Bodhi Vegetarian

Speaking from an omnivore's point of view here - I have NEVER eaten so much vegetarian food in one sitting, and frankly surprised by the variety of vegetarian dishes available, from uniquely vegetarian to the variations on meat dishes by using veggie alternatives in a Chinese restaurant no less. While Chinese people cook with beef pork chicken and even more types of meat I haven't listed, we do apparently have our range of vegetarian dishes. Chalk it up to Buddhism in China.  We've heard of veggie burgers and such, gone to restaurants like Foundation, but tonight we found ourselves at Bodhi Vegetarian Restaurant on Fraser St in Vancouver.  There's more to vegetarian food than salads and meat dishes sans meat.

Please excuse some of my terminology as it's hard to translate ingredients I know in Chinese to English, and there were a few dishes we just stared at in curiosity wondering what the heck things actually were.

Sadly I had not been anticipating this meal and thus didn't have my camera, but let's just recount the experience shall we, it would be nice to go back and try a few more dishes with my non meat eating friends =)  With a large group, the easiest thing really was to order the dinner for 8 (x2). Yikes, sounds like a lot - unfortunately there were only 7 of us at our table, oops.  We start off with a soup very much like the fake shark fin soup, except the shark fin is a vermicelli substitute, not bad, but could've been tastier, make sure you add a bit of red vinegar to excite it up.

Our first main - sweet and sour.....beancurds! Haha, gotcha! A variation on the old favorite sweet and sour pork. We miss the pork, but the bean curds were interesting with the sauce that had the addition of sweet ginger (like the kind you get with your sushi). Next, a fried combination plate consisting of fried taro, fried tofu and fried something else. The tofu was a bit strange, texture-wise not smooth but almost spongy. The fried something else, I can't tell you what it is but it was GOOD! A little sweet with an almost oozing interior.  


Then came a cold plate of vegetarian bean curds in various flavours - my sisters and I always just ordered them by colour, if you've been to T&T on weekends, you'll know what I'm talking about (incidentally I think this is the same supplier). There's red pieces and sweet black pieces, curry pieces etc. Keep the food coming with baby bok choi and another unidentifiable item that looked like a cross between mushrooms and eggplants but with that spongy texture. Still can't figure out what it is, but I honestly didn't care much for it.  Another mushroom veggie dish, vegetarian portuguese curry, and lastly another mishmash of tofu puffs and eggplants (real eggplants this time).

As with all Chinese set menus, who can forget dessert? The usual red bean soup, though this version had tapioca in it as well, and chrysanthemum jello type dish with small red dates?  Hmm...not a fan of the latter, prefer lychee instead of the chrysanthemum =)

All in all - to go or not to go?  It's an interesting experience for sure, pretty good deal for dinner per person, and it's also 20% off right now dine in because of it's 20th anniversary. So if you're up for something different, give it a try.  Pretty decent and the place was packed for dinner time. They're also open during lunch.

Next time I return, will be sure to take some photos.