Best Vegan dishes

What are the best vegan dishes in town? What restaurants have the best vegan-friendly menus?

I'm not vegan, but I think this is useful info when dining with vegetarians and vegans.

I really like Tin In on Valley. It's a completely vegan Chinese restaurant. I also like Messob, which adapts well.

There are a number of other good Chinese vegetarian restaurants in addition to Ten In. There's Vegetarian Delight in San Gabriel square and also the chain of Happy Family Chinese vegetarian restaurants in Monterey Park, Montebello and Rowland Heights. Also, there's House of Vege on Pacific Coast Highway in Lomita.

Who cares about vegetarian restaurants that try to substiute tofu for every type of meat there is. Boring!

I'm not thrilled with most of the seitan/gluten Chinese vegetarian places--the ones that pride themselves on almost duplicating sweet and sour pork--but the Shanghainese ``interpretations'' of duck or goose in the Buddhist-monk tradition can be quite good: Lake Spring and Mei Long Village have several of these dishes on the menu.

And I used to enjoy taking vegetarian friends to Meitze on Valley in Rosemead, a Taiwanese place with a lengthy list of vegetarian specials. Even when vegans intellectually know that a dish of vegetarian cold sliced pork kidney or vegetarian fried intestine is nothing more than manipulated vegetable protein, they still find it difficult to wrap their minds around actually eating the stuff.

The vegetarian kidney dishes remind me of the old proverb, "Just because something is possible does not mean it should be done."

I tried House of Vege and was unimpressed - while their "chicken" eggrolls were quite good, the rest of the items we tried were rather oily and heavy.

So, by that same token, does that mean that in the 24th century on Star Trek where all food is "replicated" and doesnt come from animals, that the steak that captain Kirk eats is vegan?

Jason

Strangely enough, this question has been answered - I just called a friend who wrote two Star Trek books and he said that according to the writer's bible a Trek Steak will have animal proteins. All steaks will be copies of one original steak which some programmer analyzed into the computer. (I hope it's a good one; it would be terrible if they were saving money when they bought the original.)

On the other hand, Spock has always been a vegetarian, as are most Vulcans. I assume that any sensible Vulcan would pick up the menu at House of Vege, see the item labeled Vegetarian Duck Kidney, and murmur "Most illogical. According to my analysys this is a mixture of chopped mushrooms, water chestnuts, and tofu, fried with vegetable oil to simulate an aquatic avian's lymphatic filter." This is probably why most Vulcans are seen dining alone or with other Vulcans, who regard this sort of remark as the height of witty table conversation...

But if they are replicated animal proteins they are not -really- from an animal. I mean replicated food doesnt really have a cellular structure and all that from living or formerly living tissue from an animal (this, at least, was my understanding why replicated food doesnt tast the same), which is at the heart of the vegan's problems with eating meat.

I mean all stuff is made from organic matter. Hell you can find organic matter all over the universe, in the atmosphere of Jupiter, everywhere.

I think that replicated meats would be vegan. In fact, they might be significanly less expensive to produce than actual meats, and might end up becoming the ultimate form of "meat". Creepy, eh?

Imagine, though, that you could create huge sheets of high quality beef, pre-aged, and it could grow over an inch a month. Yummy! No more chuck!

I think that there's been some research into modifying mushrooms to taste more like meat. What an idea. Porkobellos, Live Oysters, and Beeftake. That's genetic engineering I can get with!

yuck..why would you want to eat a vegetarian kidney anyway? even if it's vegetarian..the fact that it's supposed to resemble a kidney is just GROSS

I also have liked Happy Family on Atlantic on the Monterey Park/Alhambra border. Avoid the buffet, and see if you can get some of the specials off the wall and specials board. The staff will translate if you walk up to it and ask nicely.
As well, I've enjoyed Vegetable Delight (or something like that such as vegetarain delight) on Chatsworth in Granada Hills. Look for the more interesting mushroom dishes and seaweed - Buddha's hair, or hair vegetable (fa tsai).
If your friends eat dairy, kind of off topic, try chameli in the SGV or Dasaprakash in Artesia and in West LA on Santa Monica.

For those having dietary restrictions, either religious or health imposed, there's nothing wrong with soy and gluten dishes. Some of these places are very creative in preparing their dishes.