Enlightened Cuisine Vegetarian Restaurant
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“Enlighten, Enrich, Enjoy” Welcome to Enlightened Cuisine Vegetarian Restaurant. We hope you will enjoy your dining experience with us and return frequently to sample the delights of our unique cuisine. About Us Our restaurant was established to offer an alternative to other vegetarian restaurants. Our teachings tell us that dining should be a pleasurable experience which is more than simply the consumption of “fuel” for living. Our aim is to create a relaxed environment that is both inviting and comforting. We believe that, in addition to the quality of our cuisine, the physical environment should be pleasing and the service should be polite and helpful. We truly hope that this will be your experience. Our Cuisine The food we serve is strictly vegetarian. Our use of mock meat products is intended to broaden the vegetarian dining experience and to encourage those who would like to make the transition to a meatless lifestyle without necessarily giving up the taste and texture. The History of Mock Meat The concept of using a mock replacement for meat is not new. In the early Chinese Imperial dynasties, prior to the Emperor performing his annual prayer for the kingdom’s prosperity, he was required to practise strict vegetarianism for seven weeks. The Royal Court’s skilled chefs created extraordinary vegetarian recipes with the appearance, texture, and taste of the Emperor’s favourite meat and seafood dishes as a substitute for the Emperor’s normal meat diet. This skill has been passed down over the years and developed further by Chinese monks. The monks were required to emulate meat for the Emperor when he visited their temples because they were not permitted to serve real meat to the temple. Benefits of Eating Soy Based Products Our dishes are based on soy and wheat protein products. The most commonly known soya bean products is tofu while our wheat based product is sometimes termed “seitan” (also known as gluten). Gluten is the name of the insoluble protein in wheat, probably most familiar as the ingredient that makes bread dough elastic. When raw gluten (wheat dough with the starch washed away) has been cooked in a broth of shoyu, ginger, and kombu, it is called “seitan”. This name was coined in the early 1960’s in Japan by George Ohsawa, the founder of macrobiotics. The use of soya bean, on the other hand, dates back 5000 years. Everyone can benefit from soy. It provides high quality protein, full of vitamins, minerals and fibre with absolutely no cholesterol or saturated fat. It is known to reduce the risk of heart disease, various types of cancer and digestive disorders. It avoids milk allergies (lactose intolerance) and is beneficial in diabetic diets. Best of all, soy foods are unbelievably delicious. Soy based products can also simulate different meat and meat products. Meat analogues, as they are often known, are made primarily from textured proteins (TVP) and soy concentrate. They are an excellent source of protein, Vitamin B12 and iron. Soy meat analogues also contain a high level of genistein, a compound found only in soy and known to possess remarkable powers of healing and disease prevention. It is our sincere desire to offer you a healthy dining experience, full of culinary creations in a relaxed and charming environment. What more could one ask for? Please enjoy. We hope this short description will ENLIGHTEN you and serve to ENRICH your knowledge of our vegetarian philosophy. Hopefully, this will help you to ENJOY your culinary exploration with us. |
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