I remember, more than 10 years ago, I had fond memory of a particular vegetarian restaurant in my neighbourhood. Perhaps I was rather amaze by how the dishes can be imitated to taste so much like the real thing, and to this I’m referring to mock meat, such as fish, abalone, chicken wings, ham.
Fast forward 10 years later, It strikes me that all these mock meat I’ve had in childhood is actually filled with glutton, since then I’ve kept out of vegetarians restaurant unless I feel guilty about putting on weight and decide to go on diet, which is rather silly if you ask me, since most vegetarian places uses a lot of gluttony substances and MSG in order to resemble the real thing. And why would you want to eat the mock versions (filled with glutton) when the whole purpose is to stay away from meat for a period?
By the way, eating vegetarian doesn’t necessary make you skinnier! It’s all in the mind!
I’ve got some good friends whom are vegetarian by choice; I often can’t see how they can come eat with us, while we chunk down slabs of meat, and them watching with their plate of meat-less misery.
When being asked, they always told me a similar story, that they don’t see the need to harm animals to satisfy their stomachs when there is so many varieties of vegetarian dishes around. There is also the health element, apparently eating vegetarian is more healthy than eating meat (I beg to differ, hmmm! Nobody takes my meat away from me)
Fan Cai Xiang in Taman Desa is a well-known vegetarian restaurant in the neighborhood. Occupying an intermediate lot of the buzzing area of Plaza Danau 2 next to KFC, it was easy enough to locate the place. Since its welcoming presence 4 years ago, they’ve been able to retain long stem of customers and from what I’ve heard, it can be pretty pack during the weekends.
Unlike most vegetarian restaurants I’ve been, Fan Cai Xiang focus predominantly on natural ingredients, their handsomely bound menu has a vast list of green leaves, tofu, mushrooms, soup etc. As the restaurant promotes healthy living, their dishes are majority less salty and oily, with no use of MSG. It helps that the food is reasonably priced too, most come in three sizes of regular (RM13~) medium (RM19~) and large (RM23~).
Fan Cai Xiang noodes (RM9) is their house specialty. A simple stir fry with nice springy texture with a mix of mushrooms, greens and bean curd skin.
We’ve lapped up everything without a waste, well except for my half eaten rice, which my friend Y. can’t stop looking at me, sending me signal to finish it (I know she doesn’t like seeing things wasted) But don’t blame me! Blame my super tight skirt and that viciously small belt =P
The owners behind the restaurant has a really big heart, aside from their normal charity works, Fan Cai Xiang often give away well-packed food to different organizations, one of them being Malaysia Buddhist organization. For this upcoming Mother’s Day, they plan to distribute 10,000 food packets to promote healthy living.
Seriously, eating vegetarian? Charity? Can one get more holy that that? I’m truly inspired.
