Results tagged “vegetarian”

It's dineLA week, are you checking out new restaurants? Some vegans felt their options were limited, but the bloggers and readers at Quarrygirl are calling all the restaurants, asking if they'll accommodate vegans. Most restaurants so far are agreeable, but two are not. There's nothing surprising about Chaya Downtown not offering vegan food, but La Grande Orange, the restaurant that promotes dishes made from fresh, organic and seasonal ingredients? That's just disappointing.

          

Yesterday not only marked the last day of September, but also the last event at a vegan festival (of sorts) called 30 Days of Celebrating Being Vegan. Bakers and those with a sweet tooth gathered at 2 Headed Horse Production/Art Studio on Glendale Boulevard for the event last night, which benefited Compassion Over Killing.

              

If a vegan restaurant can open in Orange County and not only survive, but expand within the same city (Irvine), then it must be doing something right. And that's why the Veggie Grill, which opens in Hollywood today at 11 a.m. at the Sunset Plaza, is welcomed with praise.

Prabhat Gautam, owner of Positive Television and a local vegan gadfly (also, a former LAist contributor), is a very energetic guy. This month, he set out to accomplish the goal of 30 straight days of vegan events. "A lot of people said it could never be done, but lots of people stepped up," he wrote in an e-mail. And so it began last Tuesday night at SunPower Natural Cafe and continue throughout September.

       

After 16 years as a raw and vegan chef, producing meals in containers found in places like Whole Foods, catering and traveling, Chef Rawsheed launched his very own storefront last May. Ultra vegan bloggers tried it out early and gave their thumbs up. It left Quarrygirl dying to go back and Foodeater is glad the Valley is "no longer the dreaded no-mans land that it used to be" because SunPower does raw food the way it's supposed to be done.

The two anonymous bloggers at the popular vegan blog, Quarrygirl, went all out and published a large investigative report today, finding that a handful of vegan restaurants, mostly Thai in nature, are in fact not vegan.

"Just look at that picture. Look at how that cheese is melting, you know it belongs in your fucking face." That's vegan blogger Quarrygirl for you on her above photo from Chango in Echo Park. The coffeeshop is now offering grilled cheeses with that new vegan cheese that some pizzerias have started to use. Is this a trend that we'll see continue across the city? Is this Daiya vegan cheese so good that chefs are actually willing to put it on their menus? We'll see...

A new trend for Los Angeles? After learning that Cruzer Pizza in Los Feliz began offering a vegan-heralded brand of very realistic cheese, Daiya, Purgatory Pizza chimes in via Twitter to us saying, "Someone told me they read on LAist that only one place in LA has Daiya. Not true. We have it at Purgatory Pizza too." For vegan blogger Quarrygirl, her favorite pizza place just got a lot better (added bonus: she notes that you can bring your own beer or wine).

Rejoice! The Valley will soon have a dedicated vegan ice cream shop. Spotted on Cahuenga Blvd. at Regal Place, Nice Cream is a few storefronts down from recent vegan newcomer, SunPower Natural Cafe, which is from local veteran Chef Rawsheed.

Over the past few years, WorldFest has consistently been a useful, fun and conscious festival chock full of vegetarian restaurants, eco-minded speakers and do gooding exhibiters. And making it even more impact-less to the planet, the solar powered fest is located right off the Metro Orange Line at Woodley Park in Encino.

             

Keven Tran has no customers, just friends. And for over six years, he's had hundreds of friends who visit him everyday at his restaurant and tofu factory in Reseda called Vinh Loi Tofu. "I'm a tofu lover," he explained of the restaurant's beginnings. "One day my wife came up with an idea, 'honey, let's open a tofu factory, we can eat tofu everyday.'" And so they did. In 2002, they opened a the factory only for a year later to turn part of it into a restaurant, which is now one of Los Angeles' best vegan restaurants (the staff of Los Angeles Magazine are huge fans and Discovery Channel visited the restaurant to show people how Tofu is made, that video is below).

Instead of throwing all the unused food away, Doomie of Chinatown's about-to-be-closed vegan restaurant eponymously named after him will have a $10 all you can eat grub fest this weekend. But there's one catch, it's not going to be in Chinatown, it will be in... South Gate. The money raised will go towards them opening a new restaurant sometime in the near future, but many are hoping it's going to be much closer than... South Gate. More about the restaurant can be read here.

Doomie's Home Cookin', which just opened last October, has shut its doors in search of a more permanent home. "I don’t know what to say, I am completely and utterly shocked and saddened by this news. they were one of my favorite spots in los angeles, no doubt," vegan blogger Quarrygirl lamented this weekend. Doomie's opened when the dance club in the space temporarily shut down--it was a product of "hey, let's use the space for at least something while the doors are shut on the club." The restaurant became known as one a hot vegan junkfood spot, serving up amazing vegan chili cheese nachos, cookies and other homemade meals. They expect to open somewhere by the end of the year. to Quarrygirl, that's far off: "Unfortunately, on the first day of february, the end of the year is a long, long way away."

Back in October, The Vegan Spot on Sunset Blvd. put up an ad on Craigslist. It was a "quick sale." You could have your own vegan restaurant for $75,000.

