Loving Hut Portland

The first vegan restaurant choice in Portland was Loving Hut. I have heard a lot about this restaurant chain and actually had reservations to the one in NYC a few months ago, before their water main broke and we had to find another restaurant.

The Loving Hut Vegan Concept was created by Supreme Master Ching Hai. She is the founder and teacher of Quan Yin Method and has many followers all over the world. She grew up in Vietnam and her following is the biggest in China. She now has over 200 restaurants worldwide all of which are vegetarian or vegan. The Loving Hut in Portland run by an independent family.

The Portland restaurant truly lived up to its name, a loving hut. It was a small-ish restaurant and we were warmly welcomed in immediately by a very nice gentleman who ended up being our server as well. I'd even imagine that he was the owner, but that I am not sure of. He sat us in a prime window seat and immediately asked us if anyone in our party had allergies, no. Then he asked whether we had dined there before, since we had not, he provided a full breakdown of the menu. He discussed each kind of meal, how spicy it was, tailoring his talk to our spicy or spiceless enjoyment. We asked him for his favorites and he quickly provided a number of delicious looking lunch ideas (although, they all looked great.)

In the end, we chose according to our servers suggestions. After we ordered he brought by the soup of the day, a tofu vegetable soup. Simple, but tasty. Our appetizer was the Golden Yum Melt, which is a tofu cream melt with vegan shredded crab meat, our servers suggestion as the best appetizer. It was delicious. It tasted just like a crab rangoon! I would have never known the difference. Since that was a favorite of mine in the past, it was great!!

We also ended up picking two of the servers favorites for our meal, the Mongolian Wonder (which was my choice) and the Spicy Cha Cha. The Mongolian Wonder was beefy pieces of soy protein, green onions, yellow onions sauteed with a homemade sauce. This mixture was placed on a bed of crispy noodles. The Spicy Cha Cha was a yam-based protein in the shape of a shrimp that was fried and placed on green and red bell peppers, onions and celery on top of shredded lettuce. The spicy sauce, which was pretty spicy, was poured on top. When you broke open the fried "shrimp" they actually looked like shrimp, white with some red. I don't necessarily want something that looks like an animal product, but as long as it tastes good and isn't an animal, I am fine with it!