Nature Vegetarian Restaurant
1116 Franklin St.
Oakland
It’s December, we’re full of phlegm, and on a mission.
Time to slow down, pry open your throat – and guzzle some soup.
Step 1: Select Your Soup Wizard
As a lifer of the veg sort, I am forever on the hunt for prepared foods that are nutritious but tasty, thoughtful, and at least a bit outside of my home kitchen's reaches (which are wide and funky, but hardly expansive). Nature Vegetarian Restaurant, a downtown Oakland staple since its opening in 2012 by husband and wife duo Jian Liu and Hui Lin, boasts an extensive menu with all of the usual suspects and more than a handful of far less common fare. Their shark fin soup is not only ethical, but like the rest of the menu is 100% plant based, sans sanguine entirely. Further information is sparing but the categories run deep, and I look forward to finding out what each of the other offerings has in store on future visits.
Step 2: Acquire Your Soup(s)
With too many germs itching to spray, I opted to squirrel away home with my restorative potions, in hopes of rebuilding my vitality enough to rejoin society this weekend for open studios. I ordered a couple of cozy and comforting choices to go, and using what little strength my frail frame could muster carried the liquid health up to my attic apartment to slurp in solitude.
Step 3: Consume Said Soup(s)
Despite the BART ride home, everything was very hot upon opening. The “Traditional Health Maintenance Soup,” the reason for season, as it were, was up first. A heady waft of steam, highly aromatic, hit me upon opening. Dotted with bloated goji berries, the colored but clear base stock was sweet and savory in one, spiced and medicinal but gentle.
The berries, soft and squishy to the touch (yes, I stuck my fingers in to find out, sorry), were accompanied by crescents of a vegetable. Eggplant? No. Soft and slightly rubbery with lots of give. Also cordyceps, or another fungi, like tapeworms for good. Lastly, a fleshy pulpy, billowingly tripe-like and citric in one. White (jelly) fungus, it appeared, citrusy and celery-esqe, lightly sweet. The broth, light and vegetal, mild, almost tea-like.
For a quick bite of heartier fare, to hold down the soup, some sesame chicken. Immediately upon biting in I regretted the choice, wishing for the “spicy” veggie General Tao’s instead, but the nuggets were very good: a nice ratio of sticky sauce to crunchy battered gluten puff with the accompanying steamed broccoli, a little wet, bringing a clean simplicity and funky cruciferous depth cuts the sweet richness of the sauce.
Back to the soups though. With a songbird! Or you know, any other kind of bird, I don’t know, I haven’t reached that stage of my 30’s yet.
That sweet waterfowl rested in the wonton soup. This boasted a much lighter broth than the health choice, but was simultaneously richer and more savory. The dumplings were soft with small bits of interior crunch. They were just on this side of gooey, tasting of flour in a nostalgic way, and oh so comforting to bite through. The baby bok choy were ultra tender and creamy while managing to still provide a bit of bite and snap and just a whisper of heat, and the mushrooms melded in nicely. My only hot take would be to leave that ornamental carrot be, as it was rough to the tongue, a tad tough and tasteless. Its habitat, however, makes for an excellent meal.
