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Link: http://nymag.com/restaurants/openings/55483/

I normally breeze past the 'Food/Openings' section of NY mag, but somehow this week I looked, and the words 'Japanese' and 'vegetarian' caught my eye. Woah... what was that? "In the Shojin, or Japanese vegetarian kaiseki tradition, devised centuries ago by Buddhist monks..." By this point I had stopped reading and was running around in circles looking for my phone.

I immediately made a booking for the missus and I, and a couple of friends. Friend #1 is Japanese, from Kyoto, and if you've ever been to Kyoto, you'll know the best food on the planet is to be found here. Delectable, refined, pure and infused with artisanship. Friend #2 is a reject from a torturous vegetarian upbringing. When I've dragged him to vegetarian restaurants before, he will stand in the doorway smelling the air, seeking out the 'health food odor' he so detests (yes you know the one) deciding whether or not he dare venture further. Two greater critics could not have been chosen to attend the opening of this new fine dining establishment!

The restaurant is beautifully decorated in minimal Japanese style, with heavyset tables and a counter made from solid blocks of zelkova wood, offering a gentle, soothing fragrance. The walls are treated with what seems to be a combination of sands, clays and other organic matters, apparently changing in color as it matures. The staff were calm, friendly and courteous. Already the stresses of my week had been politely asked to wait outside.

The menu offers two set courses, and reading through it only serves to tantalize you as to what is yet to come. Naturally a selection of fine sakes and wines offers accompaniment for your meal.

The meal itself? A taste sensation. No, in fact, it was the full sensory journey that only the Japanese can execute so flawlessly. The fragrances and smells invite you towards each bite, delicate, complex and intriguing. The presentation, exquisite. Each course a display of pure craftsmanship, expertly packaged and assembled to guide you through the meal at a pace guaranteed to maximize your enjoyment. The textures all expertly combined with the flavors to produce a seemingly limitless palette of tastes in this masterpiece. The only time I have eaten this well was in a particularly expensive Kyoto ryokan. This is the real deal!

I was in vegan heaven the whole time. Emitting uncontrollable 'mm-mm's as my eyes rolled about in ecstasy. All of us, shaking our heads not quite able to believe what our tongues were telling us. By the time I got to the roasted artichoke with grated apple and celery root in the third course I was purring like a cat. The zaru soba (made fresh in house daily) was unadulterated joy. And as I bit into the most sublime piece of tempura cauliflower in the fifth course, I shed a tear - I kid you not. Particular interest points in the menu include the grilled nama-fu, yuba in wasabi soy, burdock root and miso paste grilled onto a cedar paddle. Joy, total and complete.

The service was superb, polite and informative. Attentive yet non-invasive, and most importantly, no clearling of plates until all guests were done - an annoyingly rude trait all too common in New York restaurants and over-eager busboys. An overall refined dining experience.

Candle 79, Hangawi and Blossom are now accompanied by a new high-end vegan eatery in New York city. Kajitsu has raised the bar to a new high, again showing that vegan food is far from bland. Critics #1 and #2 enjoyed it beyond measure. I'm glad. I plan to go often.

Kajitsu - 414 E9th St (near 1st Ave) 212 228 4873

I work in the financial district in New York, which is a desolate place when you're a vegan. I usually take leftovers for lunch, but on the off days I rotate between Chipotle, salad or curry. Kind of sick of them all. A colleague told me of a vegan health food restaurant on Broadway nearby. Hurray! It's a quirky little place in the basement of 120 Broadway called Little Lad's Basket. Take away is measured by the pound, or if you eat in, a plate and bowl (stack to your heart's content!) is under 6 bucks! The first time I went I had to grab take away and run back to the office. Today I wanted to avoid the landfill, so decided to eat in. Unfortunately, this entails Styrofoam plates and bowls, and plastic cutlery. Negative points there, Little Lad!

The food however, is pretty good. It's very home-style, old-school, health food kind of vegetarian. But I think it's predominantly organic, and it tastes better than it looks :) Simple, homely, comfort food. And filling. I think it may be run by the church over the road (or maybe another nearby church), it has a nice air, and all the staff are very friendly and very much into what they are doing. I get a kick out of it when other religions also promote compassion for our furry/scaly/other brethren. Propaganda informational videos and pamphlets also promise to rid you of cancer if you eat a vegan diet. Solid!

Today was frikkin' weird though. I'm sitting there chowing down in a vegan restaurant, and a woman sits down next to me... in a FUR COAT! WHAT - THE - FUCK!? Full length, and broad enough to house a full-bodied woman. Or a fat, heartless wench, take your pick. Very strange. Perhaps if I should tell her fur coats cause cancer and she'd get rid of it. No idea what the hell is up with rancid fur this season.

While walking around this evening, I saw an ad for some vegan fair from Fresh Direct, using the good ol' seitan/satan pun. Nice one!

I also made chocolate pudding tonight. I adapted from the Vegan With a Vengeance recipe, using agave syrup instead of sugar. I also used Green & Blacks cocoa powder, which maybe a little strong. Regular sugar probably would've offset the bitterness of the cocoa better than agave.

It wasn't particularly sweet. Which at first was a little disappointing. But I enjoyed it more the more I ate it - I can't eat much of sweet stuff. So all in all, not a bad first attempt. But I really need to figure out how Candle Cafe make their orgasmic chocolate mouse! :oP~~

Last night I think I cooked the best dish I've ever made, thanks to the Candle Cafe Cookbook and the Vegan With A Vengeance cookbook.

