3G Vegetarian Restaurant

3G Vegetarian Restaurant @ 3423 Cambie St.

The other day we were in the south Main Street area so we decided to go to Long's Noodle House for lunch, but we were unable to find parking, so we  had to abandon our plans and look for another place further on. Very frustrating. That's one annoying thing about this area. The parking. We swung around the back to check if they have a parking lot, and they do, but it made us laugh when we saw it. About 10 cars were jam-packed into a tiny space of around 30 square feet, and a delivery van was parked behind them all. You couldn't even walk inbetween the cars, much less park there.

So we said forget it and drove around until we ran across this vegetarian restaurant called 3G Vegetarian Restaurant and decided to give it a shot. I was a vegetarian for well over a decade, but ever since having quit I haven't visited vegetarian restaurants very often because after reverting I find them lacking in taste. When I was a vegetarian it didn't bother me, but now I find the food pretty bland. It's tough to make good vegetarian food. In Houston there were a lot of good vegetarian restaurants, so it's a good place to be a vegetarian. Here there are some, but it's more hit-or-miss.

We were intrigued by this one because they offer vegetarian dim sum. Upon being seated, we were presented with a dim sum card very much in the manner of a typical dim sum joint. Except everything here is vegetarian. It's also vegan-friendly. Dim sum is very heavy on meaty flavors, so if they have the guts to serve vegetarian dim sum, they must be pretty sure that they've created vegetarian versions that are as good as the original versions, I hoped. Turns out I was overly optimistic.

You can see which items we ordered below. The "goose" was a little expensive, but we decided to give it a shot to see if the restaurant was good with bean curd.

They also have a traditional menu with lots of items:

They were actually out of the steamed veggie shrimp dumpling. The first dish to come out was:

Deep fried veggie fish w/spicy & salt ($3.50)

This was quite good. The fish texture was fairly convincing, and the spices and sauce they used made it quite delectable. The only problem is that it was a miniscule serving. I suppose it makes sense since it's dim sum and pretty cheap, but we felt they could have put a little more on the plate. The sad thing is, the rest of the meal was downhill from here. This was the best thing we ate.

Veggie goose ($7.50) 

We were very disappointed to discover that the veggie goose was not made of bean curd at all (except for the wrapper) but of shiitake mushrooms. Shiitake mushrooms wrapped in thin bean curd skin. Very misleading to call this veggie goose. Veggie goose suggests a "fake meat" made of processed and flavored bean curd, just like they have veggie pork, veggie beef, etc. We actually felt cheated. This dish was a joke.

Mixed veggie meat puff ($3.50) 

The veggie goose wasn't typical dim sum, but it even fell short without being compared to something else. Here we have something that looks obviously like a classic dim sum. Appearance is just like the real thing. The consistency of the skin is identical. What's inside was almost tasteless, though. It's just veggies without any kind of tofu or bean curd. Very disappointing.

Steamed veggie BBQ pork bun ($3.50)

I always order steamed BBQ pork buns when I have dim sum, so I was eager to try the veggie version to see how it compares. Again, just like the previous item, the bun itself is just like the real thing, but the interior is lacking in taste. It has a tomato taste but without any body. Not at all like the real thing, and very weak flavor. Obviously a lot of the flavors of dim sum come from the meat sauces and from the use of MSG. Here they have neither at their disposal. They did the best they could to imitate something essentially impossible to imitate without the proper ingredients.

After eating all this we weren't full, but we didn't feel like ordering any more. We were too disappointed by what we'd had already. But we decided to get some dessert, because the server lady recommended a certain item that a group at another table was eating. So we went for it, because it actually sounded good. This is what we ordered:

Deep fried soy milk ($3.50?)

It has a sticky sweet exterior of crunchy deep-fried tempura-like batter covering an interior of a cold, white congealed soy milk substance. It was quite good. Except again the flavor was very weak. It should have been stronger and sweeter.

I felt that we'd made a mistake ordering the dim sum, and perhaps the items on their main menu were better. They have a large selection of items, including fake meat dishes, noodle dishes, and intriguing-sounding fusion-style risottos and rice dishes. If I was passing by, I might give one of these a shot sometime, but after my experience here it's not high on my priority list. It's a shame, because I really wanted to like this place.

I know from first-hand experience how hard it is to cook good vegetarian dishes, especially ethnic dishes where you already know what it's supposed to taste like and you have an uphill battle trying to reach a taste that is approximately similar. But vegetarians are a resourceful lot, and put considerable ingenuity into discovering new combinations of ingredients to try to eke out the best flavors they can from their more limited selection of available ingredients. Thus it makes them more creative in a certain sense. Instead of just falling back on a meat flavor, they concoct new flavors. A lot of the best cooking I've had has been vegetarian. There are many veggie restaurants I ate at that had lots of dishes with fantastic taste that even a non-vegetarian would - Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, you name it. So I don't think it's acceptable to be second-rate. Vegetarian food does NOT have to be bland.

One of my favorite vegetarian restaurants in the Vancouver metro area is this fantastic buffet-style vegetarian joint in Richmond called Veggie Bunch Vegetarian Buffet in the Richmond Public Market on Westminster Highway. I'll have to go there soon to write about them. Of course, now that I'm not a vegetarian I usually wind up going to eat upstairs at one of the many great little food stalls in the food court on the second floor, but I still find Veggie Bunch to be among the best veggie cooking I've had in Vancouver.

