In S.F., a Veggie Delight

No meat, no cheese, but Lucky Creation is sure to please

BY M.C. ANDERSON

Photos by Jason Doiy

Assistant cook Kin Liu prepares meat-free meals at Lucky Creation vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco Chinatown.

When asked where to get inexpensive, but please-no-meat fare in San Francisco Chinatown, vegetarians like to mention Lucky Creation.

They're right on target. This small, friendly, storefront restaurant dishes up very good food that never sees a speck of meat, fish or fowl.

The menu offers a good selection of appetizers, soups, entrees, specials, clay-pot dishes, pan-fried noodles, noodles in soup and rice plates. And the prices are budget-friendly, with appetizers in the $3-$4 range and entrees priced between $4-$6 (specials are pricier at $7-$9).

Expect to bite into lots of lightly cooked fresh vegetable dishes--mushrooms, Chinese greens, fungus, tofu and taro root. Should you still yearn for meat, wheat gluten and bean curd creations mimic all kinds of meaty matter.

The wheat gluten puff combination ($3.25 small, $5.50 large), consists of several slightly chewy, rubbery meatoid mounds that come in soy, curry and sweet-and-sour flavors. Also on the menu: sweetish-sticky little squares of fake beef jerky and large slices of fake barbecued pork. Bean curd cylinders encase carrot, jicama and gluten for another meat stand-in: a delicate-tasting vegetarian "goose" with a jolt of spice from black bean sauce on the side ($7.95).

You enjoy all this food in a setting that can be described as no-nonsense utilitarian. Hospital green is the color of aprons on the wait staff, the tiled floor, the menus--even the chopsticks. Pleasantly slap-dash decorations include brush paintings, framed restaurant reviews and posters. An altar to the Buddhist goddess of prosperity, decorated with oranges, apples and sprays of gladioli, anchors the back of the long, narrow room that glows in fluorescent light.

This small restaurant--eight tables in all--always seems busy, at lunch or dinner. People stream in and out, ordering from the counter at front, where steamed buns, taro cakes and trays of wheat gluten mock meat and star anise-scented soy sausages are among the popular take-out items.

The crowd is a hodgepodge. Office workers relaxing on lunch break, tourists puzzling over menus, hipsters decked out head to toe in basic black, attorneys arguing over legal minutiae--all chowing down on food served promptly by the friendly staff.

Tables are usually packed, but at slower times, the large round table at front is busy with employees prepping food--shelling peanuts, string green beans, chatting as they work. The good thing about all this conviviality is that lone diners never have to feel out of place--people are seated willy-nilly, family-style, so you might find yourself right across from a family of three working their way through soups and stir-fry. If you're tired of listening to your own thoughts, the tables are close enough for A-track eavesdropping.

The food is so good, at times it's difficult to stop yourself from ordering and ordering and ordering until your table is full of little plates and platters and bowls and you're stuffed to bursting. On one visit, a man at the next table lurched unsteadily up out of his chair, looked around and announced to no one in particular: "I think I just ate too much." Overindulgence probably happens more often than not. Sometimes, the solicitous wait staff feel obligated to behave like menu police. "Are you only two? What you ordered is too much for two," one warned us, relenting only after we assured her our haul was for both lunch and dinner.

But so many dishes are so well-presented, it may be difficult to stop. The kitchen's knack for decoration shows: The carrots in many dishes are cut in the shape of flowers; a corona of baby bok choy or broccoli frames many dishes; mushroom-packed mixed vegetables in a light sauce ($5.95) rest in a lattice of julienned potatoes shaped into a bowl.

Photos by Jason Doiy

Among the house specials are deep-fried, taro root "fish" and wheat gluten "chicken" and "pork."

The best entrees? Diced bean cake with chili sauce--one of the menu's few spicy dishes--was a standout; tofu cubes, nicely fried and still hot and creamy on the inside, came with a sauce with a hot zing. If you're in the mood for mild, try black fungus with broccoli ($9.95), a mild-tasting sauté with a nice bit of ginger; or black mushrooms and Chinese greens ($9.50).

Fried food here is worth the calories: crisp, sweet and pungent were the dominant notes in the honeyed, fried walnuts sprinkled with sesame seed and taro cake, pepped up by an accompanying sweet-and-sour sauce ($5.95).

Although it takes a little longer to prepare than most of the stir-fries and sautés, a clay-pot dish is worth a try, such as the cabbage and vermicelli that came steaming hot to our table in a tangy thick rich red bean sauce ($4.50).

Worth a splurge ($14.50) is sautéed bamboo pith, long strips with a slight crunch draped over bean curd and mustard greens with a jolt of ginger.

Chow mein over a pillow of pan-fried noodles had lots of mushrooms including button, straw and shiitake in a nice brown sauce ($4.50).

Barbecued totally fake pork bits furnish pleasantly sweet chewy counterpoints in the truly excellent fried rice ($4.20), a confetti of colors from the diced carrots, peas and corn.

So give Lucky Creation a try. You won't miss meat at all.

Lucky Creation Vegetarian Restaurant, 854 Washington St., San Francisco. 415-989-0818. Hours: 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday-Tuesday and Thursday-Saturday. Closed on Wednesday.

©1998 AsianWeek. The information you receive on-line from AsianWeek is protected by the copyright laws of the United States. The copyright laws prohibit any copying, redistributing, retransmitting, or repurposing of any copyright protected material.