Orange "chicken" with fried king mushroom, broccoli and orange sauce is on the menu at Veggie House, the first vegan and vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

From your first glimpse of Veggie House, it’s clear the newish restaurant is dedicated to flora over fauna.

Shades of green, from dark jade signage to pale jasmine walls, emanate salad vibes, along with optimistic white banquettes. Instead of vinaigrette, though, the air hints at stir-fried garlic, in harmony with the clacks and clangs heard from woks in the kitchen.

With the rise of plant-based menus around Chicago reaching back a number of years now, you might think Chinatown has long been a vegetarian-friendly destination. Veggie House, however, is the only dedicated vegetarian and vegan restaurant in the neighborhood. For those who don’t eat meat, it’s not just gai lan and snow pea leaves anymore.

Chef John Zhao stands outside Veggie House, the only vegan and vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown on March 21, 2022. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Three-cup lion’s mane mushroom is cooked with soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil, inspired by sanbeiji, three-cup chicken, the dish wildly popular in Taiwan. Here the plush mushrooms become so hearty and full-flavored with ginger and elusive angelica root, they evoke pure animal pleasure.

“A lot of Chinese people love it,” said Veggie House owner Zoe Zhao. “But some Americans don’t like it, because they think the seasoning is a little bit weird. That’s why we have another similar dish that’s almost the same.”

Three-cup sauce lion's mane mushroom ($15.50) with bamboo, fried ginger and three cup sauce is on the menu at Veggie House. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Angelica root does have an earthy, herbal flavor that might be an acquired taste, but it’s one that I — as a Chinese American — highly recommend acquiring.

You’ll probably see Taiwan egg noodles on just about every table. The slippery strands are laced with slivers of firm pressed tofu, jalapeño, basil and lemon juice. It’s not old-country traditional, but inspired by a dish chef John Zhao made when he worked at The Peninsula Chicago hotel’s restaurant, Shanghai Terrace.

“His co-workers, servers from the hotel, came to our restaurant during the grand opening to support our business,” Zoe Zhao said. The chef is her husband’s uncle. “I was their server and recommended the Taiwan noodles. They had it and were laughing and I was just wondering why. They knew that dish, so it was so funny.”

Taiwan egg noodles ($14) with, onion, bok choy, basil, jalapeño, and fresh lemon juice. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

She launched Veggie House with business partner Jin Xiang Chen. He owned Lao Yunnan, last in the space, originally part of the Tony Hu empire.

“We opened this restaurant because I got inspiration from a vegan friend,” Zhao said. “Also, my partner’s wife and his sister are vegetarian and Buddhist.”

She had no experience in the restaurant industry prior to opening Veggie House. The mother of two at the time (now there are three) worked full time as a medical coder at Mount Sinai Hospital. Neither she nor her husband, who’s her business partner’s best friend, are vegetarian or vegan.

“I try to eat vegetarian, but then my husband buys seafood,” Zhao said. “And the kids love meat.”

They had planned to open in February 2020, then the pandemic was declared that March.

Fresh mango and pineapple juice is on the menu at Veggie House in Chinatown. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Veggie House eventually celebrated its grand opening Aug. 28 later that year.

“I picked that day because it’s my dad’s ID birthday,” Zhao said. “Chinese people have two birthdays, the lunar birthday and birthday on your ID.”

And opening on 8/28 worked in other ways; the number eight is also considered lucky in Chinese culture, because it sounds like the word associated with wealth.

They needed all the luck they could get, opening a restaurant in Chinatown when the neighborhood was hit first and hard by the politics of the pandemic.

“People complained about how Chinese people eat bats and kill dogs,” Zhao said of the racist stereotypes. She was spared complaints to her personally, unlike other Chinatown business owners who endured prank calls by young children asking for bat soup, or comments online about dog meat.

Meanwhile her vegetarian and vegan friends who wanted to eat in Chinatown told her they were scared because restaurants might unexpectedly use just a little bit of meat or oyster sauce.

“They wanted fried rice, but in Chinatown, fried rice almost always has eggs in it,” Zhao said. “Because it’s just what chefs do.”

Their chef makes soy beef-fried rice with plant-based protein, jasmine rice and the prized smoky “wok hei,” the breath of the wok.

Fried rice ($14) with plant-based beef, carrots, peas, broccoli and soy sauce at Veggie House. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

His mapo tofu appears fiery red, but soft tofu, cooked with doubanjiang, fermented chile bean paste, offers nuanced heat treasured by purist defenders of the dish. The wok-fried potatoes, a lesser-known Sichuan-style dish with spicy and sour potato sticks, is cooked barely crisp and tender. Hot and sour soup with black wood ear mushrooms shows the skill of the chef in a delicate texture that may spoil your favorite takeout forever.

Chef Zhao’s house mixed vegetables seem deceptively simple, yet it’s an ideal study of Chinese-style stir-fried asparagus, snow peas, zucchini and more, all anointed with a garlicky finish.

Their vegetal virtue’s not needed for the impeccably fried foods: crackling crab rangoon replaces crustaceans (or krab) with pumpkin and cream cheese; crunchy spring rolls with bamboo shoots and glass noodles; crisp sesame rice balls , jian dui, stuffs the chewy gems with red bean paste; and the banana tempura, should be the golden standards to which all others are measured.

The menu notes which items are vegetarian or vegan.

Salt and pepper shiitake mushrooms ($15) with deep-fried black mushrooms, bell pepper and fried noodles. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

You probably won’t want the wontons with a forgettable filling, no matter how well the wrapper is deep-fried. Salt-and-pepper shiitake mushrooms sounds like a fantastic idea, but the fresh black mushrooms need seasoning to add more flavor. The veggie pot stickers are supposed to be colorful, but they’re a bit dull outside and in. The wonton soup would fare far better without the stodgy, surprisingly sweet dumplings.

The orange “chicken,” however, may surpass the original. Little nuggets of king oyster mushrooms, fried as crisp as tempura, with diced fresh orange, and a sweet yet tangy sauce rivaling any from a French saucier, stunningly redefines the dish.

Orange "chicken" ($15) with fried king mushrooms, broccoli and orange sauce is on the menu at Veggie House. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Zoe Zhao is planning to open a second location of Veggie House in Aurora this summer.

“I realized that it’s very meaningful to do this work,” she said. “Running a vegetarian restaurant is difficult. If we just wanted to make money, we could have just tried to do something else.”

Especially in Chinatown, where husbands tempt wives with seafood, and their kids love meat.

“We want to tell people that Chinese people eat healthy,” Zhao said.

It’s a hopeful mission, and one I look forward to supporting with a future birthday dinner — or two.

2109 S. China Place (entrance at front door inside Chinatown Square mall)

Open: Sunday-Monday, Wednesday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, to 10 p.m.; closed Tuesday

Prices: $4.95 (hot and sour soup) to $15.50 (three cup lion’s mane mushroom)

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on single level

Tribune rating: 2 ½ stars, very good to excellent

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.