Fragrance Land

Update Aug 2009: Fragrance Land was shut down earlier this year.

V and I tried out a new vegetarian restaurant in Cupertino last weekend called "Fragrance Land". They label themselves as a Chinese restaurant serving Vegetarian cuisine. There is a sign in the reception area which requests customers to indicate if they have any religious preferences. Our waitress also enquired the same of us, before taking our order. Pretty thoughtful!

We were served hot jasmine tea at the table - a nice touch which immediately led V and I to renew our resolution to buy a teapot to enjoy our daily cup of soothing after-dinner herbal tea curled up in our lazy chairs reading the day's newspaper. Hmmm... welcome to the land of plentiful time where our dishes will clean themselves and late-night-work-calls will be banished. Well, one can always dream!

We started off with potstickers served with a delicious soy-sauce-based dip. Totally satisfactory, but V said he meant to get the dumplings which would have been the healthier choice. Next time! For the main dish, V had to order the "Kungpao Veggie Chicken" (with extra peanuts ofcourse!). Mine was "Sauteed String Beans with Preserved Pickles". The Kungpao, V declared, was the best he had had in a long time. The texture of the veggie chicken was so close the the real, he said. Not sure how he would know considering he had never had chicken! The String Beans were a beautiful bright green, just the right amount of crunchy and soft! I would love to learn how to make this. The String Beans does not have any gravy, but the Kungpao had enough gravy for the brown rice. All in all, a delicious dinner which cost us $28 with tip.

Our waitress, it turned out, was one of 5 partners who owned this restaurant which just opened 2 months back. She was very warm and friendly and seemed eager to make a success of the business. We are bleeding hearts for vegetarian restaurants and hope the same for her!

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We are also bleeding hearts for sea turtles. Today I heard a program on NPR which was heart-breaking. Sea turtles mistake plastic bags for jelly fish and try to eat them. They slowly choke to death when this happens. It takes so little to take in your own cloth bags! I always keep 3-4 bags in my car in case I need to stop at the grocery store anytime. I also refuse plastic bags for small things I can put inside my handbag/backpack. I really hope more people will do this.

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A Vegetarian in Paris

A quest for vegetarian food in Paris would prompt most people to give up and say "let's just eat pizza". But V & I are determined to ferret out the hidden veggie spots everywhere! V's meticulous planning of our wonderful Paris trip included eating at "La Potager du Marais" located on Ru Rambuteau close to the Pompidou Centre.

We made reservations for Saturday night dinner at La Potager du Marais (our waitress explained to us that it meant Garden of Vegetables), and in our eagerness we got there about an hour early! We found the place buzzing with people, and so we had to go out for a long walk to build up our appetite. The restaurant is a long narrow corridor with a single line of tables placed edge to edge. When we got back, our waitress had to pull out a table to let one of us get to the other side.

Since I procrastinated on writing this blog (shame on me!), I do not have exact descriptions of the items we ordered. All I remember is that the food was very good -- in fact we went back the following day. (We would have gone back a third time, but they were closed on Mondays!)

V got a "crepe" dish filled with lot of yummy veggies (leek and potatoes and other), and I got some delicious falafel which came with a side of home-made tomato sauce.

The bill came to US $35 with tips - which is not so bad considering this was Paris!!

Another trick we adopted to survive in Paris as a vegetarian was to get freshly baked baguettes every day and some hummus to go with it. We put this in our backpack so that we could have lunch on the road!