Flexitarian's Delight
Broadway East might easily be taken for a vegetarian restaurant, with its plates of macrobiotic grains and dairy-free simulated cheeses. But close perusal of the menu turns up a roast chicken dish that's made with real chicken. The black cod is not ersatz either.
The attractive, dully named new spot on the edge of Chinatown is built for flexitarians, that breed of mostly vegetarian eater that doesn't mind a helping of animal protein now and then. Under executive chef Lee Gross, the bulk of the offerings are indeed meat- and often dairy-free, but come close on occasion to the often-promised, rarely delivered grail of vegetarian food that even carnivores can enjoy sinking their sharp teeth into. The fish and chicken dishes aren't a heedless deviation into meat-and-potatoes excess: Those dishes deploy animal meats in moderate, delicate ways. The roast chicken ($24), a sliced breast mildly sauced with horseradish and strewn with fresh vegetables, is so liberally stuffed with deliciously half-bitter kasha that the chicken's role is more as a casing than a focus.
The restaurant's virtuousness runs throughout, but not overweeningly so. A two-story wall of live greenery absorbs sound and seems to exude fresh air as you approach it. Attractive tabletops and beams are crafted from reused redwood that was once a nearby water tower. All wines and beers (though not the fine list of cold sakes) are local, as is the house-filtered table water, which can be drunk flat or, for a $4 fee, house-carbonated.
Starter snacks include pleasant Japanese sesame crisps ($6) and very tasty crisp-fried sheets of yuba (a paper-thin soy product) that are dusted with cayenne ($4). Calling them, as the menu does, "cracklin's," creates the wrong impression. These slick, dry wafers could hardly be less like pork rinds.
A tempura-style fritto misto ($10) includes pleasingly small sprigs of baby cauliflower and shreds of lemon peel robed in a light batter, with crisped capers and lemony aioli. A curious quasi-Asian starter ($11) substitutes beets for meats, in a cool molded tartare of yellow beets and a crunchy sheaf of red ones, accompanied with "mountain caviar," a soaked seed with caviar-like texture that's flavored with seaweed for an authentically fishy taste. Real oysters, five good, unapologetically meaty ones, come gratinéed with local cheese and spicy bread crumbs ($13).
Among the main courses is an excellent club sandwich ($16) stuffed juicily with mackerel and mortared with spiced mayonnaise. It comes almost buried under its side helping of fried lotus-root chips, which are an effective substitute for potato chips, with the added benefit of the lotus's attractive perforated appearance. Black cod, the luxuriously rich Japanese favorite, forms part of an oden here ($6): a light, brothy stew with a faintly sweet soy-miso complexity, filled with dense radish and turnip pieces and, almost as an afterthought, the lovely fish. The clay pot of stew is capped with a baked-on sheet of yuba.
Tempeh, an Indonesian soy cake that's gently fermented to give it a mild but distinctive flavor, is here ($20) thickly breaded with coconut and fried, which obscures the tempeh flavor. Underneath is a great bed of curried lentils and greens, and sweet-potato puree.
None of the desserts really stuck in my mind — not the bread pudding with saffron ice cream ($10), not the vegan peanut-butter cheesecake ($9), not the puffy profiteroles with the flavor of carrot cake. More invigorating and more flavorful are the house-made sodas ($4 each), in such flavors as zingy ginger-kaffir-lime and tartly cooling rhubarb-hibiscus.
Flexibility, and attention to detail, pay off. All sorts of 'tarians should be happy at Broadway East, and if they bring their meat-eating friends, the latter should be quite content as well.
