Wau’s Vegan Coconut Calamari Is a Spicy-Salty Delight | Eater NY

"In the month-old Upper West Side spot, Salil Mehta’s tiny kitchen turns out a wide array of classic Southeast Asian preparations—Singaporean laksa fragrant with coconut, Malaysian nasi lemak laced with spicy sambal, and Indonesian nasi goreng slicked with sweet kecap manis—but one of the chief draws is a vegan fried calamari listed on the menu as “salt and pepper young coconut.” I sampled that vegan version on a packed weeknight in the 76-seat dining room and found it seriously delicious: Mehta tempuras the coconut so it’s golden and crispy outside and soft within, then tosses it, like the restaurant’s actual squid dish (both are $15 apiece), with a spicy-salty mix of garlic, long green chiles, bell peppers, and salt to mimic fried squid; he told me he’d never encountered the preparation during his travels across Asia and developed it while cooking for his wife, Stacey Lo. The tempura lacks the delicately rubbery QQ-bounce of real squid, but Mehta also deploys fatter slices for a snappy, al dente texture, and at moments the coconut’s sweet, tropical aroma comes through vividly—recalling tembleque or even a Mounds bar. I don’t expect he’s solving larger environmental questions—the piece notes coconut farming and exporting have impacts and Seafood Watch still considers most domestic squid reasonably sustainable—but for what it is, a tasty, meat-free take that will delight omnivores and vegans alike, I call his vegan squid a BUY." - Ryan Sutton