Jan. 13, 2010 - Issue #743: Broken Embraces
ORIENTAL VEGGIE HOUSE: Better than the real thing
Oriental Veggie House a tasty place to spend a little time
The restaurant is located north of downtown near Chinatown and the outside of the place sure doesn't look like anything special. In fact, neither does the inside. Luckily, my desire for ambiance was trumped by my curiosty to find out what their food was all about.
We strolled in during the dinner hour on a Saturday night, and to my dismay, no one else was in there—not a single customer. Just an older man who served as a host, waiter and probably also owns the place. He was very friendly though, told us to sit wherever we wanted and brought us menus. It was a little strange being in a restaurant all alone. My date and I kept finding ourselves whispering to each other for no reason. The room is medium-sized and isn't anything fancy. There are Chinese decorations and Buddhas all over the walls, and the table cloths are cute with vegetables all over them, but other than that it's a brightly lit room and there are several deep freezes along one of the walls. Let's just say that you wouldn't come here for the scenery.
We ordered a pot of green tea ($3) which was warm, soothing and perfectly steeped.
The menu is a few pages long and covers such courses as appetizers, main courses, hot pots, soups and so on. The word on the street is that even though the menu mentions animals like chicken, beef, duck and seafood, none of it is actually meat—even though, in some cases, you would never be able to tell.
We settled on the veggie crab roll ($6.95) as an appetizer. Of course the service was very prompt—they were only cooking for the two of us. On the bright side, all of our food came out hot and fast. The crab rolls were a wonderful and pleasant surprise. Quite similar to your typical spring roll, they were piping hot and came with a plum sauce to dip in. The best parts were the juicy chunks of "crab" that were to be found inside. I would never have guessed in a million years that I wasn't actually eating seafood.
For our main course, we decided on a few items to share. The spicy egg plant and veggie chicken ball hot pot ($11.95), fried taro root duck ($12.95) and the Singapore vermicelli ($8.95). The hot pot arrived with a lid on top which our server removed to reveal a bubbling pot of saucy vegetables and chicken. This was my favourite dish—it had the most deliciously sweet, spicy and just a little smokey flavour. The egg plant was savoury and coated with specks of dried chili peppers, and the "chicken" balls were a pretty convincing substitute for real chicken. I recommend this dish and am already experiencing cravings for it.
The vermicelli was a really nice accompaniment. It had a strong flavour of yellow curry yet somehow managed to be fairly mild at the same time, and the bits of "chicken" within the dish were very good as well. And lastly, the taro root duck, which was probably our least favourite. It was only lagging behind because it was the least what we expected it to be. We figured that it would resemble fake "duck" just like the other meats. Instead it was a deep-fried taro-root paste, and really had nothing to do with duck at all. It's possible that it was prepared in the same style as one would prepare duck, but I'm not sure. It came with a nice dipping sauce and it certainly wasn't bad, it was just different and not what we had had in mind.
Despite some of the downsides, I would still recommend this place for carnivores and vegetarians alike; the delicious and interesting food is certainly worth a try. V
Mon – Sat (11 am – 9:30 pm)
Oriental Veggie House
10586 - 100 St, 780.424.0463
More info about Oriental Veggie House →
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