Dependable Zo.Ca.Lo…what do you have to offer to those meat weary folks? Apparently just one dish, an amazing dish I have never had before in my life. The lone vegetarian warrior on the entrees menu is the “Black Bean and Corn Relleno”. I really didn’t know what to expect, I just read the description: smoked tomato grits, smoked pico, cilantro buttermilk honey”, figured it was cool to eat and ordered. I should warn you, this isn’t some “I am on a diet so I am trying out vegetarian food” type of dish. This thing definitely has healthy quantities of butter and cream…perhaps French cuisine had an affair with a Mexican damsel from the south and many years later Mr. Frenchie comes back to town to find out he has a lost daughter…this is his little chalupita.
What arrived was a work of art much like all the other plating designs at Zo.Ca.Lo. The dish can best be described as a:
A poblano pepper breaded with crushed red tortilla chips and fried to a crispy shell filled with a corn and bean filling served on top of a bed of smoked tomato grits on a plate accented by the cilantro buttermilk honey. I know all of you want pics but I don’t travel with an SLR camera (although perhaps I should…).
The textures (crunchy, crispy and soft) went very well with the tastes (smoky, corny and tropical). In my veggie tales so far this is the most artistically inclined vegetarian dish in cville. It looked to kill and tasted great. At $18 this is probably the most expensive vegetarian fare in town, but for those turnip loving fanatics, this could be the fancy dinner you are looking for. I could complain that they should have more veggie fare, but honestly this dish puts your desire for something else to rest. To top it off the bread they bring you in the beginning (one roll, mind you we are in war time) was amazing. I was told its not ABC and they COULD be baking it themselves, but it really doesn’t matter, good is good.
French/Mex pic from Flikr
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Tagged as: Charlottesville, charlottesville vegetarian festival, cuisine, cville veg fest, diet, dining, eat, farm, farmers market, Food, french, happy cow, haute cuisine, latin, Local, Mexican, no meat, non-dairy, Organic, raw food, recommendation, Restaurant, restriction, slow food, spanish, turtle shells, vegan, Vegetarian, vegetarian guide, veggie heaven, veggie tales, veggieheadonline, vegguide.org
Any place that offers toast for $2.50 is far out of my scope.
/using listerine
Zo is definitely in my top three. I don’t mean to gush, but they are perfection every time.
I love the bar - I love the bartenders - I love the food - I love the service and the atmosphere.
I don’t go.
/but I am sure it is very nice.
“What arrived was a work of art much like all the other plating designs at Zo.Ca.Lo.”
Seriously? I think most of zo ca lo’s food looks like it was plated at Chili’s, especially the tuna tartar.
What does Mexican food in French have to do with Zocalo? It’s like you’re not even trying…
Oh, and the fact that they have ONE veggie dish does not make them the King of anything. Gimme a break.
Whoa, ‘nanigans is a bit snappy this morning.
there are rainbow pics, if that helps??
i HATE the spam filter. it always screws me up when timing is critical.
hrmph.
Sorry, I’m just annoyed because V. keeps picking restaurants that aren’t the most veggie-friendly and promoting their most unhealthy dairy-laden dishes. I don’t think these places deserve that kind of attention. And the accompanying pictures have all been misleading or just plain confusing. V, you gotta step it up and take it to the next level.
Youcandoit!
I fixed the graphic, but the post won’t load because to the damn spam filter which hates me.
Are you trying for rainbows, B’Yo? This may be my new favorite. And it’s even sort of on topic!
http://s3-external-1.amazonaws.com/wootsaleimages/Fat_UnicorntakDetail.png
/fat unicorns are funny
Z’lo is not the most veggie friendly on paper, but the kitchen will make plates out of sides or even different things out of what there is to work with(within reason). yes, even for vegans…
and since Liquid- (on the Corner was somehow better than downtown, don’t know why) I haven’t had any awesome very fresh yummy vegetarian place in town to make my mouth water and keep me coming back out of desire…
Well, Nicola’s Veggies just opened…Have you tried that?
not only do they have 1 veggie dish, but it’s been the same dish for at least three years.
spam filter….veggie post….. I know there’s a joke in there somewhere, but my thoughts are somewhat muddled right now.
@ 12 No rainbows or unicorns, just scowly, standing outside Z’lo, holding the wrinkled up menu that was the original graphic. The usual. But of course you have to wait until one of the dot com millionaire admins wakes up and rescues it from the spam filter net
But speaking of unicorns, there is finally a sequel (if you haven’t watched number one yet, please do)…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFCSXr6qnv4
Try this:
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/6349/zocalooe3.jpg
@14: shen, where’s Nicola’s?
and have you tasted treats there?
@18 http://www.readthehook.com/dish/index.php/nicolas-veggies-opened-today/
Thanks for the link O. And sadly, I have not as I take my lunch break 15 miles from the Mall.
thanks orchid…& shenanigans.
will check it out sometime. happily, ’tis the season soon enough i can make me a salad out of my backyard. (and fresh blackberries for breakfast-thanks birds;))
Rats. This is one teeny menu. http://readthehook.com/images/issues/2008/0717/dish-nicolasmenu.jpg
Small space in which to work, so I get that. But wow. And no hot items. And “good for you” would appear to be out of my lunch budget. Only a couple of 3 item salads (with pumpkin seed oil counting as one of the items) with bread come in at $5 or under). I still applaud the concept behind the restaurant, though! Would love to hear from anyone who has tried the place.
No hot stuff because the concept is “Raw”. There’s a culture of raw food which belives you get more nutrients of food that hasn’t been cooked over a certain temperature. And the stuff is pricy because of the specialty ingredients.
