I’ve eaten Moonlight Cafe‘s vegetarian sesame beef with varying frequency for a decade. When I lived for $300 a month in a punk house with a few DIY bands, I was taken on a date to Moonlight, where I discovered its vegetable-protein alchemy. Even Burger King now has “vegetarian options,” but nearly every item on the menu at Moonlight is available vegetarian (including lobster!). At the time of my first visit, I was so poor that I subsisted on premade burritos found in the dumpster, but Moonlight Cafe soon became my weekly treat to myself. Lunch specials there were (and are) affordable even on movie-theater wages. Now that I live in the International District, Moonlight Cafe is only a few blocks from my apartment. My bike lists in the direction of Moonlight as I ride by; I think it’s the magnetic pull of that perfectly seasoned gluten.
Moonlight Cafe is a Vietnamese restaurant on Jackson and 20th, bearing a delightful resemblance to the geometrical designs on kids’ notebooks from the early 1990s. More than one of its neon signs advertise karaoke, but if you ask anyone there when karaoke happens, they stare at you like you’re insane…
