Mystery meat
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You know what goes well with arugula? Steak. |
Strolling through my local megagrocery, I noticed the salad dressing aisle has been taken over by questionable vegetarian. Don’t believe me? Check the labels: a third of the dressings are made by Wishbone, named after a bone you wish upon and break after gnawing on a dead chicken. Mmm, corpse desecration brings happy unicorn wishes. Another third are made by Ken’s Steak House, which is sort of like Jim Beam sponsoring Al-Anon. It’s a sad day when you have to turn to celebrity vegetarians like Paul Newman for a sauce which won’t infuse your herbalicious salad with the warm connotations of sizzling carcass.
Dining out is always an adventure. Chinese restaurants are famous for insisting food is vegetarian because it contains vegetables. My favorite sushi place waited a year to change its mind and inform me its miso soup was actually made with fish broth. But I’ve always been able to count on South Asian restaurants to know what’s what.
Sure, this isn’t Bombay with its massive array of vegetarian choices and menus clearly marked with green dots. And sometimes even your Tamarinds serve you lamb instead of paneer on Diwali night, not that I’m bitter. (Ok, I’m bitter.) But an Afghan restaurant at the top of everyone’s list for deliciousness, famed for its vegetarian dishes, wouldn’t steer you wrong, would it? Check out the menu at Helmand in Cambridge:
Vegetarian Entrees: Sabzi Challow — Spinach sauteed with chunks of Lamb and Afghan seasonings, served with challow rice.
Damn you, Taliban!
on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008, 8:00 pm in Food, Humor, Vegetarianism › 
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I wonder if that Helmand is related to the Helmand in Baltimore, which I have visited. The Baltimore one is owned by Hamid Karzai’s brother.
I can empathize. Was having lunch today at Spring Street Natural and noticed that under “Vegetarian and Stir Fry Entrees” the following was listed:
As far as I know, pumpkin ravioli with turkey bacon is neither vegetarian nor a stir fry!
Oh, and thought you’d appreciate this from GOOD magazine, which shows which of the country’s major food producers are behind our favorite organic (and often times vegetarian) snacks.
Helmand rocks, and you should make an exception for Afghan food ;) Is their sabzi challow like Iranian sabzi polow (green rice with dill, spinach etc)? I haven’t tried that one, always go for the aushak.
But yes, most Middle Eastern countries also identify dishes by their vegetable components (”green bean stew,” “okra”) and then have bits of meat in them, and if you say you want it vegetarian they just fish out the meat from the dish - no concept of purity/pollution when it comes to meat.
You can’t really blame Amrikis for not having a clear sense of what ‘vegetarian’ constitutes when so many ‘vegetarians’ in the States gladly eat fish, though.
The Helmand is hands down my favorite Cambridge restaurant, and I’ve never been served hidden meat when I’ve asked for a vegetarian dish. They have even handled requests to leave out butter and yogurt to make a dish complete vegan.
It might just be that their web monkey made a copy-and-paste error?
My very first day in US (6 yrs back) taught me one important lesson. When you order a ‘Cheeseburger’, be prepared for a ‘meat patty’ :). Imagine a wide-eyed desi, arguing at a fast-food restaurant that his cheeseburger seems to have some non-vegetarian ’stuff’ in it, inspite of the fact that he had ordered a ‘cheese’ burger.
Another related incident that a friend once narrated to me… this was his first week in US. While ordering food at a fast-food place, the person across the counter asked him “for here or to-go ? “. My friend’s answer was - “Yes, I’ll have the food here and then I’ll go” :)
I think the Helmand web menu is just a typo, I’ve found them to be quite vegetarian friendly. The only downside of their nice ambience at (relatively) reasonable prices is that they are mobbed and almost always require a reservation during peak hours for something like a party of 4, often even on week days.
And to answer the first poster here, yes, this Helmand (as well as the one in San Franciso, I believe) is in fact owned by Karzai’s sister. Which made it especially ironic and sad that they hastened to hang up an American flag, and if I remember correctly, erase evidence of their Afghan connection, immediately after 9/11. Helmand shared that section of the sidewalk with an Indian restaurant which too suddenly discovered the value of a giant Walmart-sold China-made American flag as a window shade that week. The Indian restaurant unfortunately is no more, replaced by a branch of the Cheesecake Factory of East Asian food, Brown Sugar Cafe.
Reminds me of this great assessment of potential “vegetarian” pitfalls:
http://blog.libranlover.net/2007/09/warnings-for-new-vegetarians-in-america.html
I know I don’t need to remind you about the time there was kheema in a samosa at Vatan.