Vegan sushi? Well, not exactly. More like vegan Japanese. Very, very good vegan Japanese.
This cash only spot in the Mission has outstanding food. I remember I ate here years and years ago when I used to live around the corner. Then, I remember thinking the food was sort of bland an unappealing. These days, though, after having been eating a whole foods, plant based diet for the better part of a year, I find that my taste buds have changed quite a lot and subtler more nuanced flavors can really shine nowadays.
That’s what I think happened last night at Cha-Ya. We arrived a little after seven and of course had to wait a bit to be seated since it was a Saturday night. I don’t think we waited more than about 15-20 minutes, though it felt like forever as we gazed at the menu in temptation.
Eventually we were seated and got some more time to review the menu. We said we were going to do everything family style, but I think we sort of started to all get greedy about what we’d each ordered and there wasn’t a whole lot of sharing after we each got curiosity bites of each other’s preferences.
We had the gyoza, which were excellent. I got an order of the haru maki, which was a fried roll with a tofu that had a nice meaty sort of mouth feel, and the texture of the glass noodles made these a hit.
We also shared the robata yaki, broiled vegetable skewers that were scarfed up pretty quickly. A bowl of the kinoki miso was barely shared around as it was filled with scrumptious udon noodles and a nearly overwhelming amount of mushrooms. Awesome.
My dining companion had an order of the Moon Garden, a steamed tofu custard dish with veggies that was surprisingly good despite its somewhat off-putting appearance.
The service here was good, the food was tasty and the prices were about right. If you find yourself in the Mission District of San Francisco, Cha-Ya is a great choice.
VegScore: 100% – entirely vegan, strict vegetarian as their menu says
The Moon Garden dish is So Good! I have to figure out how to replicate it at home.