Thursday, July 31, 2008

Newstart Veggie Garden



Speaking of restaurants that we should have known about and been frequenting, we ate at Newstart Veggie Garden for the first time today. Newstart Veggie Garden (not to be confused with Veggie Garden in Richardson) is on Royal over in Koreatown. It's a fresh, mostly healthy, vegan buffet--and it blew our minds. We tried a bit of pretty much everything on the buffet, and almost all of it was amazingly delicious. I was a little shocked at how tasty and fresh everything was. Nothing was overly oily or even a tiny bit stale. They put out small servings very frequently so that nothing sits out for too long. We had California rolls, cabbage rolls, spicy tofu soup, pumpkin soup with rice balls, yellow curry, seaweed salad, kimchi, "steak" with mushroom gravy, sweet and spicy veggie seitan, mung bean pancakes, sweet potato noodles with veggies, homemade wheat bread with raisin jam, oatmeal flax cookies and cinnamon date juice. I read somewhere that they make everything in house, and I didn't see/taste anything to the contrary. I did manage to snap a few photos while trying to stay out of the way, but they really don't do the food justice.









Mas and I agreed that this would be a good place to eat with a mixed group of vegans and non-vegans. There are several "normal" options along with the foods that some consider "weird", like tofu and seitan.

(edit: They mention agave, maple sugar and honey on the desserts page of their site, so we'll have to ask if anything contains honey next time. Hopefully, nothing--I really loved their bread!)

4 comments:

Lacy said...

Like .. wow! I'll be in Dallas during the weekend of the 23rd so I'm totally making a stop here. Is it a buffet only restaurant or is dinner an order off of the menu affair?

megan said...

Definitely try it and let me know if you like it! The menu changes every day and I want to know if it's consistently good. It's just buffet for lunch and dinner, but it's really clean and nice--not scary like some. I think they're only open for dinner on Saturday or something weird like that, so you might want to call before you drive all the way over there.

Lacy said...

I'm torn between the Veggie Garden in Richardson (this was previously the plan) and this new idea ..

What's your recommendation if I can only choose one? I trust you completely, hah!

megan said...

Hmm...it depends. If you want fatty, bad for you--but tasty Chinese, Veggie Garden is perfect. If you want something lighter and less fried, try Newstart. Veggie Garden has more soy, Newstart has more seitan.