The 9 Best Vegetarian Dishes on Valencia Street – A Mission Moveable Feast

Calvin Trillin, one of my favorite authors, wrote vividly about hypothetical moving feasts that sampled from different restaurants all across New York City to make one amazing dinner. He prepared those menus for an imaginary Chairman Mao. Last weekend, Rob and I made it a reality for our friend Josh visiting from London.

You might remember Josh from the dog bite incident in France. He’s a great person, an even better cook and a strict vegetarian. High stakes were set for showing of San Francisco’s best food across Valencia Street on Halloween night!

• First, Burma Love (211 Valencia) where we stopped for an appetizer of fermented tea leaf salad and spicy samosa soup at the bar along with microbrewed beer made in house with ginger and lemongrass.
• Quick pit stop at Pica Pica (401 Valencia) for a traditional Venezuelan corn arepa filled with avocado, plantains and black beans with a lemon-y cabbage slaw.
• On to Cha-Ya sushi (762 Valencia), which overachieves by being entirely vegan and amazing. Agedashi tofu in a light ginger broth, a towering Senroppon salad of radishes, sprouts and soybeans and pickled oshinko maki rolls along with a small bottle of sake.
• At this point, we needed to detour from our gluttony to a house party. If we had continued, next stop would have been the white truffle dosa at Dosa (995 Valencia), a vegetarian burrito at Papalote (3409 24th Street @ Valencia) and then a mint It’s-It ice cream sandwich to end the night.