I was pleasantly surprised to discover a decently good vegetarian restaurant in the barren San Bernardino city. Especially Chinese vegetarian! The Asian community is a tiny minority in San Bernardino so on the way back from Red Rocks when we discovered Chinese Vegetarian with 4.5 stars and 250+ reviews on Yelp?! .. OMG! Let’s try it! A part of me was skeptical even upon ordering, but as a Yelp Elite, I wanted to have some faith in the other Yelpers and their opinions of the food. This place is called Happy Family Vegetarian.
(Even though this is our first meal from a 3-day camping trip, it was pretty good!) We made it to the restaurant at 1455 and lunch special ends at 1500.. The female waitress/hostess was nice enough to still grant us lunch special prices!! YAY! How nice of her!
Our choice of drink was the flower tea, consisting of chrysanthemum, wolf berries, Longan, and sweet leaf. There is no added sugar to the tea, but the natural sweetness came from the berries and sweet leaves themselves. Plenty of refills of hot water and each brew was more sweet and flavorful than the previous.
Some vegetarian spring rolls to accompany our lunch special order. Each person gets one little tiny spring roll, which was okay. Super crispy on the outside and very moist and hot light vegetables in the inside. Lunch special also comes with a bowl of rice.
We each got the option to choose between spicy or non-spicy soup for lunch. We all opted for spicy, which is hot and sour soup (bamboo, tofu, carrots, dried black fungus mushrooms). The soup was gooey in texture, which is my favorite!
Our first dish was soft tofu with peas and carrots. The tofu was semi-firm in texture and smooth and soft. The sauce was gooey too! This was a lightly savory dish, which I appreciate. I love tofu though so I am biased.
This is crispy soy chicken nuggets with basil. The soy chicken nuggets are made out of soy and tasted almost like chicken in texture!! It was very savory and salty. Crispy on the outside. The basil was a nice touch and it reminded me of popcorn chicken from boba cafes!!
This was my favorite dish! (Im also biased towards bean curd though). This was vegetarian shredded pork with bean curd. Cooked in a thick soy based sauce. The shredded pork was chewy and slightly flaky. The bean curd was firm and chewy! Delicious, delicious vegetarian dish 🙂
Our next dish was mushroom sweet and sour chicken. I personally like to order this dish every time I eat vegetarian! This dish resembles orange chicken from Panda Express the most! It is a whole piece of mushroom inside, coated with a thick and crispy sweet and sour coating that perfectly resembles orange chicken! When you bite paste the crispiness, the soft and juicy texture of the mushrooms oozes out into your mouth! You can almost be tricked by the mushrooms, thinking it is chicken instead if you didn’t know this was vegetarian!
Our last dish was entree size because I ate with 3 boys and they all eat a lot.. It’s called vegetarian fish with hot bean sauce. This hits home for me. Back in high school, I almost ate vegetarian fish almost every week at this one vegetarian cafe down the street from my high school. The texture of the fish is firm and chewy and wrapped in a crispy seaweed layer on the edges. It is just soo savory and delicious for something that is not really fish.. It doesn’t really taste like fish because good fish is flaky, not chewy. But this was gooood!
Once in a while, I enjoy and appreciate a good vegetarian meal. I don’t think I could ever go 100% vegetarian because I love my meat too much!!! But once in a while or even more frequently occasionally, I love vegetarian food too! 🙂