Saravanaa Bhavan's lunch box

Last time I went there I noticed this lunch box they advertised in their window, and I was curious to try it out. So I went back the other day for lunch and gave it a shot.

Inside there's a sign explaining what it is in more detail:

That cleared up a bit of the mystery. I was hoping it would be just the take-out version of the buffet, but it's not. I was a bit disappointed that they only gave you a choice of one main, and a pretty small choice at that. Why not just let you pick two or three small portions of stuff from the buffet? Anyway I ordered it and it came out from the back about five minutes later in a plastic bag and ready to go.

This is what it looked like inside:

A modest portion that would be good for a quick take-out if you have to rush back to work or something.

It looks small but it's pretty filling. Mostly because there is SO MUCH rice. way more than necessary, especially considering the large piece of nan bread they include. There is way more than necessary for the small portion of main. I got the paneer butter masala. It was good, like everything else at the buffet.

For $5.60 (tax included) it's a decent enough deal. I won't be getting it often, though, because the whole point of going there is to be able to enjoy a number of different items at the same time, and this lunch box kind of defeats the purpose. Still, a nice idea. It just needs a little work.

TOP PICK: Saravanaa Bhavan

Saravanaa Bhavan @ 955 W. Broadway
http://www.saravanaabhavan.ca/

Starting with this post, I'm going to try to occasionally highlight my favorite restaurants in Vancouver. I'll call this series the 'top picks' series. These are the restaurants I go to on a regular basis because they're good, they're appropriately priced, and they are consistent at what they do.

I'm starting out with the well-known Vegetarian Indian buffet Saravanaa Bhavan on Broadway between Oak and Laurel. I tend to be skeptical of popular restaurants, because in my experience, more often than not, fame eventually gets to a restaurant's head, and they go downhill. Or popularity becomes an echo chamber in which crowds attract crowds, giving the impression of the restaurant being far better than it truly is.

Saravanaa Bhavan justly deserves all the praise that's been sung about it. I've been there probably almost 10 times over the years, and in a first in my entire life, rather than the food going downhill, it feels like the food only gets better every time.

Their buffet is always fresh and constantly renewed. The crowds help to ensure freshness. Every time I go there are some items I've never seen before. They have a huge variety of items on the buffet.

The interior is spacious without being well decorated. It's really a functional interior, with enough space to pack in large families of Indians. It was packed when we arrived on Sunday for lunch, and it stayed that way for most of our time there. Again, the place is frequented by Indians, testament to its authenticity. Having grown up a vegetarian in Houston, where there is a large population of Indians and many great vegetarian Indian restaurants, I ate vegetarian Indian food practically every week for a large part of my lifetime, so I know what good veggie Indian food is supposed to taste like. And apart from Saravanaa Bhavan, I haven't really tasted good veggie Indian food in Vancouver, though I've searched.

The food at Saravanaa Bhavan is very different from all the veggie Indian food I've had before. Perhaps this is because they are South Indian, or perhaps their cooks are particularly inventive. I don't know, but no matter how many times I go, they never let me down, with consistent quality and new surprises.

One of the best things about Saravanaa Bhavan is the variety of fresh breads. In addition to bringing you a fresh Naan, they also have these delicious lentil-based donut-like bread called Vada, amazing steamed rice cakes called Idli, some kind of deep-fried chapati-like bread, and even a whole fresh dosa. And of course, pappadum with great coconut chutney and tomato chutney. Everything is steaming fresh. This is what my plate looked like:

A crazy heaping mess of all sorts of amazing little items! That's why I love this place. I can revel in the delight of sampling all sorts of flavors, rather than slogging through a boring heaping mass of one dish with exactly the same flavor for the same price. I had about 12 separate items during this meal, every one of them perfectly delicious and totally unlike the others.

Even the desserts are amazing and unlike anything I've seen anywhere before. No gulab jamun in sight here. During our last visit they offered a curious spongecake-like confection infused with saffron juice and a wonderful substance that looked like tapioca at first sight but tasted nothing like the typical tapioca pudding dessert you find in Indian restaurants. They clearly are inventing their own new desserts.

Another great little touch is that each table has its own pitcher of water by default, so no having to stretch out that last quarter glass of water or struggle to get a waiter's attention to get some water. And anyway, the waiters here are everywhere and very attentive. Kweepo and I were asked no less than three times if we needed anything else.

The price for the buffet is $10.99 on weekdays and $11.99 on weekends. I don't know why the price increases on the weekend. The bill for Kweepo and I came out to $30 even including tips, which is admittedly a bit pricey for Indian food (I remember the buffets in Houston were $5). But it's hard to find good Indian food OR cheap Indian food in Vancouver, and Saravanaa Bhavan at least is reliably good and fresh, so I don't feel ripped off when I eat there.

I just noticed in the photo that they advertise a "$5 takeout lunch box". Now that's the price I want to pay for lunch. I will have to check this out.

I didn't know this until I checked their website, but apparently this is a chain. They have four locations total. The other three are all in Ontario.