Happy Veggie Restaurant is a new to me, vegan Asian fusion restaurant in NYC’s Chinatown that opened during the pandemic. There is very little written about this restaurant on the web, but evidently they use vegan meats from Lily’s Vegan Pantry (ne May Wah Grocery). The menu is mainly Chinese, with some Malaysian and Thai influences and weirdly, a Beyond Burger and fries. I need to give it another try, but I think this will become one of my go-to vegan restaurants in NYC.

The Dumplings: the menu includes Homemade Spinach Dumplings, Fried Wontons, Homemade Buns stuffed with veggies, BBQ veggies, curry potato, taro, pumpkin or peanuts and Beijing Vegetarian Momo Buns. Unfortunately the day we stopped by they were out of dumplings and buns so we tried the Beijing Vegetarian Momo Buns and the Veggie Spam Musubi with Avocado. The momo buns were not Tibetan momos at all, but were Chinese Gua bao, the white fluffy sandwich style steamed breads. The bao were stuffed with vegan duck, which had a mild smoky flavor with hints of duck, julienned cucumber and a sweet Chinese BBQ style sauce. These buns were excellent, I highly recommend them.

The vegan spam in the musubi was a decent approximation of spam, but it wasn’t grilled enough. I like my spam to be seriously grilled so it is caramelized in the teriyaki sauce. The musubi was quite large and filling and was a solid effort.

Location: Happy Veggie Restaurant is in Manhattan’s Chinatown at 76 Mott Street, just south of Canal Street.