For fast veggie food, Tops is tops

The annual vegetarian festival is about spiritual and physical cleansing and merit-making, but it’s also a fun chance to sample fresh ideas in vegan cuisine.
Restaurants all over town have adjusted their menus for the festival, continuing through Wednesday, but for sheer convenience, head to any Tops Supermarket, particularly the main branches at CentralWorld and Central Chidlom.
There’s no such thing as “sameness” in the vegetarian dishes available as Tops recruits Bangkok’s top chefs to bring out the vegan ingredients’ flavours rather than simply trying to disguise them as meat. Gone is the starchiness and oiliness that too often ruins veggie food.
Tops’ offerings come with Italian dishes from Bug & Bee, Chinese by Lee Café, Vietnamese from Le Mai Anh and sticky rice with coconut cream from Chor Sorn Kaew. And Ian Kittichai has made an organic salad with ponzu sauce and grilled aubergine with red chilli and soy sauce.
Bug & Bee’s beloved crepes take a back seat for the Je festival while the focus shifts to a creative East-West fusion of healthy brown rice fried with basil, grains, cranberry, gingko and walnut. It’s just the right concoction of sweet and spicy.
Pasta fans will like the stir-fried angel hair with red goat pepper and the blossoms of dok khajon (cowslip creeper).
Also pleasing are stir-fried fusilli with the petals of dok pak plang (Ceylon spinach), mushrooms and cashew nuts in a pesto sauce made from soybean, and a Je sandwich of salad vegetables and soft Japanese tofu topped with soy sauce.
Lee Café’s noodles are crowned with tofu and mushrooms, and its dried fish-maw-like soup is all mushroom, tofu and bamboo shoots.
The spring rolls from Le Mai Anh are great as well, as is Chor Sorn Kaew’s sticky rice with coconut cream – presented beautifully in various colours and topped with custard made without eggs or milk.
To help you make your own veggie dishes, Tops also offers about 3,000 vegetarian ingredients.