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Daiya Vegan Cheese debuts at Purgatory Pizza! The best gets better.
14June 10th, 2009LA restaurants, purgatory pizzaAt the risk of quarrygirl.com becoming “LA’s vegan pizza with Daiya cheese blog”, we just had to post that the trifecta of perfect crust, perfect sauce and perfect vegan cheese has been, well, perfected now that Purgatory Pizza offers Daiya vegan cheese. We happened to pop in there for our weekly visit just as our well respected Chef Ricky was perfecting (OK, you get the idea about perfection) his interpretation of vegan pizza using Daiya cheese, and BOY, were we in for a treat. Purgatory has also mastered the melting of Daiya Cheese…although the company sells them in bags of small shreds, Purgartory got them to come together in the most excellent way, forming pure gooey, stretchy, cheesy goodness.
Melted Daiya vegan cheese at Purgatory Pizza in Los Angeles
It’s well known that Purgatory has incredible crusts and sauce (all hand-made on the premises to Chef Ricky’s secret recipe, and strictly vegan), and they began offering vegan pizzas (using Teese vegan cheese) some months ago as an alternative to their regular vegetarian and omni pizzas. Not content with vegan cheese and vegetable toppings, Purgatory has pioneered the use of vegan meat substitutes testing many combinations of products, finally settling on Field Roast and Gardein meat analogs, each prepared and seasoned on-premise as alternative vegan offerings.
To be honest, the addition of Daiya just takes what works extremely well already (Teese is no slouch in the taste department), and tops it off [pun intended] with the “vegan cheese that changes everything” to yield an absolutely sublime pizza experience that’s staunchly vegan and incredibly well prepared and cooked.
Large Vegan Pizza with Daiya Cheese: half Pesto, Field Roast Sausage, Peppers, Mushrooms and Basil. Half Mushrooms, Tomatoes, Basil and Chopped Garlic.
On the night in question we opted for a pizza, half of which was pesto based with sauteed mushrooms, Field Roast sausage and red peppers, and the other half of which was tomato sauce based with basil, garlic mushrooms and tomatoes — all topped with lashings of incredibly tasty and amazingly textured Daiya cheese. I can tell you that the addition of Daiya takes the taste and texture of Purgatory’s pies to a whole new level. It’s actually difficult to describe, but the bottom line is that Daiya has a texture and taste so close to milk-based cheeses that even omnivores probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference in many cases.
On pizza, Daiya is at least as “good”, if not better than casein-based soy cheese. So, a combination of gourmet crust, sauce and toppings cooked in a high temperature brick convection oven (just like they do in Italy and New York) leads to an amazing pizza eating experience that’s entirely cruelty-free. Get your ass down to Boyle Heights (Purgatory is about 1 minute off the 101) and ask for a vegan pizza (be sure to specify you want Daiya as your vegan cheese of choice), and you won’t be sorry.
What’s more, you can take your own bottle of wine, beer or whatever, and enjoy your pizza an an urban-chic environment of rock music and entertaining murals. You just can’t go wrong! Rush on out to Purgatory Pizza as soon as you can for some truly exceptional artisan meat toppings, the best vegan cheese around, friendly service, and an all around excellent pizza experience. I know what I’m doing this weekend.
Purgatory Pizza
1326 E 1st St
Los Angeles, CA 90033
(323) 262-5310Mon-Sun. 6:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.
Tags: daiya, downtown la, vegan cheese
11 responses to “Daiya Vegan Cheese debuts at Purgatory Pizza! The best gets better.” 
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I can’t believe you actually ate something that was THAT close to a bell pepper!
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ive never eaten at purgatory, but your review sounds amazing…do they do a good job of keeping vegan and non vegan stuff separated? (like thats amore using separate utensils and pans marked v)… i have a dairy allergy and while it wont send me to the hospital, i try to avoid as much as i can.
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miss anthrope June 11th, 2009 at 06:42
mosez: i checked with purgatory. they keep the vegan items completely separate and use separate utensils. phew!
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I wish they would open a bit earlier at least on weekends. I would love to get some pizza but six is a bit late to go out with small children.
James
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Let’s plan a field trip ASAP!
Miss Anthrope, that was a very close call with the red bell pepper. You’re very brave (I’m not so brave with onions, let the record show).
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The boyfriend and I have to check this out. It looks amazing.
(BTW, miss anthrope, I agree with you re: bell peppers. They are an abomination.)
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Purgatory Pizza was my go to when I went to school downtown–even before they had a store front. I’m happy to see they are still around and thriving. Definitely some of the best pizza in LA. Especially when you throw on the El Diablo sauce.
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miss anthrope, thanks so much for checking on that.
i’ll definitely have to try it out 🙂 -
how does it compare to Cruzers? I can’t get enough of that margarita pizza! And its around the corner from my place so you can’t beat that…
3 Trackbacks / Pingbacks
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