From our experience, Vietnamese restaurants often have some of the best vegan options. Pho Viet Nam is an unassuming restaurant inside an old storefront on Upton Avenue. We have been there several times and have enjoyed our meals.
Each time, we have ordered the vegetarian spring rolls as an appetizer. These are served with peanut dipping sauce. We always appreciate a non-fried option for appetizer and the vegetarian spring rolls are quite tasty without being fried.

We order the Hu Tieu Chay, which is a vegetable noodle soup. This is served with chunks of tofu, greens and sprouts in a nice vegetarian broth. We also order Bun Chay, which is rice vermicelli with vegetables. This is served with tofu, carrots, sprouts, basil and some other vegetables.

Both of these dishes are tasty without being heavy. We always feel like we can eat our full portions and not be overly stuffed. 

We highly recommend Pho Viet Nam. There are only a couple of options for vegans, but both are quite good and complement each other well.  

Also, we can't write a review of a Vietnamese restaurant without putting out a plea for a vegan banh mi sandwich. We have had vegan banh mi in a variety of places and they are one of our favorite dishes. Please, somebody in Toledo, start serving vegan banh mi!

We were excited to try out Rayoka because, during their initial launch, they had made a special point to reach out to vegans on Facebook to promote their vegan-friendly options. Also, there seemed to be some enthusiasm from the people who tried it out during their soft launch. As a guideline, we try to avoid soft launches and try to give a restaurant a bit of time to settle down before trying it out.

We ordered the vegan hibachi as well as two vegetable sushi rolls as appetizers, a shiitake mushroom roll and an avocado roll. The rolls were solid and served as a nice appetizer. The vegan hibachi comes with soup and salad. There were two soup options but only the miso soup is vegan. It was standard miso soup fare. We love standard miso soup and enjoyed it. For salad, you have two choices of dressing, ginger or a sesame-based dressing, both vegan and both tasty. The salad was iceberg lettuce, pretty typical for a Japanese restaurant.

The vegan hibachi is cooked in the back and brought to the table. You have the option of white rice or fried rice. Being health conscious, we chose the white rice. The hibachi included a nice mixture of vegetables: zucchini, broccoli, mushrooms, onions and tofu. The flavor was quite nice, though a bit heavy in oil (it is fried after all), and the portion size was large. We should have had leftovers but we soldiered through and finished our plates.  

Overall, we enjoyed our meal. The vegan hibachi is a nice touch, but it isn't like the traditional hibachi served at the table with a chef who bangs knives around, lights things on fire and jokes with the table. There seem to be other options on the menu, though we were disappointed that the menu didn't have vegan items labeled clearly. We hope that in the future, there is clear labeling. The chef seems very creative and so we hope that there are also some special vegan sushi rolls created.

Finally, there is a full bar with a creative cocktail menu. We really appreciate Rayoka having vegan options and reaching out to the vegan community when launching their restaurant. We look forward to seeing its growth!