Lan Cafe

Lan Cafe is a new-ish vegan Vietnamese restaurant on 6th St (India Row). It's super-tiny, and the atmosphere isn't great, but the food was pretty good and it would be a great place to order delivery from if you live nearby.

We started with the vegetarian shrimp papaya salad. I was remembering how good the green papaya salad was at Pukk and hoping for something similar. The "vegetarian shrimp" kind of grossed me out because I don't like the taste of seafood, real or fake. But it wasn't that fishy, and was really just slightly funky chunks of tofu. The salad was okay but not really what I was looking for. I think I wanted it to be more sweet and tart and have more peanuts, but it was kind of bland (and too light on the peanuts).

Then we tried the Seitan with Mixed Vegetables and the Pad Thai. Both dishes were good but maybe a little too greasy, and the seitan dish was a little heavy on the sweet sauce.

I would definitely go back to Lan Cafe, but I may be inclined to plan ahead and get takeout rather than eating in their tiny dining room.