What is that meat doing on my plate?

Someone recommended a Vietnamese restaurant in our town.  He said they have a lot of vegetarian and vegan dishes.  I looked them up on Yelp, and sure enough, most people seemed to love them.  There were warnings on Yelp that the wife/co-owner is a surly kind of a character. 

Well, we found the restaurant, and indeed the wife seated us, and she was a very serious, no-nonsense kind of a lady.   We found a section titled "Vegetarian", followed by "no meat".  That was the only explanation on the menu.  None of the dishes had a list of ingredients or any description whatsoever.
My husband ordered the vegetarian chow mein, and I ordered the vegetarian lo mein with soy.  I was really hoping it had lots of vegetables in it.

Our meals arrived, and my dish did have more vegetables than noodles in it, which I love.  However, there was a generous amount of what appeared to be some type of meat in the dish.  I picked one up and tasted it, and declared that it was indeed pork.  My husband picked one up, took it apart, smelled it, tasted it, and agreed that it was definitely pork. 

I thought maybe I left out the descriptive word "vegetarian" when I ordered, although my husband told me that I had  included that word.  I just pulled all the pieces of meat away from the rest of the dish and happily ate the remainder of the dish.  I resigned myself to the fact that I was probably eating some type of meat broth in the dish, but I could live with that. 

I excused myself for a trip to the restroom.  My husband said the woman who had served us came over to check on us.  She saw the pile of meat on my plate and asked my husband why I   didn't like the tofu.  It was tofu! 

I wish I could find out how they make that tofu.  It is vastly different from the tofu I serve at home.  Mine is in neat little cubes, and it is very obvious that what I serve at home is tofu.  We like the tofu we eat at home, but I would love to know how they make those irregular, shredded type pieces of tofu.

We are definitely going back, and I am going to make friends with this lady if it kills me.  I have an ulterior motive, but one more friend would be a beautiful thing anyway.



Husband's note:  I must confess that I looked over the "meat", and it smelled and even tasted like meat.  But the stern woman said it was tofu.  Best tasting tofu I've run across.  We'll go back and give it another try. 

I thought it was funny so before we left, I took a picture of the "meat."