Dining Is an Enlightening Experience at This Place

You wouldn’t expect a restaurant that calls itself The Eight Immortals of Tao to be run-of-the-mill, and it certainly isn’t.

It bills itself as a Chinese vegetarian restaurant, a description more convenient than accurate. Owner Pham Bang is Vietnamese, and so are many of his dishes. Indeed, he serves vegetarian specialties from all over. Japan and Thailand get into the act here, and there even are touches of California.

This small, modest restaurant is next to a supermarket, but entering it feels like entering a sanctuary. The people inside are eating quietly, reverently, as if dining in a temple.

The curiosity by the door is a makeshift waterfall propelled by a brass wheel that provides a soft, rushing sound. The music is striking, too--low organ tones that penetrate in an eerie fashion. This is Yogananda meditation music, designed to relax, and it may not suit your mood; Pham will put on a more conventional alternative if requested to do so. One of my guests did, and got an quiet earful of Schumann and Pachelbel.

The design also is quiet. Walls are painted the softest green imaginable, and you sit on undersized chairs made from blond wood, positively Japanese in their austerity. The tea counter, next to the kitchen, contains a huge stack of literature about Taoism, and the books are yours to take away without cost. I browsed through one titled “The Key to Immediate Enlightenment” before putting it down in favor of the menu.

As it turns out, the back page of the menu provides as much information about Taoism as most people get in a lifetime. Taoism, the menu exclaims, “offers personal salvation and freedom, focusing on the mystical harmony of mankind with the world of nature.”

Then you learn that the “Eight Immortals” were Chinese personalities who dedicated their lives to helping the needy. All of the Immortals are represented by dishes here, and their personalities are described along with the dishes. I tasted three, and found them as unconventional as everything else in this place.

Han Hsiang Tzu, the patron of musicians, is the most satisfying immortal to the palate. He’s a whole vegetarian fish with a light but dominating coating of spicy bean paste. The “fish” is actually thin sheets of deep fried wheat gluten that have been wrapped in crisped-up bean curd skin to look like pieces of fried fish. This is smothered with a mixture of colorful vegetables--fresh peas mixed with finely chopped baby corn, bamboo, red pepper and black mushroom. It comes on a huge platter, handsome enough for a banquet.

Lan Ts’ai Ho, who was a collector of flowers and grasses, is a vegetarian stir fry served in a basket of wispy taro noodles. The basket overflows with red and green pepper, carrots, pineapple, water chestnuts, quail egg, snow peas and toasted balls of gluten that remind you of Swedish meatballs. I find it a strange dish with a couple of flavors too many.

Ho Hsien Ku, the only female Immortal, is prized for her endurance. The dish is a tiny ceramic crock brimming with a Chinese energy elixir: lotus seeds, red dates, ginger, ginseng and assorted mushrooms. To call this quasi-medicinal soup an acquired taste would be an understatement.

The body of this menu, though, is much more familiar, with several wonderful dishes running through it. The appetizers all are familiar ones under spiritual names such as Sincerity, Love and Harmony.

Sincerity is purely Japanese, tofu wrapped with nori (a crisp seaweed), served with a sesame-soy sauce. Love is a plate of cha gio, Vietnamese egg rolls the equal of any on Bolsa Avenue. These meatless rolls are stuffed with tofu, rice noodle, carrot and tree ear mushrooms, and there is a delicious sweet and sour dipping sauce on the side. And then there is Friendly, which turns out to be firm-skinned Chinese boiled dumplings ready to be plunged into a ginger, soy and vinegar sauce.

The entrees are mostly mock-ups of traditional Chinese dishes with wheat gluten, tofu or taro replacing meat. The best of them is braised vegetarian “partridge,” probably named because the anise-perfumed sauce in which the dish is braised tastes so refreshing. It’s composed of little bundles of deep-fried bean curd skin, filled with mustard greens, tofu and black mushrooms.

Lion’s head with broccoli is another good one, fashioned out of the same three ingredients as the partridge filling. It has a rich, soft appeal and suits the California-style brown rice that comes with everything here.

Some things don’t work this well, though. Peking-style “pork” shreds are flavorless strips of gluten atop equally bland strips of cucumber and celery. The spicy Sichuan bean curd needs more moisture and more fire. The taro croquettes with cashews are sweet and gluey.

In place of desserts, there are many interesting nonalcoholic beverages. The restaurant’s drinking water is purified by reverse osmosis, all the better for brewing such exotic teas as Jasmin, Lotus and Ti Kuan Yin. You also could have alcohol-free wine or beer, soybean milk or a glass of fresh carrot juice.

But when I go back, I’m having another tall glass of the house orange juice, squeezed to order from nectar-sweet Florida oranges. It’s not enlightenment, but it comes close.

The Eight Immortals of Tao is inexpensive. Appetizers are $2 to $3. Entrees are $5.25 to $6.95. Eight Immortals specialties are $6.25 to $12.95.

THE EIGHT IMMORTALS OF TAO

8841 Adams Ave., Huntington Beach.

(714) 965-8894.

Open for lunch and dinner every day but Tuesday, from noon to 9 p.m.

Cash only.