Sacred Chow, New York City

Dishes at Sacred Chow might look like traditional Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and East Asian favorites, but there's a key difference: the restaurant eschews meat entirely. Instead, chefs there use plant-based ingredients that are organic, heart-healthy, vegan, and kosher, with gluten- and soy-free options, to create panini sandwiches and tapas plates using roasted seitan and Indonesian tempeh. Perhaps most notably, they also rely on an ingredient that might not be familiar to most Westerners: nama gori.

What You Need to Know About Nama Gori

Legend has it nama gori was invented when a Japanese tofu maker dropped a few blocks of freshly made bean curd in the snow as he walked home one evening. He returned to search for the missing blocks the following morning, only to discover they had frozen solid overnight. Rather than toss the bean curd out, the tofu maker decided to thaw it. He was surprised find its consistency had changed dramatically, and in an unexpectedly appealing way.

Whether or not this accidental discovery occurred, it's true that a similar freezing and defrosting process can have a remarkable side effect on tofu: making it chewy and succulent instead of airy and pillow-like. That insight is the basis of nama gori, and it's one Sacred Chow's chefs exploit regularly by making their own nama gori in-house. The ingredient then goes into everything from kale caesar salads to the panini sandwiches that feature steaks of the grilled tofu.