Ananda Fuara: Keeping It Classic
Categories: Black Hole Dining
Part of a series about restaurants that have been around so long they've slipped into a media black hole.
Given its grotty corner, given its windowless exterior, it's always a shock to enter Ananda Fuara and find yourself in a such a bright space. From floor to ceiling, the room is painted Crayola's version of sky blue, and a thick stripe of leaves and vines wraps around the room above the heads of the servers (men in royal blue shirt and white pants, women in saris). Given the Bay Area's enduring reputation for being a hippie holdout, it's surprising that Ananda is one of the last restaurants in town that specializes in classic vegetarian food, the kind only found in stained copies of the Vegetarian Epicure and the Moosewood Cookbook. Yet Ananda Fuara abides, and it's just as popular with the City Hall lunch crowd as always.
Most of us know Ananda Fuara's background, and more than a few of us have used it to either tantalize or worry friends when we bring them to the restaurant: It's run by followers of Sri Chinmoy, and the late guru's paintings and books decorate the room. The New York Times' uncharacteristically sweet obituary reported that, after becoming a weightlifter in his 60s, Sri Chinmoy demonstrated his strength by picking up Nelson Mandela, an airplane, and Susan Sarandon, though not at the same time. (There are five more Sri Chinmoy restaurants in cities such as New York, Seattle, and San Diego. The Seattle cafe is even more packed than its San Francisco sister.)
The menu ranges from samosas to wraps (perhaps the 1990s did have an effect on the food, after all). While the Indian-style soups and curries reflect an Americanized approach to Indian food that predates the great chile-pepper craze of the 1980s ― in short, they're all cream and no spice ― the Neatloaf is timeless. A purported recipe that has made its way around the Internet includes tofu, brown rice, ricotta, and Special K cereal. It's dense and moist, about as filling as a Domino's pizza and no more exciting than a ninth-grade health class. Which is exactly why you clean your plate.
The house-made veggie burger, served with a grilled onion slice and fresh vegetables on a honeyed whole-wheat bun, squishes out of its frame each time you bite down, and must be remolded again and again. A thousand vegetarian burgers have surpassed its burger-ness in the decades since Ananda Fuara's patty was created, but any '70s child of liberals will immediately recognize it for what it is: as comforting as scrambled eggs, as nourishing as a bucket of brown rice. You eat it, you feel better about yourself. Just like mom always said you would.
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