The menu is pretty extensive and I will say that if you do have any sort of dietary restrictions (vegan, gluten, peanut, etc) they have a lot of options for you. We all started with the wonton soup ($6) which was a very filling appetizer and probably my favorite dish of the night. It was a clear broth with 5 very stuffed wontons and lots of fresh spinach piled on top. The wontons were filled with chopped up veggies and some soy and while it was good, I still missed the real wontons stuffed with pork and cabbage. Next came all our other dishes: roti canai with malayasian curry ($8), the avocado tartare with wasbi lime sauce ($11), the seitan skewers ($9), the eggplant stuffed with tofu cheese ($12), the nori wrapped tofu in red curry sauce ($17), the butternut squash risotto with toasted almonds ($18), and the kale, seaweed, beet salad ($12). Yes, we went a bit overboard and honestly could have done with 1-2 fewer dishes. We all agreed that the roti canai with malaysian curry was our favorite dish of the entreees. The roti was nice and soft but with a slight crisp on the outside to it and the curry tasted like a curry you would get at a mom and pop Thai place. The avocado tartare was frankly just like a guacamole to me (which is not a bad thing at all!). It was served with those weird fried noodle strips you get with a hot and sour soup but I actually liked that it was light on the salt so that you could really taste the avocado. Sadly I didn't taste much in the way of wasabi which was kind of a bummer because that would have been a nice spice addition to it. The eggplant stuffed with tofu cheese sounded like it would be a great dish and while it was fine, it didn't wow me very much. The tofu cheese had no flavor to it and they essentially roasted the crap out of the eggplant to make it soft and edible. The butternut squash had a lot of potential but it was way too sweet and for a place that has a real focus on health, it tasted like I was eating a cup of sugar. I don't actually think they added any sugar to it, it was more that the sweetness of the butternut really overwhelmed the dish. The nori wrapped tofu tasted exactly how it sounds - like tofu wrapped in dry seaweed. Again, it wasn't a bad dish, I just felt like it was missing something to it that maybe a meat or fish would have brought out in the dish. The kale, seaweed and beet salad also tasted exactly like how it's described. It's chopped up and sauteed kale, thick dark green pieces of seaweed (not the bright thin seaweed they usually use in a seaweed salad but it's a long, flat version) and cut up pieces of cold beets. I actually really love all of these ingredients individually so while it doesn't sound like a delicious dish, I enjoyed it more than a lot of the other dishes and felt super healthy eating it. My least favorite dish of the night was the seitan skewers. It just had no taste to it at all, even though it was served with two different dipping sauces. The consistency of it was also dry and if we had to cut a few dishes, this would have been my first choice to cut.
At the end of the meal, I did feel incredibly full yet healthy at the same time. You could definitely tell that the food here is not processed but I did kind of miss having the flavors of meat, fat and a bit of oil in my food. One thing to note is that we explicitly told our waiter that Vinyak has a very strong sesame allergy and they seemed very amenable to it. But apparently something we ate gave him that allergy feeling but we couldn't figure out what dish it came from. Our waiter did try to help and brought out the ingredient cards to show us but in the end, it's just a bit unnerving to have a bunch of food on your plate, knowing that you're allergic to something but that you just don't know what it is. It's a good vegetarian/gluten free option but if you are a meat lover, it may not satisfy your palate as much as some other veggie friendly places in town. Total bill: $190 for 4 people with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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