Plumeria
4661 Park Blvd. (University Heights)
619-269-9989
Prices: Starters and salads, $3.95 to $5.95; entrees, $7.95 to $10.95
Por Frank Sabatini Jr. | Descripción del restaurant
Their fragrance excites pollinating moths at night. By day, people gather monthly in Balboa Park to celebrate their exotic beauty. Lately, however, plumeria flowers have become the beguiling symbol for a vegetarian Thai restaurant in University Heights
, where the mock chicken satay tastes real even without peanut sauce.
Plumeria is a small restaurant that feels exceptionally comfortable. Booths and banquettes are embellished with colorful throw pillows. Tables are spaced reasonably apart. And a jumbo mural of the tropical blooms set against soft-purple walls soothes the psyche like a cup of hot taro tea.
Vegetarian versions of duck, beef, chicken, pork and shrimp comprise the protein list, along with non-GMO tofu (steamed or fried) as plainer options. The duck and chicken rank as the most convincing in terms of flavor, although if the faux shrimp I chose for a zesty preparation of spicy noodles were a notch sweeter, I might have been fooled into thinking they were actual Baja white shrimp.
Most dishes are accompanied by a heart-shaped mold of brown and Jasmine rice, with both steamed to a semi-sticky fluff. Equally charming is the house pineapple sauce. Fruity, yes, but tasting a little more sour than sweet. It comes with crunchy Thai rolls filled with dried mushrooms, cabbage and carrots. It was love at first swipe, proving more refreshing than cloying plum sauces served elsewhere.
For an order of crispy tofu that my vegetarian companion ordered, the pineapple sauce appeared again, though as a necessary flavor enhancer. Rich peanut sauce is also served with these spongy cubes of soy, which this carnivore typically can’t eat without boldly flavored condiments.
A majority of the menu caters to vegans with the exception of cream cheese adding velvety texture to an appetizer of wontons stuffed with water chestnuts, and eggs serving as an option in various stir fry. The egg I requested in the aforementioned spicy noodle dish imparted mere scatterings of extra protein that were largely camouflaged by the deep-red hue of the garlic-chili sauce. Combined with fresh basil, onions, bell peppers and the mock shrimp, the dish was as lively and aromatic as any you’d find in the top Thai restaurants along Larkin Street in San Francisco.
The ever-growing popularity of pumpkin curry shows up at Plumeria in a vivid sauce cloaking eggplant, peppers and bamboo shoots. At the urging of our waiter, my companion opted for the mock duck as his protein, steering him justly to a credible meat flavor that wasn’t as gamy as it was beefy. Of everything we ate, it carried the classic long-lasting flavor known as umami, the Japanese term describing foods that fall outside the categories of sweet, salty, bitter and sour.
Soups and entrees are made to order on a heat scale of one to 10. When we initially chose “five” for the entrees with a little fear in our voices, our waiter talked us down a point, warning us “five is pretty hot.” He advised us well, as both the noodle dish and pumpkin curry fell a hair short of causing a forehead sweat. Oddly, the somtom green papaya salad we started out with, also at level four, tasted much hotter, although the cool juices of the papaya, tomatoes and lime juice joining forces with plum sugar made it masochistically pleasant.
Even if you drop into Plumeria for only a bowl of Tom Kah soup, which brings together broccoli and cabbage in its base of coconut milk, and pair it with charry chicken satay that resembles moist thigh meat, you’ll soon forget the days when vegetarian food tasted like antimatter.
