January 23rd 2012: CNY Dinner at My Thai Vegan Cafe, Boston

Today is the Chinese New Year, and I decided to have a sort of celebration by going to Boston for a meetup dinner at My Thai Vegan Cafe at 3 Beach Road in Boston.

The entrance to the place is right next to Pho Pasteur, and it did not look very fancy at first, much less like it would be able to fit the 14 people that were supposed to attend this meetup event. As it turned out, the restaurant is actually on the second floor, and when I finally climbed up the dirty flight of wooden stairs, I entered into a pretty large and nicely decorated area. It was easy to find the meetup group as it was the only big group of tables in the place.

We waited a few moments for people to come and when the attendance reached 9, we decided to order anyway. Four of us decided to share our dishes, and I got the Temple Soup on the side for myself.

This soup has sweet potato, butter squash, coconut milk and ground peanuts. I had thought it would be salty like the other soups, but it turned out to be sweet, like a dessert soup. It was really good though. Between the four of us, we shared 4 dishes, although I forgot to take a picture of my own dish, the Choo Chee Fisherman, consisting of veggie fish, scallops squid and clams, mixed with Kaffir lime leaves, onions, hot red peppers and sweet basil stir fried in a red Choo Chee curry sauce. The other dishes were the Yum Nua, a salad with veggie beef, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, scallions, chili garlic and lime juice on crisp lettuce, the Penang Curry with a half veggie chicken, a thick spicy red curry with coconut milk, bamboo shoots, baby corn, string beans, red peppers, onions, zucchini, Kaffir lime leaves and sweet basil, and lastly the Pad See Ew Plus, a plate of stir fried wide rice noodles with Chinese Broccoli and a mix of veggie beef, chicken, tofu and gluten.

Yum Nua

Penang Curry with Half Veggie Chicken

Pad See Ew Plus

All the dishes were really good. What amazed me was how they were able to make the veggie chicken taste like chicken and even have similar texture, and the same for my fish and the squid as well.

After dinner, we stayed awhile to chat, talking about a range of topics like allergies, and strict Asian mothers. Overall, I had a great time here,  and won't mind coming here again.