Los Angeles, California (PRWEB) November 11, 2014

Manna Korean BBQ, a popular Korean restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, has added vegetarian options to its extensive menu.

While the establishment is mostly known for its All You Can Eat buffet, which includes a variety of beef, pork and chicken items, Manna felt it was important to offer vegetarian selections as well.

We want our menu to cater to everyone. While our menu is full of excellent meat choices, we also have some delicious vegetarian alternatives, the Manna Korean BBQ owner said.

Manna has robust All You Can Eat menus, including the AYCE Gold option for $18.99 per person and the AYCE BBQ Black option for $26.99 per person.

The vegetarian items can be found at both Manna locations, including downtown on Alameda Street and in Korea Town on Wilshire Blvd.

Manna also offers free parking at its downtown location and features champagne showers on guests birthdays.

The restaurant has become a great spot for parties because it can host a large number of people.

Were happy to invite birthday parties or any type of party to our restaurant for a great time, the Manna owner said.

More information can be found about Manna Korean at http://mannakoreanbbq.com/.

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Manna Korean BBQ in Los Angeles Adds Vegetarian Options to Menu

Washington Post Food and Dining editor Joe Yonan gives you a few simple rules to make frying less messy and scary. (Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)

One of those meals that has been seared into my memory is a tempura dinner in Tokyo. It was in a tiny place, with just one cook behind the bar and six of us seated at it. He swooped one vegetable or piece of seafood after another through a batter, into a wok and onto our plates, seemingly that quickly. We ate one piece at a time, dipping each into a simple sauce that added a little saltiness and freshness to each bite, and finishing the mushroom cap or the shrimp or the lotus root before the chef made us another piece.

The most impressive thing was how shatteringly crisp and light the crust was not heavy or greasy in the slightest. Second most impressive was how the flavor of each item came through so strongly. Contrary to expectation, the breading seemed to accentuate, not overpower, the food.

Its surprising, given how often I mention this experience, almost 10 years after I lived it, that Ive only recently started making my own tempura at home. Im a member of the frequent-fryer club, so its not that Im worried, as too many cooks are, about heating up oil. I suppose Ive been intimidated by the precision of Japanese cooking; I had a sense that there was much more to tempura than it seemed, and I never went there.

What I needed, really, was a good guide, and I got one in the delightful Japanese Soul Cooking, by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat (Ten Speed Press, 2014). The book beautifully demystifies so much of Japanese cooking, reminding readers that at their heart, ramen, gyoza, tonkatsu and, yes, tempura are pure comfort food.

The book isnt vegetarian far from it but the instructions for vegetable tempura alone are worth the cover price. The most surprising tip: to barely (and I mean barely) mix the tempura batter, leaving lots of lumps and unblended flour in it, and to mix it up immediately before coating and frying. The goal, the authors write, is to keep the gluten from forming; its the same theory as trying not to overwork, say, biscuits or pie crust. The batters uneven consistency adds to its laciness upon frying, and keeping it cold with ice cubes makes it more viscous and therefore more likely to adhere to the vegetables.

And theres more. The point is to read every bit of instruction and to pay close attention. If you do, youll be able to produce tempura worthy of memories, too.

See the article here:
Weeknight Vegetarian: For frying at its best, learn the art and craft of tempura

Kitchen 388 (388 Grand Ave.) is a popular brunch spot in Oaklands Adams Point neighborhood thats known for its fried chicken and waffles and for serving about a dozen pounds of bacon on any given Sunday. So it was with a certain sense of mischievousness that chef Kevin Schuder chose the cafe to be the site of his new vegetarian dinner series, which hes dubbed Veg 388 a vegetarian pop-up that takes over the normally meat-heavy restaurant five nights a week.

At Veg 388, the seasonal menu of inventive and inspired vegan and vegetarian cuisine might feature a salad of koji-marinated carrots or house-made pasta served with a lobster mushroom ragout. Every dish is served vegan by default, though customers can add a poached egg or grated cheese to certain dishes if they want. Most of the time, people wind up sticking with the vegan option, Schuder said.

Schuder isnt vegetarian himself; hell eat sustainable seafood and, on occasion, meat. But the chef explained that he cut his teeth working as a line cook at Millennium, San Franciscos most well-known high-end vegan restaurant. And when it came time to develop his own restaurant, he decided that he wanted to promote some kind of environmentally sustainable idea. And when he looked around at the other vegetarian and vegan food that was out there, Schuder felt that much of it wasnt very good or, at the very least, it wasnt being done in a way with which he could identify.

What we dont do is label food in parentheses, he explained, referring to the practice of many vegetarian restaurants to describe dishes in relation to meat-centric cuisine: chicken parmigiana or shiitake mushroom bacon. As Schuder put it, Chicken, in quotation marks, isnt chicken.

I guess I do want [the food] to shine on its own merits. People shouldnt shy away from good produce, he said.

What that means, from a practical standpoint, is that Veg 388 serves significantly fewer beans and soy products which are traditionally deployed to emulate the taste and texture of meat than your typical vegan restaurant. (Schuder does, on the other hand, incorporate about five or six different varieties of mushrooms on any given night.) Meanwhile, a foam that Schuder makes with fermented cashews is listed on the menu, simply, as cashew foam not sour cream, in quotes.

Schuders resume is dotted with such prominent San Francisco restaurants as AQ, Izakaya Yuzuki, and, most recently, Bouli Bar. But Schuder said he identifies most with two of the citys best-known permanent pop-ups, Mission Chinese Food and Pink Zebra restaurants known for their punk rock, modern edge.

According to Schuder, what he shares with the chefs of those establishments is a fine-dining background that hes decided to apply in a more casual, accessible setting to strip away the pomp and circumstance of it. Like the chefs at those pop-ups, Schuder uses a blend of traditional and modernist cooking techniques. He does a lot of smoking, drying, and fermenting. But hell also add xanthan gum to a pasta sauce to make it adhere better to the noodles, and he uses an iSi canister to aerate the aforementioned cashew foam.

Veg 388 is now open for dinner from Thursday to Monday, from 69 p.m. Schuder also just launched Kitchen 388s new happy hour program, which isnt strictly vegetarian, from 46 p.m. those same nights.

Read more here:
A New Oakland Pop-Up Serves Vegetarian Food with a Modern Edge