A Vote For Green

By John Kessler
Published on: 03/30/04


One of these days, I've decided, I'll give up red meat, white meat, dark meat, lunch meat and mincemeat and declare myself an ancho-baco vegetarian.

The diet will be quite simple: lots of green leafy vegetables, whole grains, tofu and tempeh with just enough anchovy and bacon to make life interesting. As long as no one takes away my Thai fish sauce or my pancetta, I could become a model veg-head.

But I could never embrace vegetarian orthodoxy and fret over rennet in my brie. And I wouldn't use meat substitutes. Ugh. You know the stuff — the textured vegetable protein that replicates taco beef right down to its gray pallor and sandblasted texture, the Thanksgiving Tofurkey, the "chicken" nuggets apparently formed from Dr. Scholl's inserts and seasoning salt.

Whenever a Buddhist-style vegetarian Chinese restaurant opens, I find myself of two minds. I love the fresh vegetables and healthy focus of these menus, but I find all the mock meats — the "scallops," the "beef" — disconcerting. Highly processed foods don't taste wholesome to me.

Green Sprout is certainly the best Buddhist-style Chinese restaurant I've been to in Atlanta. It has the liveliest sauces, the crispest vegetables and the highest quality pink curls of God only knows what part of the soybean's nether regions masquerading as shrimp. But that's not why I like it.

I like Green Sprout for its creative ways with undisguised vegetables and for the few homestyle Shanghaiese dishes that come out of this kitchen. Like many Chinese restaurants, Green Sprout has two menus. There is the standard menu, which looks like any standard Chinese menu and yet is a field day of meat substitutes. (Kung pao chicken? Heh, heh.) Then there is the chef's specialty menu, here listed on a dry-erase board and posted in a display of photographs in the front window. These are the dishes you most want to try.

The restaurant occupies a narrow, Spartan slot of space in Clear Creek Mall — the little shopping center across from Ansley Mall that also houses Ru-San's. There are but a few spacious, widely spaced tables on the carpeted floor and an omnipresent smell of glass cleaner in the air. The waiters are diligent about spritzing down every glass table topper after a party leaves.

The food is so inexpensive that you should order with abandon and box up the leftovers. For starters, don't miss the bean curd skin roll filled with bean sprouts. Yes, it sounds like diet hell but surprises you. Paper thin, shatteringly crisp wraps hold hot, peppery sprouts, carrot threads and slips of other veggies. You have to open root-canal wide to fit one of these babies in your maw, but then the effect is quite extraordinary as it all collapses with a whoosh of heat and flavor into a mere mouthful.

My other don't-miss is the Yukon Gold potatoes stir fried with salty bits of preserved Chinese greens, soothing and funky in every bite.

If you want to be a little more challenged try the dry-fried green beans with preserved and fresh tofu. Preserved tofu is a product that's left to ferment with hot chilies and then packed into a jar. A little goes a long way as it dissipates into the stir-fry sauce and coats the beans with its tangy/earthy flavor and uniquely clingy texture. It smells, well, spoiled at first, but it grows on you. My friend and I both went from wariness to love over the course of one meal.

It's not all so hard core. Some dishes bring Chinese-accented creations that any vegetarian could relate to. A steamed butternut squash half, as soft as velvet, holds a bright mound of peppers, cabbage and carrots tossed in a friendly plum sauce. Stuffed zucchini boats sport a crunchy tempura-batter crust. Firm triangles of home-style tofu absorb the flavor of their spicy brown sauce.

I diligently ate my way through the "beef," "pork," "chicken" and "wombat" (kidding about that last one). None of it was offensive, but then I'm not lining up for seconds. Given my druthers, the chewy squares of mock pork stir fried with crisp asparagus were far preferable to the Hunan scallops.

I also tried to pawn off the shrimp lo mein on my kids when I brought some Green Sprout takeout home one evening. They ate all of the delicious noodles but spit out the rubber curls and glared at me accusingly. I could only swell with pride: My kids have good taste.