Day 2, the fight to eat vegetables continues. I feel a bit lighter and have a little more energy, but also feel a little gassy (I know, gross). Yet, the challenge goes on, and yesterday I found myself at the hippie strip mall on Preston Avenue. I mean hippie with the best of intentions. There is a yoga studio, The New Body Mind Spirit, where I had the pleasure of speaking with a hippie instructor. Apparently if you are part of the elderly or pregnant population in cville, this is the yoga studio for you. They focus more on the “intention” than the movement like a traditional vinyasa. Next door to the yoga studio is Blue Ridge Eco Shop. This is basically a store that has more green than your stomach/wallet/house can handle. They have everything from clothes to lights to cleaning products, very cool.
And then in the corner a couple feet away is Café 88. What is it with Asian restaurants and double digit numbers anyways? The previous founder/owner of cville’s vegetarian haunt Ming Dynasty, Li Chen, started a new Taiwanese café. The place is teeny tiny like a little baby, and the menu is even smaller. While some might balk at that, there is something refreshing about having limited options…there are so many restaurants out there that give the consumer so much choice, it’s a task in itself to order.
My oatmeal breakfast at Cubano left me hungry for some vegetable loving, and Li Chen was there to give me what I needed. Specifically, she recommended stir-fried tofu with a ginger/basil sauce. Excuse me did you just say ginger and basil? A resounding “hellz yea” went through my mind, and instead I opted for a more polite, “yes m’am, ginger and basil will do just fine”. The really neat thing about this place is that their open kitchen is basically part of the dining area. You can see them make everything. While open kitchens might be the cliché “rage” at the moment, it certainly does make you feel better to know the restaurant isn’t hiding anything.
The kitchen assistant began to quarter my mound of tofu and toss it in a bowl with flour. I thought Li Chen would sit this one out, but as the tofu was prepped, she dominated the wok and made me the rest of the meal. The end result was a bento box with: stir fried tofu, stir fried cabbage, stir fried green beans, and rice with sticky soy sauce and a pickled radish. The portion was just right and the taste was good.
This was the first time in a long time I had ordered a tofu-only dish (why would you do that normally!?!?!?!), and I think I can up with a strategy on how to eat it perfectly. For some reason the tofy did not cool down, but I figured out when you waited say 5 min, there would be this nice thick chewy part in the middle. My lunch became a game of finding that treasure in each bite…and before you knew it, the tofu was gone.
After I had finished my meal and thoroughly read a coffee industry magazine lying on a table nearby, Li Chen made it a point to find out how my meal was. That polite and very welcome gesture turned into a neat conversation about how she has been here for 20 some odd years and has raised her kids here. Did I mention she is a huge cville fan? “What? You haven’t been to Monticello? You must go, its very beautiful this time of year”. I guess mama Li knows best!
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Tagged as: barking spiders, Charlottesville, charlottesville vegetarian festival, Chinese, cville veg fest, diet, dining, eat, farm, farmers market, Food, happy cow, Hippies, Local, Ming Dynasty, no meat, non-dairy, Organic, raw food, recommendation, Restaurant, restriction, slow food, taiwanese, tofu, vegan, Vegetarian, vegetarian guide, veggie heaven, veggieheadonline, vegguide.org
That must have been so yummy. I love tofu and anything with ginger makes me drool. I have actively been making the switch from omnivore to veggie for various reasons, and this sounds like a great place to eat. Thanks for the tip.
/Happy Intelligent Person Pursuing Infinite Enlightenment (H.I.P.P.I.E.)
More important than the good food was the passion/love that Li Chen shows throughout your dining experience. As a vegetarian herself she was really interested to know how I liked it. I would love to see more vegetarian options on their menu however. There was one dish that I would like to go back for called vegetarian chicken. Li Chen uses the top “skin” of the tofu to make it. If you haven’t yet had tofu skin you are missing out! I hope its as good as I think it is…
Seriously. Are we gonna have a theme or not?
/scowly is underrepresented
I think every pic on the cVillain should have Scowly in it. Yes, even all the bondage shots.
What’s that photo of? It’s not what you ate… Confussssinnnnggggg….
no its certainly not..i wish that was what i ate….the picture did attract you into the post didnt it? oooohhhhhhh ahhhhhhhh! I am sure we can prod Li Chen to offer us psychedelic colored tofu no?
b’yo…i should just send you links to the pics we want to use and you can theme them for us, they look awesome! or maybe i will just start inserting them sneakily and see who is the first to notice….find waldo…find scowly?
escisme (at) gmail
I’ll hook it up.
That food looks so unappetizing. Ekkk.
[…] Café 88: During a very detailed Google search I found a place called Ming Dynasty which many cvillains said they preferred. Reading more I find out the owner/chef sold the place to someone else and setup shop in what I called the hippie corner of cville. Café 88 is a Taiwanese “small-snack” cafe in a teeny tiny spot serving freshly made food. I had a tofu dish which was good and satiated my craving for Asian fast food….but this was somewhat healthy. I discovered in stir fried tofu forms a chewy nugget of tofu in the center reminiscent of my elementary school days when you bought ice cream bars (eclairs) for 50 cents and everyone always saved the bottom corners for the last bite since they were the best. Yes, we now have a tofu equivalent of the eclair corners…life in cville is getting exciting! […]
88 is american “aryan” code for heil hitler. So is this vegetaryan food. That would be nice for a change