This all-vegan restaurant won’t have you missing meat

For a city of its size, Honolulu has long suffered a shortage of vegan restaurants. When I’ve asked restaurateurs why they don’t offer more veg-friendly items on their menu, they’ve said that diners don’t order them.

I suppose that makes sense. When dining out, people want to treat themselves to something more extravagant. But that’s a problem I associate with a typical lazy approach to vegetables. Offering a few grilled veggies and a few salads and calling it a day is almost insulting. If I can make these things at home, why would I order it as part of a special evening out?

I have longed for a reliable and casual, but refined space for diverse vegan/vegetarian food on Oahu for three decades. Perhaps Greens & Vines came closest to my ideal.

But with AV restaurant, chef/restaurateur Ken Lee’s XO Restaurant Group has done the unimaginable and created an upscale venue dedicated to the art of vegetables.

The veg set has largely been shut out of world of molecular gastronomy because of elaborate chefs’ menus that favor omnivores. AV was imagined as a special occasion destination for vegans and vegetarians, and a place to bring veg-oriented diners from out of town.

Lee said a focus on vegan cuisine was one of the ideas that kept popping up while brainstorming with his staff at Restaurant XO on ways to not only survive but also expand during the pandemic. With more people interested in healthful diets as a way to boost their immune system, eating more vegetables became, he said, “part of the cultural zeitgeist. Diets are heading more plant-based and we saw a huge gap in the market.”

The biggest gap was on the high-end where diners could treat themselves to elevated cuisine rather than eat-tolive sustenance fare. AV was inspired by Ferran Adria’s Tickets tapas restaurant and bar. Adria, who popularized molecular gastronomy, created a fun carnival-like atmosphere to go with his modernist approach to cuisine.

In that spirit, guests at AV are invited to choose from a colorful assortment of plates and whimsical chopstick holders upon entering.

Leave any preconceived notions about vegan cuisine at the door. You’ll see few unadulterated leafy greens on the plate. Here, the kitchen is a laboratory for exploring possibilities, and up-and-comer Harrison Ines, chef de cuisine for the XO Group.

If you’re quibbling about the $140 cost of the omakase menu, well, there are dozens of elements and a lot of labor that go into these dishes, and calculating these hidden values is not as obvious as tabulating the cost of more familiar luxe ingredients such as steak and lobster, but I think the value is there.

Dishes will be swapped out a few weeks at a time, but when I visited, Ines got my attention with a clear “crystal” crostini of potato and kudzu starch that formed a crunchy base for gels of pomegranate and garlic.

Next came a beet tartare tartlet filled with roasted beets and fried shallots bound by Vegemite and Marmite mayo, and topped by an “egg yolk” of tomato using the reverse spherification process of dropping the tomato juice into an alginate bath.

This was followed by an activated charcoal crepe topped with grilled cauliflower bagna cauda and white miso.

Among my favorite dishes of the evening were a dan dan tortellini with filling of king oyster mushrooms, tempeh, tofu with Chinese sesame paste and preserved mustard; xiao long bao or soup dumpling filled with banana blossoms and king oyster mushrooms, plus black truffle shavings with truffle oil and juice; and a crunchy deep-fried potato cannoli of shoestring potatoes encasing vegan shrimp, peas and carrots.

I also loved an intermezzo of celery gazpacho sorbet finished with accents of compressed cucumber, celery leaf, green bell pepper, roasted serrano pepper and harissa jam.

While much of these dishes are quite novel, the taco “tako” that followed had flavors anyone would recognize. This veggie version of takoyaki comprised seitan sausage with vegan cheese and taco-spiced tomato sauce.

Nods to Japanese cuisine came next, starting with nigiri of grilled eggplant, a Japanese curry croquette with the shape and crunch of fried chicken and smoky portobello sando with katsu sauce.

The next supplement is intended to leave no one feeling hungry. A full-size waffle dog is filled with a flavorful blend of cauliflower puree, vegan mozzarella and mustard, seasoned with paprika, vinegar powder and chile-garlic powder.

The grand finale comprised a trio of desserts: a macadamia nut cookie drizzled with cream anglaise, dulce de leche and a sprinkling of Maldon salt; prickly pear sorbet with chia seeds and date syrup; and most dangerously, a golf ball-sized orb of melon soda encased in white chocolate.

Diners are instructed to pop the entire orb into their mouths allowing the shell to melt away and unleash a torrent of liquid accompanied by the fizz of Pop Rocks.

I imagined the scene choking on dessert as some, I’d heard, spewed liquid on themselves. Opting for safety, I nibbled the top of the sphere, which worked, the orb then appearing like an eggshell filled with fluid. It all added up to a fun and entertaining evening, and I didn’t miss meat at all.

Nadine Kam’s restaurant visits are unannounced and paid for by Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Follow Nadine on Instagram (@nadinekam) or on YouTube (youtube.com/nadinekam).