Restaurant Review: Thanksgiving 2012 (Native Foods Cafe and Shojin)

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  Unfortunately I couldn't cook this year because I was so busy with school but I went to some fabulous vegan Thanksgiving gatherings at two restaurants:  Native Foods Cafe and Shojin!  I was very fortunate to have my Dad visit me from Guam during this time :)  Here's my review:

Native Foods Cafe (Westwood Location)

Native Foods Cafe is the perfect place for a Thanksgiving luncheon.   You get to try their famous Native Wellington, and how often do you get to have an all vegan Thanksgiving buffet?  ;)

Native foods holds a "Thanksgiving Dinner Buffet" every year with their famous Native Wellington as their main attraction.  Seating reservations are in two hour sections starting at 11:30am.  My Dad and I took the 11:30 seating which was perfect because it was not overly crowded.  You pay $24.95/person and can head back to the buffet as many times as you like within your 2 hour seating period.  The menu looked very appetizing and my favorite part was that it had Thanksgiving classics like cornbread, green bean casserole and stuffing.  They had two buffet stations, one downstairs the other upstairs so you didn't have to go up or down the stairs at the Westwood location.

Native Wellington

At the beginning of the buffet was the Native Wellington carving station.  The Native Wellington is a puff pastry filled with savory Native Seitan, stuffing, orange-glazed sweet potatoes, kale, and herbed mushrooms, served with mushroom shallot gravy.  This was may favorite part of the meal.  Reminded me of a pot pie!  Definitely a must try!  They even sell the Wellington itself during the holiday season.   I believe there's a way for you to order it online as well.  Makes a great addition to your Thanksgiving table.  Native Foods is going to serve this for X-mas as well ;)

Cornbread

Next up were standard buffet stations like mash potatoes, stuffing, and the green casserole.  Another great reason to come early, everyone is so neat and you get first scoop.  At the end of the station are two salad bowls to make sure you get some more greens in your meal.  To top it all off you can grab some delicious Native Foods cornbread which is the same cornbread you get from their Soul Bowl entree.  It's one of the best vegan cornbreads you'll ever have.  Just the right texture with a little kick in it.  What made it even more delicious was that they just toasted it so it was nice and golden brown near the bottom and very warm.         

Dessert table 

Finally, to top off our great Thanksgiving luncheon was a fantastic dessert buffet with vegan brownies, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin cheesecake.  Right when you walk into the door you see the dessert station so you're just tempted to start with dessert.  Hey, who's stopping you?   It's Thanksgiving!  ;)

Fun and happy atmosphere

 Overall, Native Foods Cafe was amazing.  My Dad (who's only vegan when he visits me lol) thoroughly enjoyed the food and specifically loved the green bean casserole.  I thought the highlight was the Wellington because it was so different and really brought the feeling of Thanksgiving to the whole meal.  As for dessert I thought the winner was the brownie, my Dad thought it was the pumpkin pie.  The staff was so friendly (look at the worker smiling in the picture!) and the atmosphere felt like you were having a meal amongst family.  Truly the air was filled with vegan love :D



 Shojin Restaurant

Main Entree:  Tempura Maitake, potato steak, mashed potato with Quinoa soy butter sauce.

Shojin Thanksgiving Menu

Next stop for dinner...Shojin!  This place is famous for having special holiday set courses.  I went here for Valentines Day once with my sister, so I definitely had high expectations from the start.  One thing that I was not so excited about was how much nightshades were going to be used in the meals (macrobiotics does not value nightshades).  As you see from the menu there's a lot of potatoes and some eggplant so I was definitely curious with how I was going to feel at the end of the night.  But hey I avoid nightshades all the time so what better occasion to indulge in some nightshades other than  Thanksgiving so lets have some fun ;)  

Detox Elixir

I started off with a Cranberry Detox/Green Tea Detox drink which was so refreshing.  It has ginger and cayenne with cranberry and green tea to help clear your sinuses, and detox your kidney and liver.  My Dad ordered one too but he found it to be too strong.  I compared it to a Kombucha drink and found it delicious but it may definitely be too strong for those who are not use to detox elixirs.

Beautiful!

Our first course was a pumpkin souop with a "Kuri" chestnut wrapped in "reckon" lotus roots.  Your first served with a big bowl with nothing but a ball in the middle (the kuri) and a lotus root on top.  You're left wondering, where is the soup?  But then out comes the waitress with a bowl of steaming golden pumpkin broth to serve fresh.  It's quite the presentation :)  The soup was creamy and delicious.  The chestnut ball complimented the flavors nicely and added great texture.

Crispy Rice Role Appetizer

Once again the appetizer was a beautiful presentation that reminded of an artist's paint palette.  However the best part of the dish was the brussels sprouts.  The crispy rice roll with konnyaku and agetofu was interesting but I didn't care for the crispy rice on the outside.  I found it to be somewhat odd and the textures seemed to clash with the smoosh of the rice paper inside of it.  If anything, this was the worst part of the set meals.

Tempura mushroom and potatoe

We finally got to the main entree which had tempura mushrooms, potato steak, and mashed potatoes.  The assembly was very formal and the waitress came out to pour the warm quinoa soy butter sauce.  The meal was filling and tasty but it had way too much potatoes for my taste.  Also I tended to avoid the sauce because I found it to be too oily.  Probably the best part was the tempura mushroom and the tempura shiso leaf on the side.  After eating the potatoes I could already feel my body react.  Felt a little heavy and somewhat tired :P

Fried Apple and sweet potato pie

Out came our dessert which was a fried apple and sweet potato pie with cranberry sauce and vanilla ice cream (which I believe is kindkreme).  Once again the waitress came out to pour the warm cranberry sauce, making the night extra special.  The dessert was satisfying.  Although I was a little afraid of the dessert being fried since I already felt that the nightshades was grounding me way too much, the dessert was surprisingly light.

Shojin is a great place to have a nice fancy meal.  It's hard to find a full vegan set menu so it's a great way to share a special night.  But unfortunately I left feeling really tired, probably from all the nightshades.  Another thing that was a slight disappointment was the absence of the Thanksgiving feel.  I loved the Japanese influence but felt that more classic Thanksgiving recipes could have been incorporated more thoroughly.  But you can't beat the ambience they serve up here, and what's really nice is that they take your picture and give it to you in a very nice handmade card with a free Shojin calendar :)

Thanksgiving this year was a lot of fun and I was so grateful to be able to share compassionate meals with my Dad.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone and I can't wait to share what I cook for Christmas this year!