Critics’ choice: Vegan dining redefined

Next Chicago

Grant Achatz has real nerve, said Phil Vettel in the Chicago Tribune. Since 2011, Next’s celebrated chef has been executing limited-run tasting menus whose themes suggest dares: “Paris, 1906”; “Tribute to el Bulli.” Yet his current menu, “Vegan,” might be his most audacious yet. “It’s not difficult to command $250 for a dinner full of luxury ingredients,” after all, “but a menu featuring kale?” Available through August 24, the meal begins with a visual flourish: the arrival of flowers that turn out to be made of fried kale and filled with avocado-lime puree. It’s the first signal that there won’t be any humdrum hummus or tofu in this 20-course meal. Small bites include potato sorbet in a “crisp-fried” purple majesty potato skin; the evening’s “more-composed plates” include a dish that traces the life cycle of an apple “from tree to fruit to fermented juice,” and “an absolutely brilliant salsify composition that, in one aspect of the dish, mimics the flavor of a mignonette-dressed oyster.” This summer, Achatz has done every student of vegan and vegetarian cooking a favor: He’s put “the art of the possible” on display. 953 W. Fulton Market, (312) 226-0858

Crossroads Los Angeles

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Crossroads “must feel like a godsend to certain vegans,” said Besha Rodell in LA Weekly. “Dark, chic,” and routinely packed with “gorgeous, malnourished Hollywood types,” it puts the focus every night on wow-inducing small plates, ambience, highly engineered cocktails—really, everything but the fact that the menu contains no meat or dairy. Chef Tal Ronnen’s creations impress most “when he focuses on the inherent deliciousness of vegetables and grains, and presents them in creative combinations.” A recent offering of okra with Calabrese peppers, pickled ramps, and Marcona almonds “was as creative and rewarding as any vegetable dish I’ve had all year.” Ronnen can also do whimsical, creating what he calls “artichoke oysters,” by frying up oyster mushrooms and presenting them on artichoke leaves topped with “caviar” made from kelp. I’m not yet sold on the cheese plate (featuring cheeses made from nut milks), but “if the aim of Crossroads is to make vegan dining palatable” to non-vegans, “it’s doing a swell job.” 8284 Melrose Ave., (323) 782-9245

Kajitsu New York City

It should come as no surprise that a gifted Japanese chef “can fashion a delicious multi-course meal out of nothing but plants and mushrooms,” said Pete Wells in The New York Times. The cooking tradition known as shojin ryori grew out of Japan’s earliest Zen Buddhist monasteries, and “when the Japanese have been working on an idea for hundreds of years, they tend to figure out a few things.” At Kajitsu, a restaurant that recently moved into a “tranquil and luminous new home” in Manhattan’s Murray Hill neighborhood, chef Ryota Ueshima finds “unexpected depth” in the simplest dishes. Into a mushroom broth swimming with porcini and morels, he’ll add green sansho buds and blossoms whose lemony bite gives the mushrooms a taste like cured meat. Don’t miss Kajitsu’s fermented tofu, which “has something like the funky, very deep flavor of blue cheese,” but “with a smoothness all its own.” And allow yourself the time to finish every meal with matcha, green tea frothed by Ueshima with a bamboo whisk and served with a deep bow. 125 E. 39th St., (212) 228-4873