Araya Thai - Delicious Vegetarian Buffet in Seattle

This Saturday we went to Araya's Vegetarian Place - a Thai restaurant in Seattle's University District that offers a lunch buffet Monday through Saturdays. They have a standard menu as well but I recommend going for the buffet to try a wide variety of dishes that you probably wouldn't have had on your own.

The restaurant is vegetarian and vegan so my husband wasn't entirely convinced about going when he kept asking if there was meat on the menu. I had to keep telling him no it's strictly vegetarian - no meat.

The buffet at Araya offers a wide selection of soup, rice, salads, vegetables, pad thai, egg rolls and dessert. I'm not much of a salad girl so I went straight for my favorites. Their deep fried egg roll is a must try - nice crispy texture and a savory filling. And they have a vat of peanut sauce that you can ladle as much of it as you want over anything and everything.

Their pad thai with tofu is standard a little more on the sour side and I usually pour a little peanut sauce over it to perk up the flavors. A new favorite that day was a very delicious light lemon grass coconut sauce over tofu, carrots, zucchini and other vegetables. I thought at first that it was filled with ginger so when I tried and realized it wasn't (not a huge ginger fan) I went back for more. The lemon coconut sauce really made the dish shine as it was light and sweet and the tofu was perfectly saturated with the flavors.

For dessert, they had two selections on the buffet. Black rice with coconut milk is their standard - the black rice is cooked into what looks like jam but it's a warm, slightly sweet concoction that grows on you as you keep eating it - you can add as much or as little coconut milk as you want to find the perfect sweetness combination for your taste buds. Also new this time, they had banana chunks in a sugared coconut water that was absolutely scrumptious and made for a tropical treat.

As we finished our meal and I noticed that my husband's plate was looking rather empty I asked him, "so did you miss the meat?" of which I was pleased to hear that he didn't miss it at all.