Vegetables By Any Other Name

At a hard-to-get-a-reservation, micro-restaurant on East 9th Street, everything feels right. The space is bright and inviting.  The music is mellow and seductive.  The chefs, Amanda Cohen and Debbie Lee, play waitresses with grace.  And, most importantly, their food fills the abyss of much-needed vegetarian/vegan innovation in a very big, very flavorful, very delicious way.

What doesn’t feel quite right is the name.  I understand it’s roots (wink), but it just seems not to fit. These women clearly are trying to mix whimsy with meaning.  But reciting the name makes me feel suddenly trapped in a trend.  There is nothing lasting in it.

This is strange because I feel as though I could eat the food at Dirt Candy a few nights a week.  And so, while the name was very distracting, I tried to only focus on eating my greens, and ended up having a truly outstanding meal.

We started with the jalapeño hush puppies, served as a snack.  Piping hot, browned and crisped, the fritters were an instant reminder that, while this restaurant may proclaim itself vegetarian/vegan, I doesn’t mean they don’t know how to be decadent.  The spicy poppers were deep-fried and came with a pot of maple butter.  Don’t overlook the snack.

Appetizers were a bright green soup, made that shade by way of spinach.  It came with smoked tofu dumplings, which added a similar complexity as bacon would.  A Greek salad arrived with what looked liked calamari but that was in fact expertly breaded rings of trumpet mushrooms.  The salad beneath was a masterful blend of cucumbers, olives, tomatoes, and fennel.  The whole plate got a pass of lemon mayo.

Any dish here can be made vegan and so for my main course, I choose the stone ground grits, and challenged the ladies to this credo.  It turned out to be my favorite! A mountain of tempura watercress crowned the plate.  Beneath this, the grits were packed with pickled shitakes, corn kernels, and chili.  We also tried the crispy tofu with green ragout.  The tofu was excellent, as were the ragout of veggies—Brussels sprouts, green beans, and peas.  However, we would prefer it a little less rich than the pool of kaffir lime beurre blanc made it—only because we wanted to save room for the (very rich) desserts, as everyone should. Popcorn pudding is a must—salted caramel popcorn accompanies a pot of luxurious rich crema as a perfect exit strategy.

So book a table now—vegetables, even if they are called dirt, have never been so exciting.