Sometimes, I really wish it were acceptable to publicly lick every last speck of sauce off a plate.
I found myself thinking this while dining at V Street, the new street bar restaurant by Vedge chefs Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby. Similar to Vedge, V Street’s food is all vegan and focuses on taking vegetables and making them as incredible as possible. They use no cheese, no eggs and no meat, but what they lack in breadth of ingredients, they make up in flavor.
The restaurant itself is much smaller and more casual than its counterpart Vedge. V Street’s menu is inspired by ethnic street food and uses spices and flavorings from around the world. The plates are small, so my friend and I sampled some of their most popular offerings. The first dish that was brought out was the langos ($9), a traditionally Hungarian staple—fried bread topped with sour cream, cabbage and meat. The V Street version was a light and crispy base, topped with a vegan cream sauce made from a sauerkraut remoulade that lightened up the fried bread and the dots of smoked beets. While eating, I cycled between belief and disbelief that everything on the plate contained no dairy whatsoever. It was that good.
The next dish we sampled was the market greens ($8), sauteed in a spicy mushroom sauce and topped with a turnip cake. The sauce added a big kick to the vegetables and the cake on top was able to mellow the spicy flavors of the greens. My only critique of the dish was its extreme spiciness, a common theme with the V Street food. We were warned away from a few dishes, such as the dan dan noodles, because we were advised that they were only for those who could handle the heat.
We followed the market greens with the carrot asado ($8) and the cauliflower shawarma ($11). The carrots were soft and had the perfect char to them, which complemented the BBQ glaze and black bean puree on the side. The black bean puree was the star of the show —I would have eaten every last ounce of it off the plate, had the waitress not whisked it off our table. The cauliflower was a nod to traditional Middle Eastern street food that is typically made with chicken and wrapped in pita. Crispy cauliflower lay on a warm pillowy, house–made flatbread—smothered in hummus, crispy cucumber and spicy harissa sauce. I can honestly say that I didn’t miss the meat at all, and I appreciated the flavor profiles of this dish.
V Street deserves to be on your list of go–to Philly restaurants. While they do not take reservations, they do offer to keep your name on a list and will text you when your table is ready.
Head downtown and walk around Rittenhouse Square if you can’t get a table right away. Or head over at 5pm, when the restaurant opens, to sample their happy hour drink specials and food options, if their dinner menu is above your price range. However you do it, get down there, and get ready to drool.