I should have presented it a little better but I was hungry!

I'm too time-poor (okay disorganized) to make seitan the traditional way, so I followed the shortcut steps to make seitan from Vegan With A Vengeance using wheat gluten. One you have your seitan at hand, Candle Cafe's recipe for Seitan Piccata is actually very straightforward and quick to make, and easily one of the most delish things you can make. If you don't live in NY, and thus can't visit Candle 79 at a whim, get these books!

Last year (oh so long ago!) I bought one of my friends the Veganomicon cookbook as a gift. I don't have it myself, but I do have the excellent Vegan With a Vengeance also by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. My friend gave me directions on how to cook one of her favourite recipes from Veganomicon - Chickpea Cutlets.

I've always been keen to try making seitan myself, but haven't committed to it since the recipe I have is completely from scratch, and quite time consuming. This recipe uses pre-packaged vital wheat gluten and is a quick recipe to make - probably 15 minutes prep before cooking.

I thought I'd try it out for my first breakfast of 2009. Yum! Delicious, especially with some jalapeño ketchup! The texture is nice and chewy, and makes for a hearty meal. A little drier and firmer than regular seitan, either that's by design, or I was a little heavy-handed with the chickpeas. An easy recipe that will impress your friends!

I thought I'd write a quick entry about my trusty Planet Bike lights, since they saved my ass twice tonight. Although bike lights are vitally important, they often seem rather ineffective. Car lights are much brighter, and in the city, there is a lot of ambient lighting, some of it flashing, meaning bike lights sometimes don't register with motorists and pedestrians until just before the moment of tragedy.

No more.

The Planet Bike Superflash tail light was the first product of theirs I bought. Bloody brilliant. This light is impossible to miss. It has two bright LEDs that flash rapidly, and then an astoundingly bright LED that flashes less frequently, making for a dazzling discotheque, proudly asserting your presence on the road. I bought this with the CatEye Opticube - a respectable (and slim) head light.

Chuffed as I was with my lighting rig, riding home one night I encountered a solar flare approaching me from the other direction. Holy shit, is that a motorcyclist on the path? A stray comet!? No! It was a cyclist with a bike light! I saw him the following night again. That light! So obnoxious, so brilliantly bright! I headed into Sid's bikes on 19th and asked about this super bloody bright bike light I had seen. They kindly directed me to the Planet Bike Blaze, and the Blaze 1W (one Watt!!).

Holy cow... is that mother bright! Like the Superflash, it has a rapidly pulsing bright light before blasting your eyes out the back of your head with a laser beam every fourth flash or so. You can also just turn it on. Bright. Unbelievably bright. And that's only on the half setting, click the button again, and you have thermonuclear bright. According to the manufacturer, you can see it a mile away, but I'd be pretty surprised if you couldn't see it from the moon, possibly even from the dark side. Trust me, if you haven't seen one of these, your bike light is like riding around with a candle compared to this thing. At the time, my Opticube was about the brightest thing I'd seen, but I can look into this thing without causing eye damage... the Blaze? Even on half setting, you'll be seeing colors for a minute if you stare into it. In defense, it is possible my Opticube's batteries are running down... [brief interlude] yes a little, but even after swapping the batteries around, I have a big purple blob in the middle of my field of vision from looking into the Blaze. There is something about the reflector and lens in this thing that is so effective.

While I was recently back in Oz visiting family, I took my bike lights with me for night cycling. I clip the Superflash onto my Chrome bag, so no problems there. The Blaze, however, has an absolutely brilliant mounting system. Very quick to adjust, easily removed, and consequently very easy to transfer to any other bike. There is a snap-style adjustment for course tightening, and then the clasp allows you to screw in to tighten it right up. The clasp then clicks in beautifully to marry your Blaze to your handlebars with no possibility of divorce. You don't even need any tools - possibly a key to help if you need to loosen the snappy bit, but you probably won't need to. The design of this thing is head and shoulders above any light I've seen. I love it. Especially compared to the finger bleeding procedure involved in getting the fucking Opticube onboard. Arsehole thing.

Borrowing my brothers rather cool Giant XTC, I noticed he had some pissweak Guppy lights, or something similar. In the interests of keeping him alive, I donated my Blaze and Superflash to him. So on returning home, I bought another Blaze, and the Superflash Stealth. Wow, possibly even cooler than the regular Superflash! Maybe even brighter!

I keep the Opticube, since it's by no means a slouch, and use it in conjunction with the Blaze, setting one to 'on' and the other to flashing. I feel this is the best of both worlds. So anyway, riding home tonight, in the cold, dark winter evening, some impatient dickface driver was about to swerve around a slower vehicle before BLAMMO! Take some of that Blaze in your faze, sucker! Later, riding down 18th, a bus, blocked by a cab, was about to pull out in front of me when it slammed on the brakes. The Blaze had saved my ass again, as the bus driver quite obviously saw me and my truck light coming, or possibly went into seizure, and slumped over the wheel. Doesn't matter... drivers can see me now, I'm no longer drowned out by bright car lights and ambient city lighting noise.

Oh yeah, and remember Planet Bike donate 25% of their profits to bike advocacy... that gets my vote!