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follow your ♥ café: better than its cheese!
8June 27th, 2008follow your heart, follow your heart, follow your heart, LA restaurants, products, storesfollow your heart? of course, they are the ones who make the awesome fake mayonnaise and the vegan cheese that doesn’t melt! yeah, and they have that supermarket in the valley with all neat healthy stuff. but did you know they also have a restaurant? i don’t know why it never occurred to me until recently to try their café (maybe eating in the back of a grocery store didn’t sound very appealing), but now i’m sure glad i did. the food was spectacular, and the atmosphere was just fine—i forgot that the bustling health food market on the other side of the wall even existed.
breakfast burrito: scrambled tofu, black beans and vegetarian ‘chorizo’, wrapped in an oversized whole wheat tortilla. served with spanish rice, guacamole and vegan sour cream. $7.95
follow your heart burger: burger pattie with vegan cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, vegenaise and thousand island dressing, on a toasted whole wheat bun. $7.95before i even say that the food tastes good, check out those huge portions they give you for under $8! with the economy plummeting and food prices soaring, i challenge you to find a healthy vegan meal in a sit-down restaurant at a better value. on top of that, everything tasted incredible. the burrito was stuffed with the finest of fake meat, and the sour cream & guac garnishes were delicious. the burger was also tasty and hearty—the follow your heart cheese was even melted. how on earth did they accomplish that?
the atmosphere is pretty diner-y. dark wood everywhere and small tables close together. maybe a little too close for my taste, next time i will grab a seat at the bar. i’ve heard the patio is quite lovely, but if you think i’m gonna sit outside in +100 degree weather during summer in the heart of the valley, you’re fuckin’ nuts.
the waitress was friendly and attentive, and she moved our order pretty fast. the best thing about her was she turned us on to a new hot sauce (with a crazy dude on the bottle!) called brother bru-bru’s. (being the capsicum addicts that we are, we had to buy our own bottle before heading home!) you pay for your meal (along with any groceries you may pick up) at the cashier of the supermarket, not in the restaurant itself, so don’t forget to leave a tip for your server.
follow your heart’s cafe also boasts a huge vegetarian menu, where almost anything can be made vegan. just be sure to specify—you don’t want to end up with some real sour cream, and never know about it because the fake stuff tastes so good. it’s getting tricky this day in age as dairy is more easily emulated.
i can’t wait to return to follow your heart and try something new. i could spend months just getting through breakfast menu! i’m so glad i found this place—it’s definitely worth a trip to the hot hot valley.
Tags: burger, burrito, market, soyrizo, tofu
8 responses to “follow your ♥ café: better than its cheese!” 
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I’m so glad you finally ate at FYH! It’s one of my very favorite restaurants and only about 15-20 minutes from my house!
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that breakfast burrito! smothered in the sauce! and heck, the whole breakfast plate looks amazing… wish this were nearby!
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I love that place!! It’s one of the few restaurants that have remained not only consistent, but improved. The staff is very nice too and the prices are very reasonable. Too bad they don’t have one here on the westside of LA or south bay.
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they have a delicious rueben sandwich served with a great tasting pickle (not a clausen’s mind you, but one like a canter’s deli pickle). it has been 15 years since i have last been there, and the memory of that rueben haunts my thoughts to this day; that is one powerful rueben!
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Yay for FYH…where you can be a hippie, or just dine like one. Our favorites include the club sandwich, tempeh tacos, the tofu “Om”lette, nachos, tandoori and curry, and the mushroom burger.
My nitpick is they should serve breakfast all day. I asked why they don’t, and they said they have a different kitchen staff in the morning who knows the breakfast menu (and they leave promptly, so oh please oh please I’m only five minutes too late doesn’t work). I also wish they had some raw dishes. And that their french fries were worth ordering (they aren’t).
They have insanely good prices and most dishes are good-sized portions. The service can be a little laid-back, which is frustrating when a table that was seated after you gets their order taken first or it takes 10 minutes to get a check. We’ve had many screw-ups too, like getting real cheese instead of faux or the wrong toppings on the pizza, but they care about making it right.
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FYH cheese is so easy to melt!! you just need to add a liquid to it! like soymilk, get it near a boil and it melts it right down! thats how i make my vegan mac n cheese!
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Miss Peach July 31st, 2009 at 05:32
It looks like the cheese is dripping up the bun instead of down, as though when you go to the FYH cafe, you enter some kind of anti-gravity forcefield (which also allows for the melting of that cheese-like substance which so many vegans battle to make ooze). Looks delish! Wish I was visiting my friend in West Hills so I could make a stop over there (instead I”m in Philly).
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Gauri Radha गौरी राधा September 15th, 2010 at 15:02
Have stopped by here for vegan lunch, quite good!!
Vegyogini June 27th, 2008 at 08:58