5 vegan Chinese dishes that fool you into thinking they’re meat

A binary informs plant-based cooking, one often expressed, but also one worth remembering. To wit: What is the point of a plant-based dish? Is it to mimic animal ingredients, when called for, or should the dish rise or fall on its own merits, apart from any animal antecedents? Or can both be true at once?

At Mott 32 in The Venetian, the answer to that last question is: Yes.

The restaurant offers five dishes that marry plant ingredients with some of the Chinese techniques, textures and flavors of the main menu at Mott 32, which has eight global locations, including Las Vegas, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The plant-based selections aren’t simply culinary acts of legerdemain (though they are that), or trompe l’oeil you can eat (that, too), or exercises in box-checking options for vegan diners.

“I’ve been on a journey learning about sustainability,” said Malcolm Wood, the co-founder, group managing director and culinary director of Maximal Concepts, parent company of Mott 32. “We’re helping to educate our customers there are alternative ways to eat, and we’re making carbon-low decisions as restaurateurs.”

Dumplings, pork, kung pao

The plant-based menu goes big from the get-go, with a marquee Mott 32 dish: a steamer of xiao long bao, the Shanghainese dumplings carrying a cargo of minced ingredients and hot soup. These dumplings, filled with minced “pork” and tofu, offer the same slurpy savory pleasure as the pork original, though with a lighter feel.

“Pork” takes another bow when it’s shredded for a sauté with wood ear mushrooms, bamboo shoots, carrots, Chinese chives and chili bean sauce. The mushrooms and bean sauce contribute some of the richness otherwise provided by animal protein.

A take on kung pao chicken, a Sichuan standard, harnesses crisp “chicken,” cashews for crunch, and red Sichuan peppercorns and dried chilis, for that flowery tingling heat. A toss of sliced “beef,” flat rice noodles, bean sprouts and soya sauce emerges hot and roasty from the wok. The fact it’s vegan is beside the point; its appeal is inherent.

Sustainability harder in Asia

Chinese cooking, Wood said, suits a plant-based approach.

“It lends itself to kind of being sustainable off the bat. It is actually very vegan-friendly. Traditionally, meat was one of those scarcities (in China). We used meat to flavor dishes in sparing quantities. You ended up eating a more plant-based diet.”

At the same time, sustainability and plant ingredients have been an easier sell at Mott 32 in the West than in Asia.

“Chinese are very stuck in tradition, and it’s incredibly difficult to break that mold when you’re dealing with that heritage aspect of the culture,” said Wood, who is part Chinese. “The access to information around sustainability has been more readily available in the West and the movements have been led out of the West.”

The toughest dish to do

Signature smoked “cod” headlines the plant-based Playbill at Mott 32. “It was by far the most challenging dish,” Wood said. “The flavor, the flakiness, was the most difficult to pull off.”

The team did not want to create just a protein substitute (a trickier task with fish than with meat). They wanted to create a dish diners might rank with the original. After extensive trial and error, the “cod” was submitted to blind tasters. Everyone who tried it, Wood said, including his family, couldn’t tell “cod” from cod (or preferred the “cod”).

Fashioning skin and fat

Plant-based R&D continues at Mott 32 with the development, in the Hong Kong restaurant, of a vegan version of Mott’s famed Peking duck. A protein incorporating seaweed shows promise for the “duck.” A tofu wrapper fried crisp could conjure the skin. The fat, essential to Peking duck, remains an open issue.

“We want to create the texture and experience and celebration of Peking duck,” said Matthew Reid, co-founder of Maximal Concepts, the Mott 32 parent. “It’s about giving people who don’t eat meat the same experience.”

So, if it’s fat like a duck and crisp like a duck, it’s probably … a plant?

Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram and @ItsJLW on Twitter.