VEGGIE OPTIONS IN THE BAY AREA

Living in Northern CA, we have lots of vegetarian options. And many of them have been rather tasty. While working at the SF Chocolate Salon in Fort Mason a few weeks back, I was able to have a sandwich from Greens To Go, the take out arm of the famed Greens Restaurant. For those of you who have never heard of Greens, it's a vegetarian restaurant that's been around for almost 30 years and founded by the SF Zen Center ( I read an article about Zen dining and food yesterday, and it totally confused me) and it's known for having just really great food.
So I ordered a sandwich featuring an olive tapenade, arugula, yellow peppers and cheese.
It was actually quite tasty, but this tiny little sandwich cost $6, so not exactly the greatest value. I look foward to going back in the future, though. It's a beautiful restaurant with a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the menu does look delicious.

Another vegetarian restaurant that we tried out recently is a South Indian restaurant called Udupi Palace. We learned about this restaurant after watching a local show that we enjoy called Check Please, Bay Area. It's a show where people suggest their favorite restaurants and after you watch this show, you can see why food is so good in the Bay Area. People are so demanding, vocal and passionate about their food, and they interview all locals and restauranteurs have to keep up to meet these tastes.

My high school friend, who was born in Qatar, is a vegetarian and attended both UCBerkeley as an undergrad and PhD student gave this place a thumbs down. He said we could find much better South Indian food in the South Bay, but we figured we'd try it out anyway, since we aren't really connossieurs of South Indian food and it's close to where we live.

We decide to go for an early lunch, and despite the restaurant being nearly empty, the servers were not very welcoming or friendly. It was our first time there and we were unfamiliar with their food, but they didn't offer to help us out at all. This place is famous for their dosas, so we each ordered one, and we also ordered some appetizers. We started off with this dish below, described as Fried Lentil Donuts served with Sambar &Chutney.
This was actually our favorite dish of the whole lunch. It was served piping hot and all that fried, crunchy surface along with the soft center made a tasty combination. Of course, I didn't realize until later that the bowl to the left was a soup and not a dipping sauce (it would've been nice had someone explained that to me).

I also ordered some potato samosas, which were ok. I didn't love the texture of the pastry on the exterior, but the flavor was pretty good.
Tom also ordered this big puffy fried bread called a partha. I only tried a little over it, because it was so greasy I just didn't find it too appealing.
And now for the main event. The dosas, are basically large pancakes stuffed with different fillings. We each ordered one and they were both huge. Here's Tom's dosa, stuffed with a potato mixture. He thought it was OK, enjoying the cripsy edges of the dosa, but there were too many potatoes for him and the pancake itself got very sticky and soggy after it'd cooled down a bit.
Here's my dosa, stuffed with potatoes and spinach.
I thought the filling was pretty tasty, but I agreed with Tom about the pancake, it just got too soggy and sticky and rather not enjoyable.

Overall, I thought our lunch at Udupi Palace was pretty good, but I don't think we're be back due to the neglectful service which made for a rather unpleasant dining experience. But we'll continue exploring veggies restaurant in the Bay Area and will report back to all of you.