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Lan Cafe

Nestled between the standard chili light Indian restaurants on Curry Row (aka East 6th street) you will find a jewel of New York vegetarian cuisine called Lan Cafe (342 E 6th Street). Its an incredibly simple, unassuming, and comfortable (albeit small) Vietnamese restaurant that is an extreme value. The standout dish is the Vegetarian Ham Salad (pictured here to the left), which has so many layers of flavor it manages to refresh in the summer and comfort in the winter. I think the difference with dishes like these is the use of fried shallots for flavor and crunch. I always love to start with it, and move on to the Grilled Lemongrass Seitan over rice vermicelli (pictured right). These dishes seem as traditional as they come, and though they do seem like “meat substitutes” its hardly what you think of when you eat them. It’s an outstanding meal being piped out of a tiny restaurant that I can only hope stays open for years and years due to (what has to be) the low overhead.


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