Quick Bites: Caravan of Dreams

The Basics: You won’t find portabello mousse at Caravan of Dreams. This is a real, hippydippy vegetarian restaurant. The kind that might scare away a carnivorous skeptic. Half the menu is raw or “live”, while everything is organic, vegan and kosher. Anyone with an open mind willl appreciate the worldly possibilities on the menu. I for one, had my head spinning between spelt pancakes, seitan taquitos, peanut noodles and carrot polenta. Seasonal and local, it is not. There’s plenty of coconut where it doesn’t need to be. You can’t be everything to everyone I guess. Our waitress seemed to have her head in some yonder hemp clouds, but when she finally brought our food it was flavorful and satisfying. Not everything is a success, but you’ll leave Caravan with plenty of new information about some rather wild ingredients.
Cuisine: Vegan, Kosher
Best Dish: Classic nachos with black bean chili, guacamole and salsa.
Food: Good
Service: Poor
Value: Good
Average App/Entree Price: $8/$15
Location: 405 E 6th Street
You Gonna Finish That? Meh, you can taste the side.
Word to the Wise: They serve a $15 prixe-fixe brunch

Hangawi (Spice and Serenity)

Though on the edge of K-town, you won’t find communal BBQs at Hangawi, a Zen temple of vegetarian Korean fare. When E suggested we try a Korean vegetarian place he had been to for lunch, I did not expect this level of elegance. After some jerky driver behind me honked incessantly at my cab, I stepped out, walked into Hangawi and felt immediately calm.

Not only is Hangawi beautiful with its soaring ceilings and ornate table settings, but the staff glides around the room with such ease, that your stress lifts away. And boy, does it smell awesome!

A lot of that peace comes from the fact that everybody removes their shoes at the door. You won’t hear any clicking at Hangawi. It was a real joy to take off my heels and tuck my feet into the space below our table. I was amazed at how far the menu could go without any meat. From dumplings to leek pancakes, seaweed salad, vermicelli, and an entire maitake mushroom prixe fixe, the menu piqued my taste buds again and again. Narrowing down our selections was no small feat.

We started with the seamed kimchi buns, two pillows of dough with sweetly-flavored slices of kimchi inside.  The texture was just dense enough with the right amount of elasticity. I’m no bun expert but I know what a David Chang bun tastes like and what an over-processed Zen Palate bun tastes like. These were somewhere in the middle. Even better than the buns were our vegetable dumplings with a pool of spicy/sour sauce (chilli sauce? not listed) Don’t let the vague descriptions  fool you, the kitchen pays great care to detail and the flavors are there.

I appreciated the serene vibe until a LONG pause between our appetizer and entree. People began to leave the restaurant as we crept closer to closing time, with no entree. Our waiter was missing. Eventually we caught the attention of our hostess and magically, our waiter emerged with our Zen noodles and spicy chili mushrooms, served with generous side plates of spicy and mild kimchi.

The hostess felt terrible about the wait and apologized profusely. She asked if there was anything else they could bring. E mentioned a particular type of kimchi he had on another occasion. While they didn’t have it, they brought another side of some marinated, thinly sliced cucumber. The cucumber wasn’t life-changing, but a good effort at salvaging our meal.

Timing mishaps and mistakes occur all the time in restaurants, but it’s possible to recover with grace, as the staff at Hangawi did. This was a truly memorable meal and I would be happy to return anytime!

Location: 12 East 32nd Street
Food: Very Good
Drinks: No expansive wine list here but you will find some sake and sochu cocktails and a couple of beers.
Service: Good
Average App/Entree Price: $11/$21
Value: Very Good
You Gonna Finish That? Every last bite.

Quick Bites: Candle 79

The Basics: It’s hard not to love this elegant, uptown vegan restaurant with lively, inspired dishes, a great drink selection, and spot-on service. Despite its meat-free menu, deprivation won’t be your dilemna, instead you’ll feel torn between the wild-mushroom ravioli, the grilled seitan chimichurri, or the spring harvest paella. Don’t be confused by its casual, sister restaurant, Candle Cafe.
Best Dish: Lemon-grilled oyster mushroom with sauteed baby artichokes. Also a special on the day we went, walnut-crusted tofu with Jerusalem artichokes and red wine jus.
Food: Very Good
Service: Very Good
Value: Good
Average App/Entree Price: $13/$22
Location: 154 East 79th Street (betw Lexington and 3rd Ave)
You Gonna Finish That? Every last bite.

Pure Food and Wine

No oven. No stove. No grill. No meat. No dairy. Sound like a hellish dining experience? The divine kitchen at Pure Food and Wine proves that it doesn’t have to be. The cooking at Pure is really not “cooking” at all, as nothing gets heated above 118F. The folks at Pure say that this “preserves the food’s natural enzymes which catalyze digestion.” Essentially, eating raw food is supposed to maintain a lot of the great nutrients that are present, rather than having them released by heat. Like I said, Pure has no heat-conducting kitchen appliances. What they do have is a few dehydrators which slowly dehydrate ingredients at a very low temperature.

The cuisine at Pure Food and Wine takes influences from all over the world including some Southwestern flavors in chili lime tortilla wraps with avocado and pico de gallo or Asian elements in a Lapsang smoked portabella mushroom. They do seem to love their mushrooms as a myriad of species were on the list from trumpet to shiitake and chanterelle. I’m a mushroom freak so this was OK by me! They serve wine, sake, and hard cider but no beer or spirits due to the high temperature at which these are fermented. I’m not entirely satisfied with that explanation. Wine can be fermented at a pretty wide range of temperatures and I don’t know it’s true that all beer is fermented at a higher temperature. This sounded strange. Anyway, I ordered a fig sake martini and E had a hard cider and we moved on.

I started with a napolean of thick pumpkin seed crisps, cashew cheese and mushrooms (trumpet I think). I’ve never had cheese made from nuts but the cashew cheese tasted like real, creamy goat cheese. It was a delectable bite with the earthy pumpkin seed crisps. E had the marinated shiitake and avocado sushi rolls served with freshly sliced, pungent ginger (not pickled). I’m amazed at how soft and sticky the rice was, of course without the use of a rice cooker. For entrees I had tamales filled with a soft white corn mash studded with marinated mushrooms (pictured below). There was a rich, raw cacao mole that I dragged each bite into along with a tomatillo cilantro salsa for balanced acidity. E had the tostada with mushroom, cabbage, pico de gallo and guacamole. The flavors harmonized beautifully in all of the dishes.

from VeggieGirl

I was in awe at how phenomenal the food was. Pure Food and Wine is not just good for its category, it’s a great dining experience in and of itself. Raw food is unforgiving. Think of the difference in flavor between a raw carrot and a cooked carrot. How fresh must the ingredients be at Pure for them to craft these involved dishes, without the cloak of heat? I will warn that Pure is on the pricey side, but even in this economy it’s worth it to pay for the freshest of organic ingredients, wisely prepared and served in a friendly, elegant setting. What’s better than that?

Pure Food and Wine: 54 Irving Place
Cuisine: Raw Food, Vegan, Eclectic
Average App/Entree Price: $14/$25
Food: Excellent
Service: Very Good
Value: Good
You Gonna Finish That? Every last bite.
Word to the Wise: Pure also has a casual, takeout option for lunch (restaurant is only open for dinner) called Pure Food and Juice and a vegan product site called One Lucky Duck