We have a newly opened Chinese restaurant in our neighborhood. Our meat eating friends have had good things to say about it, so we gave it a try the other night. It was Rick's choice for his birthday dinner.
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| Veggie Chow Mein |
Duck House Chinese Restaurant doesn't appear to have a website, but I did find this page on
Eater. We wandered in on a Monday night, and were greeted warmly and seated right away. I'm not sure if there's a cultural thing we don't know about, but we eventually had to flag someone down to take our order. No problem. Just something to know.
There was not a lot of English spoken, which was a good sign we'd get real Chinese food, rather than an Americanized version. And because of that, it seemed like one of those situations where it would be best to ask for "vegetarian" rather than "vegan," to avoid having to explain too much, or being misunderstood.
The word "vegetarian" worked perfectly, and our server pointed out several things on the menu that were already veggie, or could have tofu or vegetables subbed for the meat. Perfect. We ordered mixed vegetables in garlic sauce, kung pao tofu, and veggie chow mein. We also ordered rice, which we didn't need, but we like it. It was all
way too much food, but when that happens, we just take it home and think of it as "grocery shopping."
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| Mixed Vegetable in Garlic Sauce |
Everything was delicious, and I'm fairly confident it was all vegan. As I talked about in my
last post, making a big ol' stinky deal over ever tiny ingredient can actually be counterproductive to the number one vegan objective of helping our animal friends. So stop it already. Be a little bit imperfect. Do your best. It's good enough.
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| Kung Pao Tofu |
And wouldn't you know it, when it came time for the fortune cookies, the kind with a fortune on one side and a Chinese lesson on the other, I got the one that taught me how to say "vegetable!" I asked our server to tell me how to say it properly, and it turns out I would have mangled it terribly if I'd just read it phonetically.
Good Chinese food just steps from our door is going to be a great thing. Welcome to the neighborhood, Duck House. I won't be ordering the duck, but I do plan to do a lot of "vegetarian" grocery shopping there!
