Joined our friends for holiday lunch at this neighborhood establishment. It’s close to our house, and I’ve only been once before, for take out soup for Mrs. Burgerdogboy; the Mrs. loves her soup.
Green Wok is a vegetarian restaurant, and at noon offers a set price buffet as well as the regular menu. It’s a fairly competitive neighborhood for restaurants, we have Baba Fresh, Subway, Baristador’s, the Hummus Stop, a pho place, and of course, my standby – 7-Eleven.
My only other experience with a vegetarian buffet in Portland was at the Vegetarian House in Old Town. It was pretty good, as I recall.
Glancing at Yelp or Urban Spoon, you’ll find mixed reviews for the Green Wok, but you will for any restaurant.
We give plus points for any locally owned place, on that merit alone. Today, between the four of us, we had a wide variety of foods, including kung pao chicken, noodles, rice, fake sushi, an eggplant dish, mixed vegetables, spring rolls.
All in all, it was good. I have to agree with some other assessments I have seen in reviews – by 1pm (when we arrived) the buffet is starting to look sparse. In farness to management, we did not ask if they would prepare more, but I think they would.
The faux sushi was good, but the fake fish was not to my taste. I kept thinking it looked like Patrick (from Spongebob’s) tongue. I expected it to wag. The consistency was reminiscent of fish, but it really didn’t have much taste.
We shared the ABC roll (avocado, bacon, and c-something), and that was interesting, in a good way.
I of course, liked the fried rice and spring rolls. The kung pao “chicken” was pretty tasty as well.
Will I go back? Sure.
