Aaron Woo’s Vegetarian Dreams
Aaron Woo is the chef and owner of behind Natural Selection, a small farm-to-table restaurant in Portland, Ore. The menu offers an entirely vegetarian select along with some vegan dishes for good measure. Aaron is our featured chef in the Winter issue of Wilder Quarterly. Read an excerpt from is conversation with Jonah Campbell and get Woo’s recipe for a Sunchoke & Parmesan Salad.
No one, in their coverage of Natural Selection, seems able to resist the “vegetarian restaurant that’s not a vegetarian restaurant” angle. Can you tell us about that?
We try our best not to bill ourselves as a vegetarian restaurant. We try to put out there, to the public, that we serve really awesome food that’s local and sustainable, farm-to-table style and it just happens to be vegetarian. I know a lot of people who will flat out say, “I’m not into vegetarian food,” and I’ll say, “Well, why not? You eat vegetables, right?” And they’re like, “Yeaaahhhh … But nah.” I think there’s this image of vegetarian restaurants in the ’80s and ’90s, that it’s hippies and granola, and rainbows and unicorns on the walls. So, people come in and say, “Wow, it looks like a real restaurant!” and we go, “Yeah, actually, it is a real restaurant.”
People definitely have prejudices against vegetarian food. In some cases rightly so, because in the history of what could be called “American vegetarian food” there have been moments when simplicity has been mistaken for banality. Or, worse—blandness.
But you personally are not a vegetarian. How would you say your history as a meat-eater, or your roots in omnivory, frame your cooking at Natural Selection?
One of the things I’ve learned as a chef is that when you take that piece of meat or fish or protein off the plate, you have to put a lot more thought into everything else you prepare. We joke about how, if you added a piece of protein to this plate of vegetables that we do, it’d be amazing; it’d be ground breaking. Probably 60—70 percent of our customer base is not vegetarian, but people say, “They serve really good food, period.” Our most vocal advocates are hardcore vegans and hardcore meat eaters. It’s always, “I’m not vegetarian, but that was amazing. I didn’t miss the meat.”
Get Aaron’s recipe for the salad pictured left after the jump and see the full article in the winter issue.
Images shot by Carlie Armstrong
NATURAL SELECTION
SUNCHOKE & PARMESAN SALAD RECIPE
1/3 cup fresh, thinly sliced Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes)
2/3 cup thinly shaved Brussels sprouts
1/4 cup thinly shaved fennel
1—2 Belgian endives, sliced lengthwise
1 tablespoon pine nuts, toasted
2 tablespoons julienned green olives
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons lemon vinaigrette
1 teaspoon chopped parsley
5 grapefruit segments
freshly grated or shaved Parmesan cheese
LEMON VINAIGRETTE
1—In a bowl, cover 1 tablespoon minced shallot with 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice.
2—Add 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, salt and pepper to taste, and mix well.
3—Using a whisk, whip the mixture consistently while drizzling in 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil.
4—Re-season to taste and set aside.
DIRECTIONS
1—Combine Jerusalem artichokes, Brussels sprouts, fennel and endive in a mixing bowl
and gently toss well.
2—Add pine nuts, green olives, Parmesan and parsley. Lightly toss.
3—Add lemon vinaigrette and gently toss thoroughly.
4—Neatly arrange in a stack/pile on serving plate.
5—Grate or shave fresh Parmesan over the salad.
6—Neatly arrange the grapefruit segments on and around the salad.
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