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Tucked below the fire escape of a brownstone near Washington Square Park, VP2 is blessed with a built-in clientele: cash-strapped, scruffy NYU undergraduates in jeans as narrow as the restaurant’s interior. But with ultra-reasonable prices and health-conscious twists on Chinese and Thai favorites, VP2’s well worthy of a pilgrimage for any student of vegetarianism. The tofu is light and creamy, and soy protein, wheat gluten, and sucanat are coaxed into a generally convincing array of mock meat and fish items. Skeptical carnivores will find it hard to resist the trademarked house special, crispy soul chicken: hunks of moist soy “chicken” breaded with rosemary, oregano, and basil. The low-ceilinged white room would be as bland as the doughy (if greaseless) scallion pancakes if not for a row of Rothko-esque canvases of metallic and earth-toned blocks. — Kate Appleton

Crispy soul chicken, $12.95; lo mein with ginger and scallion, $6.95; satay tofu, $5.95