Xu’s Cooking is an Asian restaurant which only offers vegetarian and vegan dishes. Not a restaurant I would choose usually. But I might have mentioned here before that I have a vegan friend. Her restaurant choices are always a bit weird. I still remember her last one with reluctance.
This one sounded worse in a completely different way. Looking already at the online menu I was less than impressed by the many dishes with meat substitute. If you don’t serve meat than don’t call it that. It’s such a turn off!
Our starters included deep-fried peanut-vegetable balls, piquant soup with egg, spring roll, avocado maki and skewers, and deep-fried cheese-potato rolls. If you notice a pattern, we did too! It might all be vegetarian/vegan and therefore ‘healthy’ but most of it was deep-fried. One of my friends called her spring roll “hot and greasy and exactly what she wanted”. Is that really the only resquest you have on vegetarian food? Hot and greasy? In any case we were up against an onslaught on the gall bladder.
deep-fried peanut-vegetables balls @Xu’s Cooking
piquant soup @Xu’s Cooking
spring roll @Xu’s Cooking
avocado maki and skewers @Xu’s Cooking
deep-fried cheese-potato rolls @Xu’s Cooking
Later the main dishes didn’t vary much more. The grease level in them was exactly the same as before. We had fried noodles with vegetables, more of the avocado maki, grilled Jiao-Zi (vegetables dumplings), crispy duck with deep-fried vegetables, and ants on a tree (soy meat with vegetables on a hot iron plate). Just looking at these pictures makes me feel a bit sick.
fried noodles with vegetables @Xu’s Cooking
avocado maki @Xu’s Cooking
grilled Jiao-Zi @Xu’s Cooking
crispy duck with deep-fried vegetables @Xu’s Cooking
ants on a tree @Xu’s Cooking
Service by the way was friendly and quick and it was no trouble to substitute the ‘meat’ for more veggies or tofu. Overall the food was less than memorable. I really don’t believe that this kind of vegetarian food is healthy at all. I’ve rarely tasted ‘crispy duck’ which was greasy and dry at once. Also the ‘ants on the tree’ didn’t convince me. Honestly my choice of grilled Jiao-Zi was by far the most appealing to me. Overall the best dish was the free dessert of orange slices! In short this is not a place which will see me again. And just to be clear about, this has nothing to do with either vegan or vegetarian cooking. But rather with the really greasy food. Yours, Pollybert
Xu’s Cooking
1070 Wien, Kaiserstraße 45
Tel: +43 1 523 10 91
Mon-Sun: 11:30-15:00, 17:30-23:00
http://www.xus-cooking.at/
