Is there chicken vada pav? Or a mutton pav bhaji? Or a prawn dal makhni? I guess not. Because simply adding chicken pieces to a Vegetarian dish cannot replicate the character of the dish. The Kheema Pav is essentially your Mutton Pav Bhaji, but it has a different name and a completely different palate. Why then do we expect to remove meat, replace it with a vegetable, call it the vegetarian version and expect it to taste great or replicate the dish itself?
When a restaurant comes from the stable of Mr. Mahadevan, one that calls itself an Asian Vegetarian restaurant, I was hoping for more than just meat to be replaced with a vegetable. And that is what Eastern Wedge pulls off. Fresh from his buy back of the entire Oriental Cuisines from the clutches of his investors, Mr. Mahadevan is fully in control of his restaurants now. And from the looks of this restaurants, fully in control of the kitchens as well.
When a restaurant comes from the stable of Mr. Mahadevan, one that calls itself an Asian Vegetarian restaurant, I was hoping for more than just meat to be replaced with a vegetable. And that is what Eastern Wedge pulls off. Fresh from his buy back of the entire Oriental Cuisines from the clutches of his investors, Mr. Mahadevan is fully in control of his restaurants now. And from the looks of this restaurants, fully in control of the kitchens as well.
Passing judgements on vegetarian replacements of non veg food is not really my specialty, and I don't know how the market is going to respond to this, but I really think that this is a great start to truly reproduce certain dishes with a vegetarian counterpart.
The water chestnut for example. The house special sauce, a very Asian flavoured one is something that most restaurants would do with lotus stem. And I really like that, but this honey glaze flavour is something that goes great with prawns. Replacing the prawn with the chestnut has almost completely recreated the character of the dish.
All through my trip in China, I was ogling at a green leaf covered rice dish. Those are the glutinous rice with pork in it and as a non pork eater, I didn't get a chance to try it. My Chinese friends said there is other meat equivalent. The Chinese didn't even try to make a vegetarian version. And here, I found it. It looks the same, sticks the same way and I loved it. While I don't have a meat version to compare it to, going by what they've done to other dishes, I can rest in peace. I've had the glutinous rice.
The Schezwan Shitake can pass off as a meat dish if you're slightly tipsy. The restaurant introduces the Chanko Nabe for the first time in Chennai. We had it with the miso broth and it pulls of the Japanese flavours reasonably well. The Sui Mai, which is also a traditional pork and shrimp dimsum, finds a place in this menu with carrots, mushroom and green peas to bring out the texture of the original. While restaurants go wrong in simply replacing the pork, Eastern Wedge has truly spent time in recreating Asian dishes and a neat Sui Mai.
While I was here on an invite and early impressions of new restaurants can be difficult to base a judgment on, the amount of effort gone into creating a truly Eastern menu is visible. I sure hope that they are able to pull it off in the long run, but also how will the audience respond? Only time will tell.
