Hakkasan: Miami's Best Asian Vegetarian Food Doesn't Come Cheap

John Zur

Hakkasan's vegetarian dim sum.

​Four Diamond Award-winner, Hakkasan, at the Fontainebleau Hotel, may not be the most likely destination for vegetarians. But the menu is rich with offerings to suit most every taste and preference.

Executive Chef Ooi Soon Lok offers fresh, well orchestrated food that is likely the area's best. Consider he fried rice ($16) with pumpkin, French bean, and Thai fragrance. Chef Lok says, "The secret to any fried rice is the wok must be hot enough before you add the rice; if the wok does not have enough heat, the rice will stick on the wok and the dish is ruined."

John Zur

The tofu clay pot.

​Of the tofu clay pot ($24), Chef Lok explains, "We use homemade because it's healthier and we maintain the level of quality people know Hakkasan for. We deep-fry the tofu so it's crispy but before that, we braise it with the eggplant in preserved black bean sauce; the tofu absorbs that fantastic flavor and gives depth to the dish.

"We use dried shitake mushrooms, which are imported from Japan, selected young lotus root, yellow fungus, etcetera."

The vegetarian dim sum ($24) includes sugar snap peas, wild mushrooms, rice, vegetarian ham, pine nuts, enoki mushroom, beancurd, asparagus, yam bean, and zucchini. The result is six pieces of dim sum that one never could have imagined could be conceived from vegetables alone. The dish is served with chili sauce and soy sauce.

John Zur

Chinese wild mushroom soup.

​The Chinese wild mushroom soup ($16) contains supreme yellow fungus, supreme black fungus, bamboo fungus, pak choi, ginger and carrot, and supreme vegetarian stock. The result is... supreme.

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