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Michael Mina
335 Powell St
San Francisco, CA
415.397.9222
www.michaelmina.net
There are restaurants that offer vegetarian menus just to round out their offerings - Alex at Wynn, for example. And then there are those that understand that vegetarian cooking can be innovative, delicious and fulfilling. Michael Mina falls into the latter group.
The San Francisco restaurant offers a full vegetarian menu filled with creative and tasty offerings.
A recent dinner included the heirloom beet chop salad (above) with spiced filberts, fromage blanc fritters and Belgian endive. The combination of the sweet beets and bitter greens made for a nice balance, especially with the warm nuggets of cheese.
The chickpea soup (below) was set off with sweet bites of onion.
The soft-boiled hen egg with green asparagus, chanterelle mushrooms and bernaise sauce made for a wonderful entree. The warm egg was cooked for 40 minutes so that it came out nice and warm with a perfectly viscous yolk. If only more places that made eggs Benedict took the time to make their eggs like this. The egg was atop asparagus that had been thinly sliced lengthwise, so they were almost like noodles.
The German chocolate torte with pressed coconut and candied pecans was rich and flavorful.
While the food at Michael Mina is quite good, the service is somewhat lacking. Dishes were not cleared immediately between courses, it often took a reminder to get water glasses refilled, and instead of replacing a lint-covered napkin the waiter shrugged it off. The linens were wrinkled and the arm of my chair was coming apart. The restaurant could use some attention. To their credit, the kitchen did send out an extra course - a squash salad - to fill time while waiting for the egg to cook.
Michael Mina is not the most cozy of restaurants as it's situated in a large room just off the lobby of the Westin St. Francis. The restaurant does have a nice deal right now - a three-course pre-theater menu offered before 6 p.m. for $55 a person.
Ubuntu
1140 Main Street
Napa, CA 94558
707.251.5656
www.ubuntunapa.com
Ubuntu, the two-year-old vegetarian restaurant in Napa, has become a media darling. The New York Times wrote about it as though they had no clue vegetarian restaurants served anything other than tofu and wheat gluten. It was odd given that New York has a rather nice share of quality vegetarian restaurants that focus on what comes out of the garden.
Perhaps it's that Ubuntu is not just a restaurant but also a yoga studio that helps with the fascination. While I like the restaurant and have eaten there about a half a dozen times, vegetarians used to eating quality meals might find it doesn't quite live up to the hype. In any event, Ubuntu is good.
One of the staples of the menu, and a great little pre-meal snack, are the marcona almonds in sea salt and lavender sugar. During a recent meal, those preceded a nasturtium, brioche and pear salad (above). Although it had a little too much bread, it was definitely a visual treat.
The strawberry pizza margherita (below) with hand-pulled mozzarella, three-day Napa strawberry soffrito, basils and saba was good, but nothing special. The strawberry soffrito was so light as to not add any flavor.
A much better choice was the creamy gnocchi with truffle oil (below).
For dessert, their vanilla bean cheesecake in a jar (below) is wonderful. During this meal it came with strawberries, at other times it's come with different fruits. It's nice and creamy and not at all dense and rich like most cheesecake.
Ubuntu serves quality ingredients, many from the restaurant's organic garden. It may not surprise vegetarians, but if the press is any indication, your carnivore friends may be amazed at what a vegetarian restaurant can be. 
graffEats
Guerrilla Dining
San Francisco Bay Area
graffEats@gmail.com
The hottest places to eat are no longer restaurants, but warehouses, fields, parking lots, even on a platform dangling from a crane. Guerrilla dining, as it's called, is to food what raves were to parties - an event held in a location revealed just prior to the event. Some are revealed through underground networks, while others are more out in the open, available for anyone to join.
graffEats has put on guerrilla dining events in castles and farmer's fields in the San Francisco Bay Area. Blair Warsham, former chef/owner of the Tinderbox in San Francisco, creates the meals. With 72-hours notice, he can accommodate vegetarians. 
On a recent night in Healdsburg, graffEats celebrated the start of tomato season with a tomato dinner near the basil fields (below) of Dan "The Tomato Man" Magnuson, who grows about 40 varities of heirloom tomatoes that are sold to restaurants in the area and at the local farmer's market.
