VEGETABLE MEMORIES

i went there once in its earlier incarnation when one of the bell's cats had bitten me, the old sacred heart hospital emergency room. it was actually below ground level. i was young, maybe 8, there w/a cat bite & i saw an array of seriously wounded & ill older folks. oddly, it wasn't an adventure that i savored.
how that place became p'cola's first & best vegetarian restaurant i don't know. no doubt there is ripe irony here: all that bruised & battered, sick & suffering human flesh giving way to an oasis of health & vitality. ok. that last part is pretty much a stretch.
strega nona was a decent version of early era vegetarian restaurants. way before greens here in the bay area or moosewood in upstate new york, the folks at strega nona were trying...they succeeded every now & then. several of the outrigger employees worked there too. i can vaguely recall some of the restaurant gossip tho none of it had the lunacy or decadence of outrigger lore.
food-wise, well, like i said, it was an early era vegetarian restaurant: veggie lasagnes, split pea soup, sprouts on most everything. typically unimaginative stuff, which was the basic philosophical position(& failure) back then in regards to vegetarian cooking. they baked a bread there that literally sucked every drop of saliva out of your mouth when you tried to eat it. that's still pretty impressive to me. i've eaten some bad bread in my years(& made it too)but nothing has come close to that stuff.
of course, their salads were good; soup & salads were the way to go here. the problem w/the salads was their house dressing. the dressing itself really wasn't the problem. in fact, the dressing was terrific. it was the sales pitch for the dressing that was the problem. when inevitably asked about what the house dressing was(which was being enthusiastically pitched), the answer was:
"we mix nutritional yeasts & amino acids together w/rice vinegar." smiling expectant faces collapsed into befuddlement or revulsion when they heard this. it was like they'd said they mixed shit & pus & squeezed it through a raw intestine onto fresh greens. " i'll have the french," was the usual response. p'cola wasn't known for it's adventuresome diners. i remember when the fine dining restaurant, jamies, opened. their signature dish was a parsley salad. a LOT of work went into that salad. my parents were aghast. the food was damned pricy, they reasoned, parsley doesn't cost anything!!! jamies changed their signature real quick.

the strega nona patrons who passed on the house dressing lost out. it really was incredibly tasty & nutritious:

1 tbs seasoning mix(spike is good here)
2 tsp bragg liquid aminos
3 tbs nutritional yeast
1 cup rice wine vinegar
1 cup olive oil
1 cup neutral oil(canola or grapeseed)

mix first 4 ingredients together & whisk in the oils. this works over a regular salad but also has a "meatiness" that stands up to grilled, cooked, or composed salads.


you can get the aminos at most any grocery store out here in cali now. the nutritional yeast you'll have to get at a "healthier" grocery. i found this recipe in the "good grits" cookbook.

i'm not sure when strega's finally closed. they lasted way longer than a lot of other p'cola restaurants. they tried for a while to be a hub of "activity" for the younger folks. oddball films were sometimes shown(i saw "slacker" here for the first time), political activism meetings, food awareness workshops(i didn't go to either of these), etc. that didn't last long. maybe it was just the novelty of being the only vegetarian restaurant in town that kept them going. i know it wasn't the food. but the "house dressing," that was damned tasty.