elephantwalktalk

Best Vegetarian Food 2008

I admit it: It felt good to learn that The Elephant Walk was voted the restaurant with the Best Vegetarian Food in Greater Boston by Citysearch.

We've been part of the Greater Boston restaurant landscape for over 17 years now and have offered vegetarians and vegans a strong vegetarian menu for at least 16 and a half of those years.

Soon after we opened The Elephant Walk in Somerville in 1991 we realized we had to do a better job of meeting the needs of vegetarians. On our very first menu we offered only Vegetable Curry.

It was then and remains now quite typical of restaurants to offer only a single vegetarian entrée to accommodate vegetarian clientele. But think about it from a vegetarian perspective: Is one vegetarian entrée choice really what you're looking for when you go out to dinner? Of course not. We had to do better than that.

It wasn't a simple task to develop The Elephant Walk's vegetarian menu. Believe it or not, there are extremely few traditional vegetarian Cambodian dishes! There is meat or fish or their essence in just about everything savory in the Cambodian diet.

It was quite a challenge to get the flavors of Tofu Citronnelle close to our all-time customer favorite [and what I enjoy referring to, along with Loc Lac, as The Elephant Walk's own gateway drug!]: "Poulet à la Citronnelle."

It's not simply a matter of a chef replacing chicken, beef, pork or fish in a traditional dish with tofu that gets it right. The hard - and by far most important - challenge confronting a chef who is trying to create a vegetarian version of a meaty favorite is getting the sauce right. Beef, chicken and fish stocks are tough to replace!

Nyep and Nadsa put in the time and effort to create worthwhile vegetarian Cambodian options, adapting many traditional Cambodian dishes and some of their own original Cambodian recipes to meet vegetarian and often vegan standards, while creating others from scratch. As a consequence, we offer a full menu of vegetarian and vegan choices at lunch and dinner at all three of our restaurants. And for the past five years or so they've both been teaching vegetarian cooking classes as well.

We're defintely grateful to Citysearch users for celebrating us for our commitment to serving vegetarians and vegans well - by serving the "Best Vegetarian Food 2008!"

Our guardian angel and The New York Times

On April Fool's Day 1992 a piece about The Elephant Walk appeared on the cover of the Living Section of the New York Times that would alter the profile and trajectory of our small restaurant business forever.

Marian Burros authored the piece but I've always felt that Nancy Harmon Jenkins deserved at least half the credit for it.

Nancy is a gifted and accomplished food writer herself, expert in Italian cuisine and the Mediterranean diet. She’s also our guardian angel.

When we opened in Union Square Somerville in August 1991 Nancy was a part-time resident of Somerville, on Prospect Hill, behind the restaurant.

Nancy had been a writer and editor for the Times in her recent past and must have dropped a dime to call her friend Marian to let her know about this new restaurant she had discovered just a short walk from her doorstep.

This was just one of many blessings Nancy bestowed on us. Another was an impromptu, magical dinner-for-two she shared with Julia Child at the Somerville Elephant Walk on a quiet Tuesday night early in our first, uncertain autumn.

N.B. This Times article includes three recipes too: Loc Lac, Curry de Legumes, and Leah Chah, all classics and menu fixtures to this day.