NY Eats: Bodhi Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant
During my quick NY Easter trip, we had a long overdue family reunion with East Coast relatives. It had been about 6 years since the last time that I saw some of them!
The typical place for our family get-togethers has been at a Chinese vegetarian restaurant called Buddha Bodai, but apparently there was some kind of a dispute at the restaurant and there is now a spin-off with some former employees called Bodhi. My relatives seemed to have a preference for this new restaurant at 77 Mulberry Street.
We started with some simple stir-fried vegetables, like spinach...
...and bok choy.
And then came the Vegetarian Straw Bass in Black Bean Sauce. I always find this dish amusing, because they really do shape the tofu shreds (I think they're tofu shreds, that is!) in the form of a whole fish.
Then came a Triple Mushroom with Basil dish.
Now, I think the following dish is Braised Soybean Skin with Vegetables. I didn't do the ordering, but this is the description on the menu that most closely matches the dish. It had a bit of a sweet taste.
The following was a fascinating dish to me: Crispy Stuffed Tofu with Mixed Vegetables. Instead of the usual stuffing of pork and/or shrimp, this tofu was stuffed with meat-like gluten, perhaps. They were fried to have a nice, crunchy exterior.
The Diced Bean Curd Szechuan Style (Mapo Tofu) was also a surprise; it was truly spicy! They even used sichuan peppercorns for the numbing sensation. This went really well with some rice.
The Shredded Vegetable Chicken Lo Mein was perhaps the most robustly flavored dish of the bunch, and we all really enjoyed the texture of the noodles and the savory taste of the veggie chicken.
At the end of the meal, they brought out a plate of sliced oranges, and bowls of red bean soup, on the house. What a nice way to end the meal! Now, my aunt said that a third of all oranges consumed in New York are consumed in Chinese restaurants. And I can kind of believe that. While Americans in general don't seem to eat a lot of whole fruit, it wouldn't surprise me that Chinese restaurants, where it's typical to serve sliced oranges for dessert after each meal, would make up such a big proportion of orange consumption in the city.
We really had a feast at Bodhi. Their menu is also separated out for those avoiding gluten, and note that they also claim to be Kosher, so they have a lot of bases covered!
