Red Bamboo

So, I went to Red Bamboo for Vday with my lovely girlfriend because she has decided to be vegan for the month of February. (As a foodie, I pray she doesn't make it permanent) Red Bamboo is a vegetarian soul food restaurant.

I had mixed feelings. We ordered a lot of small plates, and I was surprised by the dominance of fake meat on the menu. Aren't there any vegetarian restaurants in new york that serve actual vegetarian dishes? If you are addicted to fake chicken, maybe you shouldn't be vegetarian.

Anyway, my favorite dish was actually the one without the fake meat: beer-battered portabella mushrooms. Yum. It was like high-class bar food. The next dish was their version of buffalo chicken wings... Hmm. The "chicken" was squishy and not chicken-like, and on a stick! And the sauce tasted like sweet and sour. Definite ick. I ate the celery. After that we had their coconut shrimp. The "shrimp" actually tasted like shrimp and had a similar texture. I was both impressed and slightly disturbed (how do you make something vegetarian that tastes like shrimp?). I liked it though. And we ended with their king fish filet. It was a very close approximation to a McDonald's fish filet with tartar sauce. Impressive yet equally unappealing.

I love soul food. I love vegetarian food. But "mock" soul food dishes full of slightly odd fake meat.. not so much. It was good for a restaurant who specializes in fake meat (truly), but bad for a restaurant in general. I'll still take the real thing any day.