Going Way Beyond Tofu

Thai food is great--unless you’re a vegetarian. If you are, head for Grandma’s Thai Kitchen, a bright new place in Sherman Oaks.

Omitting meat, chicken and seafood from Thai dishes is easy. Using lots of tofu is obvious. But how can you cook without that quintessential Thai seasoning, fish sauce? And how do you flavor a curry without curry pastes, which strict vegetarians avoid because they usually contain tiny amounts of shrimp paste?

Bangkok-born owner Kim Ragasa has found ways. When cooking for vegetarians, Ragasa replaces fish sauce with soy sauce that she buys at a health food store. If she uses salt, it is sea salt. And the curry pastes? No problem. The kitchen makes its own shrimp-less pastes.

Ragasa knows that vegetarians want healthful, natural food, so she serves brown rice with vegetarian entrees and, if requested, uses honey instead of the sugar that Thais add to almost every dish. Eggs and dairy products are not used in any of the vegetarian dishes.

The resulting food is so good that meat eaters need feel no qualms about bypassing the regular menu (yes, all the meaty favorites are available here too) to share a meal with their vegetarian friends.

I’m not a tofu fan, but I liked the restaurant’s yellow curry with tofu, potato, carrots and green peas so much that I copied it for a dinner party. It’s a beautiful dish, sunny yellow and rich with coconut milk. Curry powder is partly responsible for the golden hue.

The waitress stepped into the kitchen to make the sauce for fried tofu herself. This appetizer (from the main menu) also overcame my distaste for tofu. It’s an amazing dish, crisp without a batter coating, meltingly tender inside. For the Thai-style sweet-sour sauce, she boiled sugar down to a syrup and added rice vinegar, cilantro and chopped roasted peanuts.

Spicy green beans, usually mixed with minced pork or other meat in Thai cookery, come with fried tofu cubes instead. The sauce is a heady, slightly sweetened mixture of mild California chiles, kaffir lime peel, red onions, garlic, cilantro stems, roasted cumin and coriander.

Eat this dish with a bowl of brown rice and you have a filling meal. Or mix some of the beans into vegetarian pad Thai for a fine-tasting combination. (The pad Thai formula here is simple: Leave out the meat or shrimp, retain the tofu and add bean sprouts, green onions, chopped peanuts, cilantro and a sweet-sour sauce.)

Instead of tom kha gai, the popular coconut-chicken soup, the restaurant offers coconut-mushroom soup. It’s very good, although a little too tart with lime juice when I tried it. Along with brown mushrooms, the soup contains broccoli, Asian long beans and such Thai aromatics as lemon grass, galangal (kha) and cilantro. The seasoning paste is nam prik pao, made with just three ingredients: California chile, red onion and lots of garlic, all roasted to bring out the flavor.

There’s a simple mixed vegetable soup that may be just what you want along with hotly seasoned, rich dishes. Or load up on vegetables with a mixed stir fry of cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, broccoli, baby corn and, well, too many more to list. This is a mild dish, so instead of plain brown rice, you might like to try fried brown rice, a nutty-testing blend of rice, vegetables, fried tofu and cilantro.

I tried to order mock chicken fried rice, only to learn that it has been dropped in a shakedown of the menu. Also eliminated were several non-Thai sandwiches, side dishes such as potato salad and desserts including carrot cake, which didn’t fit here anyway. The kitchen might consider adding a vegetarian mee krob, though. Everyone loves that crisp, sweet noodle dish.

Grandma’s Thai Kitchen is clearly after the health-conscious crowd. “The healthy approach to your dining,” says the menu, promising that dishes will be prepared to suit individual tastes. On top of this, prices are low. The vegetarian entrees, served with brown rice, are $5.95. Some, such as the spicy green beans with tofu, are hearty enough to feed two. And there’s a set vegetarian menu for $8.95 that includes an appetizer (egg roll), vegetable soup or a salad with peanut sauce, an entree, brown rice, dessert and tea.

The dessert is so typically Thai that I fantasize I am in Bangkok as I eat it. A blend of hot and cold, sweet and salty, crisp and smooth, it is coconut ice cream topped with peanuts and set on a base of warm, sweetened sticky rice. The rice is a tad salty--not the cook’s mistake but a Thai trick for accenting sweet flavors.

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BE THERE

Grandma’s Thai Kitchen, 13230 Burbank Blvd., Sherman Oaks. (818) 785-9036 or (818) 785-4670. Open Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Takes major credit cards with minimum order of $10. Beer and wine. Lot parking. Dinner for two, food only, $6-$20.

What to Order: Yellow curry, spicy green beans, pad Thai, coconut ice cream with sticky rice.