Bay watch: Vegetarian travelers can enjoy lots of choices in San Francisco - California - Traveling Fare

Vegetarian Times, Sept, 1997 by Amy O'Connor

"Do you have tea?" I asked.

"it's lukewarm," he deadpanned.

Not long after we ordered, a cook ran outside and returned with a large green plant. Then we heard the whir of a blender coming from the kitchen.

Raw Living Food served us some of the most unusual, freshest and most intensely flavored food we've ever eaten. We started with fresh, ruby-ripe persimmons, sliced very thin. Then came porto-bello mushrooms served in a cold both of pureed yellow tomatoes and herbs. They were delicious, as was a salad made with fresh greens, edible flowers, seaweed, wasabe dressing, cilantro and diced peppers. We scooped up spicy guacamole studded with pomegranate seeds using dried root vegetables instead of chips. "There have never been so many flavors going into my mouth at one sitting," joe enthused.

Our waiter recommended "It Lives" pizza. The pie consisted of a sunbaked buckwheat crust topped with creamed beans that tasted a bit like ricotta, exotic mushrooms, black sesame seeds and avocado. The pizza was cut into pieces and served on wooden slabs. The meal cost nearly $75 and went on for hours. By the time we ordered their award-winning dessert -- a delicious raw chocolate and hazelnut tart slathered in fresh pomegranate seeds, raspberries and strawberries -- we agreed that the uninitiated should probably start with small quantities of raw foods, not, as we did, with an entire smorgasbord.

In Albany, a town just north of Berkeley, we discovered Ambrosia Garden with a menu so vast Joe simply picked out the item with the highest number in the name. His "100-layered Bean Curd" was pretty bland, but we loved the spicy, braised eggplant and anything made with their yummy vegetarian `chicken'.

As we continued cutting our culinary swath through the San Francisco area, the Loendorffs recanted their prior assumption that all vegetarian restaurants are the same and unappealing. Which would they return to? They will probably never go back to Now & Zen, a gourmet vegan bakery and cafe in Japantown where the food is almost ridiculously low-fat. (I liked their carrot flan and "benevolent" Caesar salad, both of which are less than 10 percent fat. You can also get steamed vegetables served over homemade, supposedly calorie-free japanese mountain yam noodles.) We agreed that Millennium, a spartan vegan gourmet restaurant in the Abigail Hotel near the Civic Center, was best for lunch. We probably won't sample the vegan restaurants in Chinatown again. Joe and Tracey loved Neecha, a restaurant on Sutter Street that served traditional vegan versions of Thai specialities.

I don't know when I'll get back to the Bay Area, but when I do, I'll wander to the Richmond neighborhood in San Francisco to try Joubert's, a South African vegan eatery with a huge open kitchen. I'll become a regular at Jamba Juice, a chain of shops that serves wholesome 24-ounce smoothies made with fresh fruit and soy or rice milk for about $3. And I'll definitely go back to Raw for the best guacamole I've ever tasted, those wild wasabedressed salads and that hunky waiter ... not necessarily in that order. And I'll leave my meat-eating friends at home.