Offbeat Eats

As you can see from our recent review, we again found ourselves heading up to Montreal for a weekend of particularly excessive Quebecois dining. This usually leaves me craving a lighter, healthier meal at some place, and in the past, we’d often hit up Yuan Vegeterien for some light vegeterian-based Japanese and Chinese food. We decided to do that again this trip, and ran into a slight hitch: Yuan isn’t quite there any more. Around January of 2022, it re-branded as Oplante. It is mostly the same concept, but shifting from vegetarian to vegan, and focusing more on serving all-you-can-eat buffet-style food (although they still offer an a la carte menu, which is what we ordered on).

Okay, it’s now time for Offbeat Eats to get back Stateside. Last August (yes, yes, I’m behind again), we joined friends of ours from college and TivoCommunity in our annual tradition: a Death March. That’s a 20+ mile hike through an urban area exploring all the food options, and this year we decided to give Seattle a try. There were a few reasons for this: (a) it’s been a perennial top finisher in the polls when we’ve been selecting cities to visit, and (b) my college roommate Steve had just moved there from San Francisco back in 2015. So we rounded up the usual cast of Death Marchers plus a few locals from the Pacific Northwest, and set out on our hike (basically a giant loop starting by Volunteer Park and looping through University of Washington, over to Phinney Ridge, and through downtown, ending up down near Georgetown). One of our first stops was a find by Steve: Mighty O Donuts.

Recent events in my household have led me to discover that there’s an entire subprofession of veterinary care that I didn’t really know much about: Veterinary Oncology. Yes, my poor dog Buster has cancer, and it’s back. We’ve been considering treatment options, and the consultations have required us to travel down to Waltham, MA for these and the initial treatments. However, one of the few plus sides in this whole deal is that it’s introduced me to a part of the Boston metro area that I previous wasn’t familiar with (I’ve done mostly Boston, NE suburbs, and a few things around Natick due to work). Looking at the usual suspects for online reviews in the Waltham area, I was intrigued by one place that consistently showed up at the top of area restaurant review lists: Masao’s Kitchen, winning much acclaim for the quality of their Japanese vegan food. I’m not used to vegan places, Japanese or otherwise, making the top of review lists, so I was really intrigued, especially since I’m generally not the sort of person that seeks out vegan food.