Imitation Shark Fin With Egg Whites at Embassy Kitchen--Best Vegetarian Dish Ever?
With so many Chinese restaurants in the SGV it's foolhardy to choose a single best dish. My personal favorites are simple items like the beef roll at 101 Noodle Express and the dumplings at Qingdao Bread Food. However, on the vegetarian side I just ran into something fabulous at Embassy Kitchen in San Gabriel (once known as Embassy Billiards)--a mixture of bean sprouts, egg whites and imitation shark fin. Has anybody seen this dish anywhere else?
Embassy Kitchen has some other great dishes, including crab fried rice, Chinese broccoli with dried salted halibut bits and egg tofu with bamboo pith. They also have some very ordinary dishes. That probably explains why they're busy, but not overwhelmingly so. Embassy Kitchen is at 218 S. San Gabriel Blvd.
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101 Noodle Express
1408 E Valley Blvd, Alhambra, CA 91801
Embassy Kitchen
218 S San Gabriel Blvd, San Gabriel, CA 91776
Qingdao Bread Food
301 N Garfield Ave, Monterey Park, CA
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I am assuming you are a vegertarian - why would you enbrace a fake vegetarian dish where shark fins in real life are cut of and left to die. I work for a natural food supplier where I still dont understand tofurkey and soyrizo but imitaion sharks fin is beyond my scopr . The money should be be spent saving the sharks if you dont want to eat them
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re: jonesstonehaven
westsidegal
Nov 21, 2011 01:14 PM
although i'm not a vegetarian, i can understand soyrizo:
grease/oil+ spicy = good.added jalepeno's or anything made with them, makes it even better.
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re: jonesstonehaven
K K
Nov 21, 2011 03:39 PM
It's a cultural thing.
Vegetarian/vegan food is consumed by Western society for health reasons. Much like raw foods.
Chinese (including Taiwanese and those of SE Asian backgroun) people eat vegetarian or vegan because of religious beliefs (i.e. Buddhism) first and foremost, with health or dietary reasons being secondary for the most part. One could however equate certain beliefs of vegetarianism, veganism, raw food consumption, pro-PETA and whatever worthy caused inspired movements, akin to religious/personal beliefs.
As for people who need to eat Chinese vegetarian for health reasons, the mock meat dishes (could be made with tofu, mushrooms, and/or wheat gluten) and flavored similarly to their traditional meaty counterparts, is done on purpose to help ease the transition of those used to eating meat. Nothing hypocritical about it, but yet gets a lot of flack from those who don't fully understand.
With regards to imitation shark's fin soup, this dates back perhaps to the 50s and 60s in Hong Kong, where shark fin soup was primarily a luxurious banquet delicacy. The idea of a cheaper downscale version w/o shark fin came about when someone came across a restaurant's base stock of shark fin, then decided to come up with their own humbler street version. After all without the base stock, the shark fin is basically flavorless. The authentic HK style imitation shark fin soup is not vegetarian...as the base stock is still Chinese ham with mature whole chickens. Nobody is embracing a fake vegetarian dish as a result of consuming "imitation shark fin soup". After all it is just a name of a substitute for whatever reasons it was given, much like there are substitute ingredients used with traditional receipes (where the original receipe may have been controversial, very expensive, or dangerous or what have you).
But I would be curious if Embassy Kitchen is Chinese Buddhist Vegan or just Chinese vegetarian.
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re: will47
That's what I took from the above posting too.
Maybe it's a thing where if you are against shark fin you should be eating imitation "shark fin's" either.
Just like some vegetarians won't eat veggie ham because they were escaping any relation even just in name, to beef, pork, and other meat and or fish products.
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