“Do you prefer vegan or just vegetarian?” the woman on the other end of the phone asks when I call to make a reservation at Taste of Beauty, a new Chinese fusion vegetarian restaurant in Fountain Valley.
Open only a couple of months, the reservations-only restaurant serves a nine-course tasting menu starting at or around $95, with even more elaborate tasting menus slated for the coming months. There is currently no à la carte option. The only choice to be made for now — at the time of reservation — is whether to go meatless or strictly vegan.
“Just vegetarian,” I say. I’ve been craving a great vegetarian date-night dinner lately. Fruits and vegetables are so amazing this time of year. This is my second attempt to make a reservation. The restaurant was fully booked on my previous try. (Reservations are available by telephone only.)
When I arrive at the restaurant, the interior is eerily quiet. The decor combines beautiful Chinese antiques with contemporary furniture and an abundance of open space, plus hospital-grade lighting. It has the look and feel of a luxury office complex more than a traditional restaurant.
A hostess leads us to a private room in the back where a large round table built for eight people is set for two. A cabinet in the corner of the room is piled with takeout containers.
There’s no background music, only a meditative silence. When the first course arrives, a heavenly fragrance fills the room. The waiter presents each of us with a ceramic tea pot, and I can already smell the roasted oolong tea inside. But when I lift the lid I realize it’s much more than tea. The pot is filled with bamboo fungus, mushrooms and a soft, gooey-centered quail egg. It is tea soup. “It’s been steeping in the pot for eight hours,” the waiters informs us.
We drink the soup from tea cups, then pluck the egg and fungus from the pots with chopsticks and spoons. It is absolutely delicious and incredibly refreshing. The soup makes a promising first impression.
Sadly, it’s the only truly wonderful dish of the night. Everything goes downhill precipitously from there. The second bite is the next best: a cold salad made with dragon fruit, apples and pears, served atop what appears to be classic Pringles potato chips. It is very pretty but not particularly memorable.
Every dish comes with a story, a purpose or a myth behind it. Some items are meant to inspire prosperity or success. “Make a wish,” the waiter says. A dish of lotus root, taro and celery prepared in the style of orange chicken “is meant to aid digestion,” we’re told — and sure enough, before the next course arrives our bowels are already loosening.
For the entire nine-course vegetarian meal, we keep waiting for another dish to wow us like that first course did. But it never happens. Nothing is terrible. Mushroom tempura is just run-of-the-mill tempura, barely crisp, served over a standard mesclun mix. A grilled mushroom in a classic French bordelaise, served with a roasted tomato and a single stalk of asparagus feels remarkably out of place in a meal that is otherwise so Asian-inspired. Dumplings are filled with imitation beef when vegetables alone would be even better. We extrude brown-colored sticky rice from a bamboo tube at the table, and while the rice is pleasantly delicious, the visual is unsettling.
For years I’ve been wishing for a better vegetarian restaurant scene in Orange County. Unfortunately, this new entry does not change the fact that OC sorely lacks for choices.
Taste of Beauty
Where: 18420 Brookhurst St., Fountain Valley
When: Lunch and dinner, Tuesday-Sunday
Phone: 714-587-9113
Online: thetasteofbeauty.com