Veggie Grill - San Jose

Phil recently attended a Yelp Elite event at Veggie Grill in Santana Row. He highly recommended it so we went on a semi-double date dinner last weekend.

Phil was the only one who ordered the Buffalo Bomber ($8.95). We all had a little food envy after tasting how similar this tofu substitute was to the real meat-buffalo wings. Even better because it did not dry out like buffalo wings. I still have food envy.

VS got the B-Wing Salad ($9.95). This is a buffalo chicken burger with romaine, avocado, celery, corn salsa, and ranch dressing. Also seems like an excellent choice. Veggie Grill was giving out samples of the buffalo chicken outside their door and this really helped sell the dish to new diners. In fact, I wish I got one of the buffalo wing dishes myself.

RN got the All American Stack burger ($8.95). Although he really liked this, I sensed a bit of buffalo burger envy in him as well. 

Here is my soup and salad combo for $8.50. The soup was chicken noodle and the salad was the "All Hail Kale" with grilled tofu chicken. All in all a light and refreshing dinner but still satisfying.

Also spotted at the table was a bottle of Annie's organic ketchup. My favorite salad dressing brand makes a ketchup!How awesome.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

Veggie Grill really impressed me with their food. It is the best American style vegetarian food I've ever had. Usually it's really bland or just salads and vegetables but this, I loved! Definitely check it out and you must try the buffalo wings.

Veggie Grill on Yelp (see Phil's review)

Remember the ramen that didn't come out right so I didn't serve it to my family for Thanksgiving? Well, I fixed it by adding some chicken broth and after heating up the broth and serving with a hot bowl of noodles and all the toppings, this turned out really good. I added Chinese egg noodles, blanched spinach, woodear mushrooms, the chashu pork, fish cake rings, blanched enoki mushrooms, and topped with grated fresh garlic and Korean pepper powder. I was substituting for not having togarashi pepper they usually have at ramen shops. Hooray for a semi-successful first attempt at making ramen broth from scratch.

Also, I got a bunch of garlic from my mother in law. Too much to consume in daily cooking so I pickled it. I know it looks really green and weird but trust me, after 2 weeks, they were quite tasty. Sour, crunchy, and garlicky. As you can tell, I waited too long to pickle them because they started sprouting but that's not a big deal. When making chicken adobo, I tossed in a few chunks of raw garlic and combined with the vinegar in an adobo recipe, the garlic started turning green. At the time I freaked out but learned that it's actually ok. When vinegar comes in contact with garlic that is not mature, and heat, it can turn the garlic green. This is from the internet. And hey, I've been eating a ton of this stuff this week. Still alive and the breath is stanky as ever!

Recipe was basically vinegar, water, salt, sugar, black pepper, extra seasonings like dill, thyme, rosemary, etc. Measure to taste, heat up to a boil, pour into a jar of peeled garlic. This batch was a bit too sour. Next time, I'll add more salt, less vinegar.