The five-course menu included a fun but messy tomato popcorn (below). I'm kind of eager to see if I can do this myself by covering popcorn in finely crumbled, dried tomatoes.
That was followed by chilled watermelon and heirloom tomato soup, and a peach and purple Cherokee tomato salad with opal basil walnut pesto and aged California white cheddar (below). This was a wonderful, low-fat twist on a caprese salad. Friends I mentioned it to commented that peaches and tomatoes seemed a strange combination, but it worked. In fact, it worked extremely well. The tomatoes were so wonderful they served as a nice reminder in this dish that they are indeed fruits.
The main course was grits with fried green tomatoes (non-vegetarians had theirs with bacon and white shrimp). I was prepared to not care for this, but the grits were smooth and flavorful and the tomatoes maintained their sweetness for a well-balanced combination.
The final course was Humboldt Fog goat cheese with strawberries.
Diners ate family-style at one long table. Talking and getting to know the diverse group was a big part of the fun. Dan talked tomatoes (store them stem down) and shared some of his favorites. Each diner also left with a plastic bag of different varieties of tomatoes. The owner of the Cheese Shop of Healdsburg was on hand to talk cheese, and a local diner brought his homemade port to share.
Dinner was $45 a person and included music, and a donation to St. Anthony's Dining Hall. Wine pairings were $25 a person. The one negative was that the pours were small and no one was on hand to discuss the wines chosen for the dinner. The dinner was a bargain though, especially when compared to OutstandingintheField.com, which charges about $200 a person for their farm-to-table dinners.
Write to Blair at graffeats@gmail.com to get on his mailing list for upcoming dinners.
Araxi
4222 Village Square
Whistler, BC Canada
604.932.4540
www.araxi.com
There's no question - Whistler is largely a meat-eating kind of place. Vegetarians know the types of restaurants here well. Menus have every variety of animal on the planet and then a token "vegetable platter" just in case a vegetarian should walk through the door and still have the courage to order.
At first glance, Araxi is no exception. The menu is heavy on veal, steak, and fish. And then there's the sole vegetarian entree of spinach gnocchi. But if you're looking for good food in Whistler, well, Araxi is pretty much the place to go. (Barefoot Bistro is the other top-rated restaurant in Whistler, but finding vegetarian items there is like finding a carnivore at a PETA gathering.)
I called in advance and asked if the chef could prepare a vegetarian tasting menu. I was told it would be no problem. When I arrived, the menu had just changed. I found enough interesting items on the small plates menu to keep me happy. So I made my own tasting menu. I started with an heirloom tomato and buffalo mozzarella salad (above) with arugula, basil sorbet, olive oil and tomato chips. I'm a bit fussy about my mozzarella and this was among the best I've had, competing well with mozzarella made same day.
The white cheese souffle (above) with red sorrel, fresh laurel and lemon thyme cream toasted almonds and grilled almond oil, though slightly less cheesy than I'd hoped, was good. Others will probably appreciate that it is not overly rich.
The ricotta stuffed Pemberton squash blossoms with local vegetable ratatouille and gazpacho vinaigrette, globe eggplant and roasted garlic puree were nicely done and had a balanced flavor.
I did try the spinach gnocchi. It was nothing special and somewhat bland, so making a meal of small plates was definitely the way to go.
Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper called Araxi's executive chef James Walt one of the top seven chefs shaping Canada's cuisine. One can hope he can shape it a bit more toward vegetables, especially given the produce that grows in nearby Pemberton.
Araxi is well known for its extensive wine cellar. And the cocktails aren't bad either. Cheers!
A recent dinner included the heirloom beet chop salad (above) with spiced filberts, fromage blanc fritters and Belgian endive. The combination of the sweet beets and bitter greens made for a nice balance, especially with the warm nuggets of cheese.
The soft-boiled hen egg with green asparagus, chanterelle mushrooms and bernaise sauce made for a wonderful entree. The warm egg was cooked for 40 minutes so that it came out nice and warm with a perfectly viscous yolk. If only more places that made eggs Benedict took the time to make their eggs like this. The egg was atop asparagus that had been thinly sliced lengthwise, so they were almost like noodles.
