More Than Just Avocado Rolls

As a non-vegetarian person, I have been witness to about a million eye-rolls from vegetarians whenever sushi is mentioned. Thanks to Daniele’s great post about one Japanese restaurant’s vegetarian menu, perhaps one day we can all dine in peace and harmony.

I don’t get uptown very often, but I when I found out that Ninja on Oak Street had a special vegetarian menu I knew I had to make a special trip to go check it out.

My boyfriend and I went there for a late dinner on Friday night. The friendly staff seated us promptly and handed us menus. I eagerly flipped through to find the vegetarian section… but it wasn’t there! Did they discontinue the special menu? Had I hallucinated the pages of vegetarian options that I saw on the website? I asked our server, who quickly brought over a copy of the vegetarian menu. I was relieved, but also perturbed. The only reason that I asked for a veggie menu was because I knew they had one. If I had just walked in off the street I would have thought Ninja was just another Japanese restaurant with a paltry amount of vegetarian options.

After we ordered, the sushi chef presented us with a little starter of cucumber salad in a mayonnaise sauce. I was about ¾ of the way done with it before I realized that the stupid thing had fish in it. Super. I thought about pitching a fit, but I am not really the fit-pitching type. And my tolerance for accidental meat contact has increased exponentially since I moved to New Orleans. Sad, but true.

Okay, so I wasn’t off to such a good start at Ninja. But things began looking up once the food came. I split a tempura appetizer with my dining companion and got two sushi rolls for myself: the shiitake and the tempura sweet potato. The shiitake roll was okay. As it turns out, I am not that big of a fan of rolls that have the Japanese mayo in them. The tempura sweet potato was great! Once I had it in front of me, I grew a little skeptical about how well sweet potato would work in the context of the rest of a sushi roll. You know: rice, seaweed, soy sauce, pickled ginger. As it turns out sweet potato goes amazingly well with these things. Who knew?!

Now that I have learned two important things about Ninja (ask for a veggie menu; don’t eat the cucumber salad) I think my next meal there will go much more smoothly than my first.