Year of the Pig

In honor of our patient non-suing vegan artist friend, here’s a report on the vegetarian ribs I had recently. The restaurant, Red Bamboo, is a small West Village vegetarian joint popular with the NYU crowd. While being a guiltless omnivore, the past decade has seen, in my opinion, the flowering of excellent vegetarian restaurants in NYC, and good food is good food. Red Bamboo has good food. I got their ribs, which were delicious. They didn’t, of course, taste like real ribs, but I’ve found that the best feaux-meat doesn’t; instead, it is a tasty dish that is simply inspired by its more-bloodily-slaughtered cousin. They were served with a side of collards which were fantastic, too; they had a toasted taste which was new to me, collards-wise-speaking. Based on this, and my slightly impolite tasting of every other plate at my table within grabbing distance, I give a hearty YUM to the Red Bamboo. My fave veggie restaurant, however, remains the Vegetarian Dim Sum place on Pell Street.