Araya's Place

Reviews

• A Bloodless Coup: Two of Seattle's FUBU Vegetarian All-Stars

  June 2, 2009

  The Stranger

  For that fabled special meal, vegetarians could hardly do better
  than Araya's Vegetarian Place (1121 NE 45th St, 524-4332), a
  University District mainstay I'd heretofore stupidly ignored. Plunked
  down on 45th Street within spitting distance of the Ave, Araya's was, I
  assumed, a collegiate vegetarian restaurant, and visions of
  kaffiyeh-clad undergrads and PETA-inspired poetry readings kept me
  away. My punishment for this idiotic assumption: a life devoid of
  Araya's for years—regrettable, regrettable years.
  Araya's hypes itself as "vegan Thai cuisine," which seems
  restrictive until you realize that the difference between vegetarian
  and vegan Thai cuisine is egg on your pad thai. Araya's comes off as
  another good-to-great Seattle Thai restaurant, with special attention
  paid to vegetables and tofu/meat substitutes. In other words, it's Thai
  veggie heaven, with the heavenliness extending to the dining room:
  surprisingly large, well appointed, and both vast and cozy (a nice
  trick). Service is attentive but never overbearing, encouraging the
  sort of languorous multicourse meal Araya's extensive menu makes
  glamorously possible.

  We started with a pair of appetizers that would've sufficed as a
  meal. The spring rolls ($6.50 for six—six!) were exemplars of the
  form (thin deep-fried crispiness surrounding a fresh veggie jumble),
  but all thunder was stolen by the vegetable tempura ($9.50), a platter
  of oh-so-lightly battered-and-fried fresh veggies (red peppers,
  zucchini, broccoli, onion) that thrilled my vacationing-carnivore
  dining mate and me equally. There's simply no arguing with a good fresh
  red pepper, and adding tempura to the equation takes things to an
  almost pornographically delicious level.
  After such pleasing openers, our entrées were perhaps doomed
  to disappoint. Only one did. My pad phirk khing ($8.50) boasted an
  attractive aroma and a sprinkling of finely cut lime leaves, but
  problems arose with another primary component—the fake meat, here
  billed as "bean composition" (yum!) and formed into knotted chunks that
  required aggressive chewing. Not helping: the sauce-soaked green beans,
  which were distressingly bland. But happiness came rushing back with my
  dining mate's pad thai ($7.95), a straight-up meat-free spin on the
  classic tamarind-kissed noodles, delightfully spiced, with nice-size
  chunks of stir-fried tofu. When I order this pad thai again (and I
  will), I'll request the addition of broccoli and zucchini. But such a
  request may be a ways off, as working my way through Araya's voluminous
  menu could take years—glorious, glorious years.

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• Araya's Vegetarian Place: Vegan for Everybody

  June 2, 2009

  The Stranger

  Araya's, a vegan Thai restaurant, is just the kind of peaceable kingdom
  you'd expect it to be (queendom actually, since like many Thai chefs,
  Araya Pudpard is a woman). It's got golden walls, potted plants, a
  blue-sky-painted ceiling, quilted wall hangings, and dancing
  sculptures. The air is heated to near steaminess, and there's a high
  dreadlock count among the diners. But there are also a couple of Middle
  American parents eating happily with--one can only imagine--their newly
  radicalized college-aged kids. And that's the good thing about Thai
  food: You can easily go vegetarian, or vegan for that matter, in mixed
  company.

  Normally, when I cook a vegan meal, I end up going the Mediterranean
  way, using olive, walnut, or pumpkinseed oil here and there to add
  flavor that might otherwise come from meat, butter, or cheese. The
  beauty of a Thai meal is that the shift to vegan is almost
  unnoticeable. Thai cooking oils are vegetable-based, and the food gets
  its complex flavors from non-animal sources: coconut, coriander,
  galangal, chilies, and kaffir lime. Besides, most of the meat in Thai
  food, at least as it's cooked in American restaurants, is vestigial
  anyway. I often order my curries and noodles with eggplant or tofu
  rather than chewy, overcooked shreds of pork or chicken. The only
  really characteristic Thai flavor that isn't vegan is fishy--most
  notably, the funky back note of fish sauce or nam pla. At Araya, they
  use thin soy sauce to simulate nam pla's fermented depth.

  Vegetarian diners get accustomed to having only a choice or two on
  menus, but Araya's menu stretches on and on, entirely skipping the
  standard portobello mushroom "steak." In among the canonical Thai
  options--spicy coconut-milk soup, panang curry, Bathing Rama--are
  offbeat curries that skew toward the sweet: avocado, pineapple, and a
  vast, red pumpkin curry ($12.95) that's filled with smooth hunks of
  squash, crisp slices of broccoli and bamboo, and several forms of soy,
  including a kind of soy bologna and a chewier "bean composition."
  Vegetable cakes (like Asian knishes made of rice paste and stuffed with
  tasty Chinese leeks) are both pleasant and ponderous ($6.95). Rad na,
  made with the fat noodles I often prefer to rice sticks in pad thai, is
  bathed in a thin soy gravy, pleasant and messy to slurp up, with plenty
  of vegetables to crunch into--broccoli, carrots, and cabbage, for the
  most part ($6.95). The broccoli is a regular supporting player in
  Araya's food, popping up in so many curries and noodle dishes that I
  think it's acting as a signifier of vegetarianness. The pastel cover
  illustration of the first Moosewood cookbook, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, kept popping into my head.

  Much to its credit, and like many other U-District restaurants, Araya's
  also has a cheap lunch buffet ($5.99). As a kid, my parents would only
  take my siblings and me to restaurants with endless salad bars and
  endless steam tables. The abundance on display at the local Coco's was
  thrilling to a little girl with wide eyes and a big belly, and I still
  get a little all-you-can-eat thrill each time I grab an empty plate and
  start spooning away. Araya's buffet starts with a salad bar--a sesame'd
  spinach salad and sweet marinated cucumbers--and then offers soup and
  egg rolls with peanut sauce. It's the hot table, though, where you can
  really store up for the day on dishes like a low-key pad thai,
  vegetable fried rice, and a gentle green vegetable curry. Of course,
  there's more broccoli in everything.

  Sweet and broccoli-heavy as it can be, the food at Araya's, much like
  early Moosewood, has a kind of homespun wholesomeness that seems like
  good medicine this time of year. Unlike Moosewood, however, there's no
  cheese.

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