You could have knocked me over with a feather. When I asked owner Janet Lam for a popular vegetarian dish on the Maple Garden Restaurant menu, she replied “Vegetarian Duck.”
Vegetarian Duck ($9.50)
Owner Richard Lam presents this vegetarian favorite.
Um, OK. Now, I’m pretty sure those web-footed creatures are omnivorous, but that, of course, isn’t what she meant.
There’s nothing fowl about this duck. Instead, Maple Garden, which specializes in Northern Chinese Szechuan cuisine, simulates duck using no meat or meat products. For Vegetarian Duck, mushrooms and bamboo shoots are wrapped in bean curd and then sliced ($9.50). It’s one of the restaurant’s best-selling vegetarian offerings. It’s a simple dish, not spicy, but the flavors and textures complement each other and the result, in color, does resemble roast duck.
Some vegetarians out there may not understand this scenario. If someone chooses not to eat meat, why would they want to eat something that looks like meat?
There is at least one good reason. Some carnivores choose a vegetarian diet for health reasons, but they crave the meat they used to eat. Don’t let it ruffle your feathers.
Maple Garden Restaurant
- Where
- 909 Isenberg Street
- Honolulu, HI 96826
- Call
- (808) 941-6641
- Hours
- Open daily
- 10 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.
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