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Saturday, November 1, 2008

Restaurant Review: Evergreen House (SLC)

We ate lunch today at Evergreen House in Salt Lake City. It is a vegan Chinese restaurant. I'd heard a lot of good things about it and was missing the great Grasshopper in Boston (and My Thai too!). So, we drove down to SLC for a ski swap at REI and then lunch. Oh man. It was bad. Really really bad. I can't believe anyone likes that place. I feel really awful saying anything bad about a vegan restaurant because I really want to support vegan businesses, but wow, so bad.

Mike got a sweet and sour "chicken" and I got a black pepper "beef" dish. In the sweet and sour dish, the sauce tasted like ketchup, the "chicken" was fried on the outside but gummy on the inside. Mike described his "chicken" as "It tasted like a frozen package and um... yucky". I just asked Mike if gummy was an accurate description of the "chicken" and he told me "I don't know, I was too distracted by the horrible taste". My "Beef" had the texture of undercooked seitan (doughy) and tasted a little like five spice powder and a lot like cinnamon. The spring rolls we good ;).

Here are some pics of lunch:

photo.jpgSweet and Sour "Chicken" - You think there is enough sauce on there?

photo.jpgHot Pepper "Beef"

Sorry Evergreen House, but you are no Grasshopper... sigh.

5 comments:

  1. Oddly, we did Chinese too today- but followed a friend's recommendation and went to a place in Chinatown. Not Vegan in the slightest, but had lots of vegan options on the regular and dim sum menus. Mmmm scallion pancakes and red bean buns and spring rolls.

    (I don't mean this as a tease.)

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  2. Aww, I haven't seen a red bean bun since I left Boston.

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  3. Awww man :< I'm sorry. If I thought they'd travel well I'd mail you some. hmm.
    Chicago's Chinatown is pretty elaborate. We haven't even been to half of the restaurants and keep discovering new ones.

    I made up for my greasy Chinese food lunch with a dinner salad. But then I think I canceled it out again by eating halloween chocolate ;)

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  4. so... I don't know if you've had the nerve to try Evergreen again, but their #4 on the menu might just be close enough to the "No Name" for you to like it. I agree- their sweet n sour sauce takes some getting used to! I'm at the point where I get weird cravings for it...

    It's one of my all time favorite restaurants so I had to give it some props- next time try their #7, their hot n sour soup (which IMHO is the best on earth), and their #4. I promise you'll like it better!!

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  5. That sucks that you had such a bad experience there. Perhaps Evergreen was having an off day. I have yet to eat there, but I keep hearing from my meat eating co-worker who has a vegan brother how good the food is there. He says he eats there every time he's in SLC. I would be happy if we even had a crappy vegan restaurant here in the valley. Sigh... I will try Evergreen someday but now I have some reservations after your review. Thanks for the heads up.

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