She's single, plays flag football in Valley parks weekly and her book was on the New York Times bestselling list for a year. In fact, the vegan activist author of Skinny Bitch (LAist Review) has penned two guest posts for LAist. In the just released December issue of VegNews, writer Rory Freedman earned the top prize in the 2008 Veggie Awards--Person of the Year. In an interview with the magazine, Freedman, who has convinced thousands of women to turn vegetarian in her book, announces that a major network TV sitcom is in development and that Skinny Bastard (watch out meat eatin' guys) is due in bookstores in June (she says she's in search of a skinny bastard herself).

       

What do you do when the club you DJ at closes down temporarily? You can either get a new job, do nothing or follow a dream you've always wanted to do--open a restaurant. And that's exactly what Chef Doomie (some may know him as DJ Doomie) did when Roberto's closed down and the owners gave the "ok" to use the kitchen to start a comfort food (yes, not Thai) vegan restaurant in the space.

    

Always a fan of the Loteria Grill at the Farmer's Market at Fairfax and 3rd, their newest location is even better (located between Highland and Cahuenga on Hollywood Blvd.). The seating, the atmosphere and location mixed with it's late weekend hours. Yes, the kitchen stays open until 3 a.m. on the weekends.

Around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday morning as staff at Pure Luck were closing the Bicycle District/HelMel vegan restaurant down, a truck rammed through a window. Local vegan blogger, quarrygirl, visited for a meal later on Saturday only to find the restaurant closed. "Why does this shit have to strike at the best vegan restaurant in town. boooooo," she blogged. According to one server, as luck would have it, no one was hurt and the restaurant is still open for business during regular hours as they work to fix the window and damage.

"For the best farm-fresh sandwiches in downtown Los Angeles, it is Mendocino Farms. Amazing sandwiches," wrote hinducow in the caption of his Vegan Shawarma ($9.25) photo.

    

While ordering tacos this past weekend, Pat at Eating L.A. noticed that Cardone's Deli on Sunset had been replaced by a new place called The Vegan Spot. "There are seriously a lot of vegan places in Silver Lake and Echo Park already. (Cru, Flore Cafe, Elf, at least four Thai places, etc.) So we're just wondering, are there really that many vegans on the near-Eastside?"

With all the talk of illegal bacon dogs and legal veggie dogs on the streets of Los Angeles, why not combine the two (plus some) for a little at-home fun cooking? So here it goes: vegan bacon wrapped "pigs" in a blanket. Whoa.

It's a rare commodity for street vendors in Los Angeles, especially among the ubiquitous bacon dogs carts. In a city where vegetarian and vegan joints are beginning to become neighborhood staples, eating veggie on the streets is still no easy task. But thanks to one woman in Echo Park, it's getting a little easier.

After a one year hiatus, one of the best green festivals, Worldfest, is back. Two years ago, the solar-powered festival scheduled near Earth Day was a gem among the numerous green events around the city. Located at Woodley Park in Encino, steps away from the eponymous Metro Orange Line station, a slew of eco-friendly vendors showed off their wares, vegan chefs shared their creations and music and recognizable faces from the eco-scene were everywhere to be heard and seen.

One of Los Angeles' best, and perhaps the most inventive, vegan restaurants is Pure Luck. Located in the unofficial Bicycle District, also casually known as Hel-Mel (for its Melrose and Heliotrope location), the restaurant, simply put, serves up pub food and micro beer.

LAist reader Prabhat Gautam is an all around vegan and lives a no-car/all-transit lifestyle. He writes us a note after visiting Sante Cuisine, which was Sante La Brea before Chef Gordan Ramsay tooled around with it for an episode of Kitchen Nightmares which will air next Fall:

     

The block on Vineland between Otsego and Hesby is turning into a nice eclectic group of storefronts, even if there are only three. Starting to the north, there is a random Pirate store. Next to that, a fairly new hookah lounge. And then there is Lotus Vegan, which opened last week with a chef from Vegan Express who decided to go on her own. You'll recognize the menu as it is similar too all those staple vegan Thai restaurants around town, but it's good to know the NoHo Arts District gets one too.

There are still many comments to be left today by readers, but torrmoz's comment on an earlier story about vegetarian eating highlights points from a New York Times Mark Bittman story (Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler) about meat production and the environment. These are well worth bringing to the forefront:

With an American Institute for Cancer Research study in hand, ABC7's Lori Corbin, aka "The Food Coach," visited the Veggie Grill in El Segundo. "Several large studies confirm that consuming more than 18 ounces [of red and processed meat], a little more than one pound of red meat, bacon, and smoked meats per week, increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 30 percent," Corbin writes. "That's worrisome since many shy from this type of cancer screening."

Soul Vegetarian opened up last summer in the nightclub space, but quickly closed a couple months ago. Not to fear, however, Jewel, who owns the building, continued the short lived soul food vegan restaurant near the corner of Pico and Crenshaw. "I've been a vegan for twenty-some years," she said, "and it was a dream of mine to open up a vegan restaurant." Soul Vegetarian (not to be confused with Vegisoul on Jefferson) finally filled that void last July, but when it closed down, she didn't want to let it go, so she hired Soul's chef and opened up Vegan Village Internet Cafe.

         

On a side street in Silver Lake, two sisters open up their apartment every weekend to strangers who want to learn how to cook healthy and delicious vegan meals. Spork Foods began in December and has become a hit so far, with their small intimate cooking classes selling out quickly. Upcoming class topics include brunch, pizza, Jewish, desserts and more. A few weeks ago, they held their South East Asian class; here's what happened: