Blossom Du Jour truly brings the "shrewd"

Last week, I was in Chelsea on my way to watch the (AWFUL, TRAGIC) Pats game and found myself in need of a take-out salad. I happened across Blossom Du Jour, the takeout branch of Blossom, one of the best-known vegetarian/vegan outposts in New York City. I'd been to Blossom a year or two ago and not really enjoyed it, but for some reason I had higher hopes for Blossom Du Jour. Why does my brain do things like that? I don't know.

The space itself is kind of odd-- mostly empty, not much seating, but not much else, either. There's one very small, sleek fridge built into the wall, which holds the take-out salads and sandwiches. There wasn't a huge variety-- four salads on offer-- and since they were all pre-made, what you got was what you got. I grabbed a "Two-Tone Beet" salad, described as "marinated red and yellow beets, peppers, field greens, citrus dressing." It felt very, very light in my hand, even with the included enclosed container of dressing, which should have tipped me off to something, but it didn't. I paid my $8 and change and left.

When I got a chance to eat the salad a bit later in the evening, it was... well... okay. There were about a dozen pieces of field greens and three little dishes of shredded vegetables. the "marinated" red and yellow beets didn't have much discernible flavor beyond "wet," and it's notable that there weren't any peppers-- they seemed to have been replaced by equally "marinated" (wet) carrots, which honestly was all the better for me because I'm not a huge pepper fan. I realized only mid-consumption that this was a raw salad, so nothing was cooked, meaning the only real flavor came from the mildly tangy dressing. And given that most of the room in the container was taken up by the empty space around the plastic dishes, after finishing off the salad in approximately six bites, I was hungry about three minutes later.

There is really not much in this small, small salad

So, while there wasn't really anything WRONG with the salad per se, overall it was pretty flavorless and unnecessarily small for an outrageous $8+ dollars. I felt, honestly, ripped off. And while I appreciate that it's great for vegans to have another eating outlet in the city, Blossom Du Jour is really not a place I'd recommend or visit again myself. I should have paid more attention to the tagline: "Shrewd Fast Food." When the restaurant advertises itself as tricky and/or cunning, you're bound to leave with a (proverbial) bad taste in your mouth.

Blossom Du Jour
174 Ninth Avenue, between 20th and 21st Streets
212-229-2595

Blossom gets the best of me

Ever since I started at the bakery, the "gourmet organic vegan" restaurant Blossom has haunted me. It's right across from the bakery, and it's supposed to be the best vegetarian food in the city. But I never really wanted to go, even though, as a vegetarian, I'm SUPPOSED to want to go. Well, the guilt finally got the better of me, and earlier this week, I met BL there for a catch-up dinner.

The dining room is very interesting. You enter through an unmarked black door, turn right, and all of a sudden you're in what looks like someone's living room. It's quiet and soothing and quite nice, but a little weird, since it does feel like you're in someone's house. Regardless, there's a lot of space between the tables, and it's a pleasant place to be.

We perused the menu (which states the Blossom is "first and foremost animal caring") and placed our orders. BL started with the soup du jour, a coconut and sweet corn soup, which came with two slices of bread. It was a copious bowl of sunny yellow soup, and a taste revealed the powerful taste of coconut. BL noted it was a bit sweet but still relatively good.

Sweet & coconutty

For an entree, BL had chosen the baby spinach risotto, upon my recommendation (I'd heard that it was really good). I took a few bites, and it was... well, interesting. Incredibly rich and hearty, with huge chunks of mushrooms and bits of tofu, and perhaps too much lemon (BL wasn't all that into the citrus kick the dish provided). It was a huge portion and so rich that the few bites I had left me feeling slightly sick.

So incredibly rich

My own entree was a small grilled tofu salad. This was a simple mixed green salad topped with a bit of shredded seaweed, a few halved cherry tomatoes, and two triangles of grilled tofu. The tofu was soft and warm, but the greens were, well, greens, and the seaweed was seaweedy. The carrot-miso dressing, which I got on the side, was unappealingly oily with little flavor. While nothing was necessarily bad about the salad, it wasn't that great, either, and it left me still quite hungry.

Pretty but bland

Since I had (distinctly non-vegan, non-organic) treats from the bakery, we skipped dessert, paid the bill, and left. Blossom is a relatively expensive destination, and though I went with a salad rather than one of the more creative vegetarian entrees, I can't really recommend the restaurant. I've found that vegetarian restaurants often compensate for the lack of meat in their dishes by making their food incredibly rich and heavy in other ways, and I always leave feeling a little weighed down. While I definitely respect what Blossom is doing, for what I'm looking for, there are many cheaper, better places in the city to go. As a result, Blossom gets two Offset Spatulas and a tip of my hat.

Blossom
187 Ninth Avenue, between 21st and 22nd Streets
212-627-1144