Vegetarian Paradise 2 (VP2), West Village, NYC

Variety
Quality

VP2 is all vegetarian Chinese restaurant on the lively McDougal street in West Village. Veggie lovers have waxed eloquent about this restaurant along with it's neighbor - Red Bamboo. Both restaurants have a heavy asian tilt and feature numerous faux-meat dishes.

This was my second visit to VP2. The menu is laden with faux-meat options and I remember having tried the shrimp noodles and peking duck back in 2007. As I mention often, it's difficult to pull off a dish with a huge faux-meat component. The peking duck was average and so were the "shrimp" in the shrimp noodles.

However, that could've been because both Aparna and I were floored by the sugarcane drumstick chicken. This is a deepfriend piece of tofu-chicken set on a piece of sugarcane stick. The chicken was juicy, the tofu textured to mimic the chicken fibres. I've since held it as the gold standard for faux meat. I stopped by VP2 just to get this one dish.

One must try the very reasonably priced fresh juices - my favorite being the carrot/beet/cucumber juice.