2009/03/23

Chinese vegetarian mystery

How can we account for this? Philadelphia is half as big as Chicago, and not known for its vegetarianism. Yet Philadelphia has five - five! - all-vegetarian Chinese restaurants, and Chicago has none.

Su Xing 1508 Sansom St
Singapore Kosher Vegetarian 1006 Race St
Kingdom of Vegetarians 129 N 11th St
New Harmony 135 N 9th St
Cherry Street Vegetarian 1010 Cherry St

Chicago does have Yummy Yummy in Lakeview, a Chinese restaurant with both meat and fake meat American Chinese dishes, but here again Philadelphia beats us - it has two similar restaurants.

Charles Plaza 234-6 N 10th St
Golden Empress Garden 610 S 5th St

Granted, all of these restaurants are American Chinese, a pale imitation of the incredible fake meat restaurants in China. But this is an issue of respect. C'mon Chicago, get your act together.

2 comments:

Jeremy said...

The situation is more acute than that: Philadelphia (where I live) also has the swank Horizons (http://www.horizonsphiladelphia.com/), Mai Lai, Giannas, Godvindas, and Charles Plaza (half-meat / half-vegetarian).

(But Cherry Street, which you list, has been closed for some time.)

Walker said...

Good to know about Cherry Street, I was walking around looking for it last time I was there.

But to be fair to Chicago, we have lots of vegetarian restaurants, a better selection than Philly overall - one benefit of having a larger and more diverse population. Still, Philly's vegetarian options are consistently impressive - I tried Mi Lah last time I was there and it was great, I always like going to the vegetarian sandwich place at Reading Terminal Market, and of course the baffling number of fake meat Chinese places is very nice.