D’oh! Thanks, Shen! I didn’t get that it was part of the raw movement thingie. Subtract my idjit comments about nothing being hot. But I still think, even with the price being right for the ingredients, it’s out of my lunch budget for the most part. Guess I just won’t be that healthy.
raw food not always healthy:
http://www.courttv.com/trials/andressohn/110705_ctv.html
Good lord, they’re serving Kambucha? My old roommate used to have one of those creepy space alien fungus things under her bed. Gave me the jibblies.
@26: I was gonna say, Duhhhh…FYI You can get that stuff at IY for cheaper.
@27: Well I had a link for you but it’s not posting. That was a particular case where the parents had good intentions but weren’t properly supplementing. Raw food is proven to be the healthiest food you can eat. It’s science and shit.
this was a very sad case while it was going on. it seems like the parents should have forsaken their “good intentions” when their children started starving to death. like parents whose “religious beliefs” prevent them from taking their kids to the hospital so they die at home because “it’s god’s will.”
@31: You are right.
You are a towel.
so the point of this wasn’t to find super healthy vegan lets all hold hands and sing koombaya food, it was to find places that are vegetarian friendly in offering veggie only food on their menu. I think zo holds up to this. As for the pic and its relevance, I looked for at least an hour for a picture that somehow blended together a French/Mexican to carry on the joke that I introduced zo with at the beginning of the post, some of you seemed to have missed the cleverness of it all…its a menu from a Mexican restaurant in Paris.
Anywho, I wouldn’t compare plating at zo to Alinea or WD-50, but for what it is (upscale affordable food), plating was nice and the food was good. I did mention that it was not for the diet-friendly as it is a rich dish…but it did hold true to be a vegetarian dish just like what I had at Eppie’s, Himalayan Fusion, etc….
zocalo also has a fabulous STEAK.
orchid, you omnivore freak
vegetarians do taste good though.
ew, not the one i dated my junior year of college–he never showered. dirty hippies.
vegetarians do taste good though.
An absolute and undeniable fact of nature. Just gotta stay away from asparagus, and you’ll be fine. Go heavy on the pineapple at least several hours beforehand and you will be like ambrosia. Don’t get all defensive, omnivores… its simple biology and chemistry. You get to eat bacon and steak, we get to taste like fruit salad.
Hygiene is a whole separate topic, no matter what you eat.
you seemed to have missed the cleverness of it all
Don’t take this personally, but it seems to me if you have to point it out…
ambrosia..this is so reminding me of….no, nevermind
….then its clever? or can we blame on a case of the mondays a la parlie?
@39 better bacon & steak than boca burger!
Um, I think you’re missing the point. Although, I agree, Boca burgers are an abomination.
Morningstar, FTW!
@43 um, actually i misread 39… nevertheless, i stand by my earlier statement.
i tried Nicolas’ Veggies, the white cabbage salad is really tangy and delish better than the red, the red really had no flavor. I also had the spinach salad topped with kraut and I asked them to add kimchee. The kimchee tasted like the stuff you get in the jar from the chinese shop beside kathy’s produce, I expected it to be homemade. The bread, meh. I really like the idea of raw food and I think they are on to something, especially when they add fresh juices.
You should do some raw stuff at the coffee shop. Yum!
i was a vegetarian for 12 years- much more appealing and eay in california ( the fruit and veggies looked really sad here-being that they were mostly ripened while being shipped(here) as opposed to ca where they are ripened in the field and in the store in about a day…).
but orchid- yes, the steak at z’lo.
/i don’t cook meet.
//shower
///still prefer awesome fresh veggies.-but tend to habitat…illy eat.
someday i will take a day off and write a foodie/farmer/politicalish/blah. i am passionate about it all. especially growing food.(it just tastes sooo good).
@46 now that we have horse and buggy produce we will!
Caroline, which coffee shop is yours?
Starlight Cafe, 5th and Clay St. downtown Lynchburg baby
Echo… she owns The Porno Cafe. It is staffed by naked transvestite midgets and your coffee arrives strapped to the back of a sexually excited donkey.
/Are you new to town?
Is donkey punching like cow tipping?
floozy, that’s my other coffeeshop located behind the hidden door in the cathouse
@30 Raw food is not always more healthful than cooked food. Two examples that immediately spring to mind are spinach and tomatoes.
and pork
@54 spinach seems to be a toss-up, depending on which vitamins you’re going for: it has more iron cooked, more vitamin C raw.
and chicken.
@54: I wouldn’t go there. My BFF owns a raw food retreat in Panama. Let me put this in simple terms for you: Raw means not cooked at temperatures over 116 Fahrenheit. Spinach, lightly steamed is a little easier to digest for humans to digest. Lightly steamed =100 degrees. Cooking any produce over 116 does destroy nutrients. Nothing is healthier if all the nutrients are destroyed.
And studies show that yeah, lightly cooking tomatoes brings out the lycopene. But also kills the vitamin C. (Lycopene not just in tomatoes btw, is also in watermelon and pink grapefruit) So it’s a toss up between raw and lightly cooking (still under the definition of “Raw”) depending what you’re trying to get out of it. See 56 above for spinach. Most Americans overcook foods and therefore are not eating healthier than eating raw.
Let’s just take a moment and a appreciate the fact that we are even in a position to fuss over these minute nutritional nuances and semantic pedantry. Ready?
…
Thank you. You may now continue diet wars 2008.
[…] Zo.Ca.Lo: So I labelled this the King of Veggie food in cville, and many of you missed the point. This was the fanciest veggie dish I tried and everything from plating to taste to texture was really fun. Just for Shenanigans, you have no idea how long it took me a picture to tie to my little French/Mexican anecdote in the first paragraph…that was frikkin tough. […]
[…] Zocalo’s Black Bean and Corn Relleno. I can help but to wolf this food down. I’m a pig when a plate of this stuff is in front of me. […]