Sushi And Good Company

The Chef: Gabrielle and Tao Yin restaurant

The Menu: Sushi! An avocado and shiitake mushroom roll, accompanied by a wakame seaweed salad.

The Goods: Lacking lunch plans, VegNews Office Manager Lyndsay Orwig, Associate Editor Liz Miller, and I made a last minute decision to check out Tao Yin, a restaurant literally steps from our offices offering both Chinese and Japanese food. Mushrooms and avocados may very well be my very favorite foods, so wrapping them up in rice and seaweed and serving them with ginger, wasabi, and soy sauce can really only improve on things, all the while reminding me of my time spent traveling in Japan just a year ago. Looking for more Japanese-inspired eats? Our brand-new November+December 2010 Veggie Awards issue features sushi and Eggplant Kabayaki recipes. The issue is on newsstands now, so be sure to pick one up!

Jaw-Dropping Japanese

The Chef: Hayato!

The Menu: A phenomenal, five-course Japanese indulgence! Each dish was hand-crafted, incredibly delicious, and, as you can see, gorgeously plated. Up top you see a light and lovely miso soup that featured green beans and tofu. On the plate, Hayato served brown-rice-filled inari, which were dotted with green beans and carrots and surprisingly savory. Moving clockwise, you see a sesame-based, tofu-like custard called goma dofu that we topped with dots of wasabi and soy sauce and eagerly devoured. Perfectly prepared kabocha squash and green beans were next, followed by the best lotus root any of us had ever tasted. Hayato sautéed the lotus root with shiitake mushrooms and topped the dish with black sesame seeds. Are we the luckiest people on Earth today? Yes.

The Goods: Is there anything better than having a professional chef come all the way across the Pacific and make lunch for you? No, there isn't; don't even try to come up with something. Our guest-turned-chef is actually a chef in Japan, and we couldn't have been more thrilled when he offered us the special treat of an authentic Japanese lunch. The meal was easily the most time-intensive lunch ever served at the VNHQ—rumor has it that Hayato was up until 4am last night making preparations! We are indescribably grateful for the effort; today's meal was an outrageously special treat.

Omigosh! Okonomiyaki

The Chef: Melissa

The Menu: A Japanese feast! Ms. Melissa, our Tokyo transplant, generously offered to help out with testing our recipes from the forthcoming May+June issue of VegNews, which worked out perfectly since we just happened to have something Japanese in our lineup, courtesy of our Hot Urban Eats columnist, Terry Hope Romero. Okonomiyaki, or "as you like it" pancake-pizza hybrids may be the most delicious and best-kept secret of Japanese cuisine. Sort of like savory potato pancakes, these treats are made with grated nagaimo, which makes an almost egg-like base. Melissa added flour, shredded napa cabbage, grated carrots, pickled ginger, and spices to each pancake, and then we all added our own toppings—which is where the similarity to pizza comes in, in case you were wondering. We selected from chopped Tofurky slices, green onions, whipped vegan mayonnaise, homemade okonomiyaki sauce, strips of nori, and toasted sesame seeds. Oh, and Melissa also made an awesome salad with grated carrots and steamed edamame. Yeah, things are pretty stinking good here!

The Goods: The majority of us in the office had never heard of okonomiyaki before today, and now we are officially hooked. If there's anything better than savory pancakes that you douse with sauce and toppings like pizza, we don't even want to know about it.

The Best Wednesday Ever

The Chefs: Aurelia, Kashi, and Frankie

The Menu: Wow. This one's going to be a doozy. So to start off, we enjoyed another frozen offering from Kashi, the Mayan Harvest Bake, which featured amaranth polenta, black beans, kale, sweet potato, pumpkin seeds, and delicious plantains. We were all really impressed with the way the plantains held up after being frozen and reheated—they were perfect! Aurelia busted out a red-quinoa salad with tempeh, red bell pepper, kale, and grated carrots that was a tasty, colorful addition to our plates. Just because we maybe have more vegan cheese in the office right now than we know what to do with, we also enjoyed some light water crackers topped with slices of Cheezly. Whew. Ready for more? Oh yes, there's more. Our beloved Frankie came in today bearing her signature tray of Chocolate-Covered Everything, which today included pretzels, marzipan, pecans, raisins, dates, and—get ready—potato chips. Yeah. We're dead. Here's a little preview of all the assorted chocolaty goodness we're munching on, as modeled by our extraordinary editorial assistants, Melissa and Stacy.
The Goods: It's difficult to imagine that there would be anything else to say after such a lengthy menu, but guess what?! There's more! Yeah, that's how we do things around the VNHQ. Melissa, who just transplanted herself to SF from Japan, was kind enough to bring us some yatsuhashi cookies, which were cinnamony, crispy, and a total treat. Here's Melissa with the artfully wrapped box, straight from Kyoto:
Like we said: Best. Wednesday. Ever.