Vegan Hampton Roads

Sorry for the hiatus! I was in Europe for a few weeks vacationing and sampling delicious vegan food. If you’re ever in Berlin, you must seek out YoYo Foodworld! Now, back to the many vegan things Hampton Roads has to offer…

Indian restaurants are always great places to find vegetarian and vegan options, but Rajput Indian Cuisine in the Ghent section of Norfolk really goes out of its way to spoil diners, especially us vegans.

First off, let me just say this so you can mark it off on your calendars for the next year, Rajput offers a vegetarian and vegan dinner buffet on the first Thursday of every month. That means next week - on Thursday, September 3rd - you could be sitting down to a giant plate of mostly vegan buffet items, such as vegetable samosa, mint chutney, roti, vegetable jalfryizi, tofu patia (to die for - you must get this if you see it on the menu!), cauliflower and potatoes, and you can polish it all off with a dessert of carrot pudding before heading up there to do it again. All vegan! Those are just a few of the items I’ve seen on the monthly buffet. The price runs under $15 for the dinner buffet.

The lunch buffets at Rajput tend to cater more to the omnivores, but if you luck out with a veg-friendly buffet one day for the lunch it will run you around $10.

Rajput offers a veg-friendly brunch on the weekends, which basically means the buffet is full of your typical vegetarian, mostly vegan items, and there is a table on the other side of the room with some meat dishes. I always forget about this, but I’m pleasantly surprised when I head in for a weekend lunch and most of the buffet is vegan.

If you happen to check out the buffet one night and it’s not vegan friendly enough to make it worth your while, the menu is expansive. Rajput boasts one of the largest vegan menus in the Commonwealth. Make sure you ask for the vegan menu. The regular menu includes most of the vegan items, but I’ve found some gems (like tofu patia!) on the strictly vegan menu. Plus it’s just fun to have an entire menu at your vegan fingertips full of so many choices.

Some great things to try at Rajput are the Tofu Patia ($10.95), which I wanted to mention at least three times in this review, Caulfilower Potatoes ($10.95), Eggplant Bhartha ($11.95), and the Chana Masala ($10.95). There are plenty of other vegan dishes, but those are some of my favorites. All of the entrees are served with perfectly cooked basmati rice and you can specify the spiciness of your dishes. I tend to go with medium hot for most dishes.

No Indian meal is complete without some bread. Luckily Rajput has a long list of vegan breads from which you can order. My favorite is the garlic roti ($3.95). I’ve said before that Nawab’s roti is my favorite, because it tends to be softer and fluffier, but they only offer plain roti. Rajput offers plain ($2.50), garlic, and prathas stuffed with things like onions and potatoes.

Every meal ordered from the menu starts out with some pappadum and two chutneys - generally onion and mint. These are vegan and delicious! Like a yummy seeded cracker to put your hunger at ease before you get down to business.

If you want to try a number of things, but the buffet isn’t very vegan, you can order a combination plate called Vegan Thali ($16.95), which includes vegetable pakora, palak tofu, chana masala, salad, basmati rice, roti bread and carrot dessert.

If you want to share, you can order a vegan dinner combo for two ($31.95) that includes an appetizer and entree of your choice, and these combos can be scaled up for four people, six, etc.

The service is always great. Takeout and catering is available. And forgive me for the lack of photos on this post, but Indian food isn’t the most photogenic - it might be the most delicious, though.

Rajput Indian Cuisine

742 W, 21st Street
Norfolk, VA 23517
(757) 625 4634

Lunch: Mon-Fri 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Sat-Sun noon to 3 p.m.

Dinner: Sun-Thu 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Fri-Sat 5:00 p.m.-10:30 p.m.

Remember, you can follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-minute Hampton Roads vegan dining news and conversation @veganHR. For local vegan food porn, check out our flickr stream.

When you think of vegan Indian food in Hampton Roads, no doubt Rajput in Ghent comes to mind. But that’s a review for another day.

Before Rajput hit the scene, there was Nawab and the restaurant, with its four location, is still going strong. When I first tried Indian food it was at Nawab’s famous lunch buffet. I was hooked.

While their vegan selections aren’t as extensive as Rajput’s menu (supposedly the largest vegan menu in Virginia), the dishes they do offer are to die for. My current favorite is the Goan Curry, a coconut-infused, creamy mixed vegetable dish. When it’s brought to your table it smells like the coconut will overpower the dish. Shredded coconut is garnished on top. But the coconut flavor is just right. I tend to order my Indian food medium to medium-hot and this dish has just enough creaminess to cut the heat.

If you’re not a coconut fan, the Eggplant Bartha, a spicy mashed eggplant dish punctuated with green peas, is also great. It was my favorite for quite a while. Other vegan dishes offered are Vegetable Jhalfrazie and Chana Masala.

All dishes are served with perfectly-cooked jasmine rice. Indian food is traditionally served with a bread known as naan, however naan is not vegan. The roti, a vegan, unleavened whole wheat bread, is great at Nawab. Roti tends to have a more cracker-like texture, but the roti at Nawab is fluffy and tender.

And I always order a side of mint chutney to slather onto my roti. It’s my favorite part of the meal, truth be told.

Nawab does offer lunch buffets, though there usually only tends to be one vegan entree. I always check with the servers about what’s vegan before deciding whether to order from the menu.

Another great thing about Nawab? Four locations! I know, most of my reviews have been of Norfolk restaurants, but I’m trying to expand. Nawab has locations at Hilltop in Virginia Beach, at Military Circle in Norfolk, on Jefferson Avenue in Newport News and one in Williamsburg.

Rather than list all the details of every location, you can visit Nawab’s Web site here.