Vegan Vietnamese - Yum!

My friend Shaun is visiting from New Mexico.

I love it when he's here, because he's a lot more adventurous about trying new restaurants than I am (well, and we like visiting with him too, of course!!!)
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So, yesterday we took my youngest Sprout and ventured to a new-ish all-vegan Vietnamese restaurant in Seattle's busy and colorful International District.

Oh MY! We'd heard great things about the place from fellow vegans and let me say... we were not disappointed!

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Vegan Garden (OK, the name's not real original) has this h-u-g-e menu of tasty sounding Vietnamese favorites, all vegan and many made with fairly realistic "mock meats". If those aren't your thing, there's plenty of veggies and tofu too, not to fear.

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Well, I am not ashamed to admit we all really LIKE fake-chicken-fake-beef-fake-lobster (?!?we didn't try that, but they have it!).

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It took us forever to order, faced with so many choices, but I think we were most excited they had vegan Phở (a traditional Vietnamese beef and noodle soup), so we started with that. It had some sort of mock meat, mushrooms and tofu in a tasty broth; I can't imagine anyone missing the meat!!

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My daughter had tofu spring rolls (which, as always, she inspected for any "weird" things - like carrots). The three of us also tried lemongrass "beef" and "chicken"-something-that-I-can't-remember. I DO remember that it was good though!! Everything was.

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Yes, we ended up with lots to take home, but SOOOO worth it! We finished with my favorite treat ever, Vietnamese coffee which I haven't had since going vegan, (it usually has condensed milk) but this was made with coconut milk. Oh.Wow.
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Everything was incredibly delicious, colorful, generous portions, perfectly cooked. The staff were super helpful and the restaurant was clean and well lit.

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If you're in Seattle, you have to check this place out!!

"Saigon Rendezvous" - Vietnamese Lunch in Olympia

Another oh-so-opinionated, narrow-minded restaurant review. :P I swear I do eat at home too - more recipes to come soon!

So, my friend, 'Froggy' and I had lunch today at Saigon Rendezvous, a Vietnamese restaurant (some reviews list it as Korean) a short drive from here, in Olympia, Washington. We'd heard it had a great selection (several pages!) of vegetarian and faux meat menu items, so we were pretty excited.

But sometimes the anticipation doesn't match the hype. I hate to say it, but we were very much disappointed. It's not a bad little place; clean, fast service, fresh veggies, lots of options for veg and omni alike - but I would classify the menu offerings as "generic 1050's-style Chinese", nothing that we saw on the menu even remotely resembled "Vietnamese" or "Korean" options that we've had at other places.

And maybe we ordered the wrong things or the kitchen was having an off day, but aside from a couple items, most of our selections were bland, greasy and overcooked.

All the faux meats were exactly the same; flat, chewy rehydrated TVP product, just covered with different sauces - and the tofu was small mushy flavorless pieces that seemed like they'd been added as an afterthought. Bummer!

If I sound like a disgruntled restaurant reviewer, I'm not trying to, I think you could get a decent meal here; we just didn't hit the culinary jackpot today. Such is life.

But all was not lost.

The company was great, and though it wasn't the best dinner I've ever had, it was edible and it was vegan! That's better than a lot of places I could have gone!

And you gotta love this - the fortune in my cookie made the whole dinner worth while! Sweeeeeet!