Foodie on Duty - Wild Ginger

I may be an omnivore, but I am fascinated by vegans and their diets. Curiosity compelled me to give Wild Ginger, a self-proclaimed pan Asian vegan café, a try. When looking down the list of menu items, I had to regard the restaurant with a level of respect. There was soy protein, tempeh and seitan listed as star choice items. Granted, they are normally utilized as meat substitutes, but Wild Ginger had the good grace of not listing the items as “tofurky” or “chicken.” Honesty is something I can respect.

Too many other vegan restaurants list “beef” patties as a menu item, which leaves me with the impression that there’s something shady about what exactly is in that “beef.” Quotation marks around any kind of food product tend to create a trace of suspicion in my mind.

I ordered the sweet citrus soy protein with kale and the black pepper seitan with Chinese broccoli lunch specials to go. Each special came with miso soup, a spring roll and brown rice, and was packaged in a way that made the meal look like an upscale version of Lean Cuisine. I found this quite charming.

When I opened the lid on the sweet citrus soy protein with kale, I was hit with a lovely and familiar scent: orange chicken. The dish, of course, tasted quite different.

The soy protein was slathered in a thick, sweet sauce that I thought was a bit cloying. There was definitely a strong note of cinnamon that kept the flavor interesting, but in general I found it to be too sweet. The perfectly cooked kale underneath it was marinating in a soy-based broth that was more salty than sweet, so when I mixed the two together, the flavors balanced each other out. I would have liked a touch of acid: A shot of vinegar or squeeze of lemon would have sufficed.

The texture of the soy protein wasn’t unpleasant, and was definitely reminiscent of meat. It was thick, tender and with a nice chew – like a cross between the beef and pork pieces one would find in their favorite Chinese takeout. I did, however, find myself missing meat. The thing about meat is that when the food is hot, there is a specific kind of moistness that meat substitutes don’t have. Meats, when hot and cooked properly, are juicy and savory, full of umami, whereas plant proteins are lacking in that department.

The brown rice was studded with white soy beans, which added that nice creamy, beany texture to the nuttiness of the rice. In any case, when it comes to rice, you’ll need a lot of it to counteract the super-sweet-and-salty qualities of this dish. As for the miso soup – it’s excellent. Not too salty and a good balance of flavor with the kelp and tiny tofu cubes. The miniscule spring rolls are of your standard fare, filled with chopped veggies such as cabbage and carrot.

As for the black pepper seitan, it definitely did not disappoint. Seitan, not to be confused with a certain the dark under lord, is wheat gluten. All in all, it was a savory dish that was perfectly cooked and seasoned. Wild Ginger receives high marks, in that they didn’t attempt to substitute authentic meat flavor with salt, which other vegetarian restaurants tend to do..
The seitan is cut in uniform slices, giving it both the appearance and texture of thickly-sliced roast beef from the deli. Of course, one would never mistake it for real meat, but in terms of taste and texture, seitan can be made pretty tasty with the right kind of flavoring.

The tender, chewy slices of seitan are accompanied with silky chunks of oyster mushrooms in a glossy, savory black pepper sauce. This sauce had a light, but noticeable, touch of cinnamon as well. The Chinese broccoli was sliced into crisp, bright green pieces andsteeped in soupy, garlicky soy-based sauce.

I also gave into the demands of my sweet tooth and ordered a chocolate vegan cheese cake. Granted, there were no quotation marks around the word “cheese,” but it would have been nice to know what was substituted for as cheese. Color me paranoid, but I like to have a general idea of what’s in my food before I eat it.

The vegan cheese cake, in a word, was a big FAIL.

It was an amalgamation of any superficial critique I carried against vegan products. It just tasted fake, like every component of it was desperately trying to taste like something it was not. The texture of the cheese cake was dense and smooth at first, but broke up into a slightly chalky paste seconds after I forked a piece into my mouth. There was also a strong tofu flavor which was, while not necessarily bad, admittedly strange. It also disturbed me that it was so dense and solid at room temperature, and the dollop of whipped “cream” was gritty with sugar and tasted of chemicals and plastic. I don’t know why. The chocolate cookie crumb crust was thin and soggy with oil.

I have not, however, deserted my hopes for vegan desserts. Penny Licks can expect my visit to their uber cute vegan-friendly candy and bakeshop in the near future.

Wild Ginger
718-28-8828
212 Bedford Avenue