Long Island restaurants with standout vegetarian dishes

As a professional food writer, I adore meat in all its magical manifestations, but that doesn’t mean I feel great about eating it all the time. Maybe it’s doctor’s orders, or dining with a younger vegan family member. Maybe it’s just a weeknight. No matter — it’s become easy to go the veggie route these days, as most Long Island restaurants are reasonably accommodating. But here are four restaurants that stand out. Not only do they know the ways of eggplant and tofu, but they also have great food in general. So, whether you or yours go meatless or not, you will have an excellent meal.

THE TRATTORIA

532 North Country Rd., St. James; 631-584-3518; thetrattoriarestaurant.com

The chef-driven Italian spot called The Trattoria, tucked into a quiet St. James shopping center, is a showcase for Long Island produce. (It’s also a Top 50 restaurant.) Like many passion projects, it’s got some quirks: It’s cash only, and when you walk into the small room, they might be playing a mysterious soundtrack of '90s trip hop. Take a seat near the open kitchen (technically, every seat is pretty close to the kitchen) and browse the menu of seasonal delights.

During the summer and early fall, chef-owner Stephen Gallagher gets much of his produce from HOG Farm in Brookhaven. This includes the lettuce for a baby greens salad topped with hefty strips of Grana Padano cheese, as well as kale that becomes a vibrant pasta sauce. (Controversially, he prefers to get his corn from New Jersey.) The menu is always changing, but some dishes, like the eggplant Parmesan, have a permanent spot.

On a recent afternoon, half the selections on the 16-item menu were vegetarian. There was some fresh ricotta, made in-house, and a fabulous tapenade prepared from Turkish sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, Pecorino Romano and olive oil. The spread was just beautiful — worth the trip alone. Gallagher said he’s not necessarily tailoring the menu for vegetarians, he just loves the local vegetables here, so it feels natural. And his food was so flavorful and satisfying, it didn’t have me missing the meat. The highlight of the afternoon was the eggplant Parm, which had the look of lasagna, layered and propped up into a cheesy tower that rose above a moat of chunky red tomato sauce. Luckily, the terra cotta casserole dish held everything in, because it was pure heaven.

ATHENA GREEK RESTAURANT

65 Merrick Rd., Amityville; 631-691-4607

This is a neighborhood Greek spot all the way: Athena Greek Restaurant has been occupying the corner space in an Amityville strip mall since 1991. Third-generation owner Mike Tali stands at the front of the room, expediting dishes out of the kitchen and chatting up the regulars as they sip their Greek wine. There’s a perception that Greece is a vegetarian’s paradise: It’s the home of the heart-healthy Mediterranean diet, after all. But in researching Greek menus across Long Island, I found it was rather difficult to pull together a satisfying vegetarian meal without relying on falafel (which isn’t even Greek) and spreads. Not so at Athena, which has a dedicated vegetarian menu as well as several hot and cold appetizers, a couple of sandwiches and salads, too. Of course, there are also gyros and veal souvlaki.

The main draw here, though, is a vegetarian take on an iconic comfort dish, moussaka. Typically made with eggplant and minced lamb or beef, moussaka is a casserole that includes a fat stack of baked bechamel so rich and creamy I always think it’s mashed potatoes. (I know, sorry!) But the meat is just one of several layers, and you can get away without it, especially during the myriad Greek Orthodox fasting periods. Tali said his mother, Elena Georgiadou, a vegetarian who had several Greek- and French-inspired restaurants on Long Island, was the one to invent the dish several decades ago, ditching the meat for spinach and feta that melds into the juicy eggplant. She served it at her (now-closed) Athena in Southampton, where it was, Tali added, beloved by actor Alan Alda, who later traveled to Amityville for it.

TASTE OF CHENNAI

617 Hicksville Rd., Bethpage; 516-396-1449; tasteofchennainy.net

When a vegetarian friend wants to go out somewhere, one of my first thoughts is South Indian, which gives the eater a ton of options. And on Long Island, there are fabulous options for South Indian food, including the Hyderabadi biryani at Jazeera, Kerala coconut-milk curries at South & North Indian Inc. and multiple Tamil restaurants with the famous dosas of Chennai. Taste of Chennai is one of the few spots serving the full range of foods from Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state in India.

The restaurant got a glow-up this April when it moved from a small storefront near the Hicksville train station to a larger, more handsome dining room in Bethpage. The menu includes fish and shrimp as well as chicken, goat (often called "mutton" on menus) and lamb — a majority of people in Tamil Nadu do eat meat, said Jothi Rasu, who runs the restaurant with her husband, Murugan Gounder. The state is perhaps most famous for a bar snack, Chicken 65, which here features chunks of gingery chicken dropped into hot oil and coated with crimson spice.

But vegetarian options are equally numerous, with several sections of the menu dedicated to meatless chaats (crunchy-spicy street snacks), dosas (large, crisp crepes made from fermented grains and legumes), South Indian thali meals (a variety of small dishes corralled on a large platter) and 10 vegetarian curries. Some are classics — paneer tikka masala and creamy spinach saag, for example — but my server steered me to a Tamil Nadu specialty called puli kuzhambu, a deeply spiced eggplant dish with a chunky red gravy that comes from tomatoes and tamarind paste.

The kitchen also puts out a fabulous range of Indian breads, including mini-dosas, spongy steamed idli, plump uttapam and puffy bhaturas. I was able to sample a number of them in the Tamil Tiffin, a combo platter that comes with several flavor-packed dipping sauces. It’s unreal how good they are, especially the fried lentil fritter called medu vada, which is wonderful with a chunky coconut chutney.

MB RAMEN

335 New York Ave., Huntington; 631-923-3176

Asian cuisines can be tricky for vegetarians, who might ask for tofu and receive a dish that contains oyster sauce, dashi broth or tiny nibbles of pork that the server didn’t think to mention. But there’s one go-to Asian food subcategory, and that’s the hipster ramen shop. Specially curated by millennials, these places know the ways of miso and how it produces an umami-rich broth. Or how sesame-rich tahini adds creaminess without the dairy. Take MB Ramen in Huntington, which brings an urban hip-hop aesthetic and fusion menu (conceived by chef Marc Bynum) to the Japanese art form. It’s owned by restaurateur brothers Eric and Jason Machado, who run Pasta Joint and Bistro Cassis, also in Huntington.

Each section of the menu includes a vegetarian riff, mainly focusing on tofu. For instance, they serve one of the tastiest bao buns I’ve had in recent memory: Instead of fatty chashu pork, which often slips around and makes the bao buns super-greasy, there’s a light, crunchy block of tempura-fried tofu. There’s a similar idea going on with the crispy tofu rice bowl, which reads like a salad with its colorful bursts of corn, cucumbers and scallions.

But, of course, you’re going for the ramen here, and there are two meatless varieties: the Tomato Cheese Spicy Ramen with smoked Gouda, and the Veggie Ramen. With its house-made vegetable broth that somehow mimics a pork tonkotsu, the ramen hits all the savory notes. Umami-rich vegetables, like a juicy grilled tomato and those shiitake mushrooms, feel substantial rather than vegetable-y. This was my fourth time at MB Ramen, and I have to say, without the meat, I liked it even more than usual.