Mark's Kitchen, Takoma Park, Md.

Last night I discovered a rare breed of American diner....a vegetarian American diner! Now, this wasn't just a vegetarian cafe—I've been to those before, where one catches angry glares from fellow patrons because one is wearing leather shoes—but an actual diner with normal American diner food like beef hamburgers, crab cakes, club sandwiches, fries, ham and cheese omelettes, pancakes, and French toast, and then an extensive selection of vegan things with tofu, spinach, barley, brown rice—even tofutti "ice cream"—and other tree-hugger type foods. Then, to make things even more interesting, there are several Korean items on the menu!

Where did we find such an ecclectic place? Takoma Park, Maryland, just across the D.C. line.

My friend Robert had just flown back home after a holiday weekend in Atlanta and was anxious to go out for dinner, so he talked me into making the long trek up to Takoma Park, where we walked over to Mark's Kitchen, a comfortable tradition in Takoma Park for over fifteen years.

Our fun waitress guided us through the menu, recommending this, suggesting that, explaining details, and we ended up with a very entertaining and delicious dinner.

Robert chose the tofu royal sampler box, served in a traditional Korean sang dinner box. Beginning with the compartment in the lower right corner of the box and then moving clockwise, he got four rectangular slices of grilled firm tofu. Next was brown rice with a mung bean pancake. The things that look like black beans are actually honey soybeans, and the, next were sauteed shitake mushrooms. The long vertical compartment contained several thin, crispy sheets of roasted seaweed—the green nori used as a wrapper for sushi rolls. Then in the final compartment were long, sauteed green beans. Everything was very pretty and Robert said it all tasted very good.

My entree was officially called spinach tofucakes, and they were designed to mimick the ubiquitous crabcakes one sees on menus all over Maryland. The dish starts with a base of brown rice, then two fried spinach and tofu cakes were placed atop the rice. Some diced mango and a few chunks of roasted sweet potato were tossed over the dish, then everything was crowned with a handful of mesclun and all was dressed in a sort of raspberry soy sauce vinaigrette. A few sauteed long green beans garnished the plate. The tofu cakes were interesting, though I would have liked them to have been seasoned just a bit more. The menu said onion and mushrooms were mixed into the spinach-tofu mixture, but I would still have liked a little more intense flavor, since tofu is extremely bland by itself. The whole thing was quite a creative melange, however.

Desserts were an interesting mix of the innovative and the traditional. Robert ordered the key lime pie. It was a surprisingly thick—almost deep dish—layer of key lime filling in a graham cracker crust. At first I was a bit dismayed that there was neither a whipped cream topping nor a meringue (my favorite) topping on the pie until I remembered we were in a place catering to vegetarians, some of whom do not eat cream or eggs. I think I should have garnished the pie slice with something, perhaps a thin slice of lime or maybe some candied lime peel, so it didn't look so bare.



My gingerbread sundae was quite creative. Three pieces of gingerbread were arranged around a scoop of ginger ice cream, then topped with a sort of sweet ginger root compote, and all garnished with whipped cream. It was yummy!



After dinner, I got a tour of Robert's house and met two of his roommates, a lawyer and an actor. Then, as a gentle rain began to fall, I settled in for the long Metro ride back to Foggy Bottom.