had placed on it, and my vegetarian pho was quite good.  The broth was perhaps a bit sweet, but nothing fresh chile peppers and hot sauce can’t cure :-)  The portion was also a realistic size - not way too much, nor too small.

(pho garnishes)

The only potential downside of Cyclo is its price.  While any NYC standard, it is extremely reasonably priced, if not cheap.  However, for those looking for a $5 banh mi, this is definitely not that spot.  The banh mi range from $8 - 9, and like my pho are not huge portions, and the pho is mostly in the $9 - 10 range.

We will definitely be back!

Cyclo

5 - 51 47th Avenue

Long Island City, Queens

Easily accessible by the G (21st St), 7 (Vernon-Jackson), and slight walk from the E/M (Court Square).

Nightingale 9 - Vietnamese-Inspired, Very “Brooklyn” Restaurant

Several months back, I finally tried Nightingale 9, a modern (or really Brooklyn-style) Vietnamese-inspired restaurant in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.  

With its thick wood tables, craft beer options, and very Smith Street-storefront design and location, the only difference between this restaurant and its many companions along Smith and Court streets in this part of Brooklyn is its Vietnamese-inspired menu.  Vietnamese food, especially that of the non-banh mi variety, can be hard to come by in this part of town, so I had been looking forward to trying Nightingale 9 ever since its opening a year or two back.

When I finally made it for lunch, I tried just one menu option - the mushroom soup, their only vegetarian main course.  

The soup was actually well done - rich, well spiced and complemented by fresh scallions and herbs, and served at a solid hot temperature.  And despite my general aversion to mushrooms, the mushroom flavor wasn’t overwhelming of the soup’s other flavors.

The only downside was that the soup and its noodle serving were a bit on the small side, and I didn’t feel that full after eating it (maybe more a commentary on the huge size of restaurant meals in the U.S.).  If I lived in the area, I would probably eat this dish every few weeks, but given that I now live some distance away, it probably won’t be a repeat in the future.

Nightingale 9

329 Smith Street

Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn

Easily accessible from the F/G trains at Carroll Street

Borough Vegetarian Visits New Orleans, LA - and Eats Great Vegetarian Vietnamese Food

Borough Vegetarian took a trip to New Orleans, Louisiana last month to both escape the brutal winter weather in NYC and try some great food in one of America’s other top restaurant cities.  This is the first of a few non-NYC posts that will be featured this week.

Despite a number of trips to New Orleans in the past, we had never been to a local Vietnamese restaurant.  And with this trip, we had a car at our disposal, so decided to do some searching to not only find a great area Vietnamese restaurant, but also one that would have a number of vegetarian options.  

After a lot of debate, we ultimately settled on Pho Tau Bay in Gretna, on the other side of the mighty Mississippi.  The restaurant seemed to have not only the latest obligatory mention in the New Orleans restaurant world - an appearance on Top Chef - but also a number of clearly marked vegetarian options on their extremely reasonably priced menu.

We got to the restaurant after driving from Baton Rouge, which in turn was preceded by a flight from New York, and were completely ravenous when we sat down.  As such, we ordered WAY too much - for just me, I ordered a vegetarian pho AND a vegetarian banh mi.

I have to say though, I don’t think it was just hunger that made the soup Rau Chay really amazing.  There was a really complex flavor to the broth, which I think in part was due to what appeared to be fried garlic and onions, which though in hindsight, may have just been really, really caramelized.  In any case, I am definitely going to not only cook down garlic before I made Asian-inspired noodle soups in the future, but may also add really cooked-down onion, an ingredient I don’t believe I have actually seen in any phos past.

The banh mi, on the other hand, was less impressive.  I have to qualify this statement though with the fact that I don’t think I have ever actually had banh mi before, which is a bit surprising to reflect on.  I have no idea how I have missed this popular sandwich in my 30+ years on this planet, but there you go.  

Ok, back to the banh mi.  It was a little too sweet for my taste, so I definitely had to load up the Sriracha and fresh chiles to give the sandwich some flavor from my perspective.  Not only was the tofu a bit sweet, but the lightly pickled vegetables also were pretty sweet, which didn’t lead to the best sandwich flavor for me.  The bread was great and fluffy though, and ultimately the cilantro and pickled vegetables added some lightness to the sandwich as well.

I definitely see us returning to Pho Tau Bay in the future, car or no car.  I highly recommend this affordable Vietnamese restaurant to all New Orleans travelers - definitely worth a side trip to check out!