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A Walk Down the Golden Road with Tony
18November 3rd, 2011golden road brewing, LA restaurants, mohawk bend, tony's darts away
Seemingly, barely a day goes by that the Tony Yanow empire doesn’t further the cause of craft beer and vegan food in LA.
Just two weeks ago we were celebrating the opening of spanking new Golden Road brewery in Atwater Village, and not long before that we were chowing down on a vegan burger at the opening night of Echo Park’s Mohawk Bend. Of course, we’ve raved many times about the neighborhood bar Tony’s Darts Away in Burbank with its energetic crowd, great beer selection and plentiful vegan food options.
Frankly, we’d been looking for an excuse to visit all three businesses sequentially: A “Tony crawl”, if you will, for a while, and the final nail was placed in the coffin when we heard that Tony’s Darts Away had not only opened its patio up but was also serving LA’s ONLY vegan brunch with beer on tap.
So last Saturday we set out to eat and drink as much of Tony’s offerings as we could. To begin, we opened up Tony’s Darts Away, ordering both vegan breakfast options, as well as a couple of glasses of Golden Road Hefeweizen to wash down the food…
First, the Vegan Breakfast Plate was really good, loaded with quinoa and tofu scramble with onions (we asked for no peppers, but it usually comes with by default), a side of vegan bacon, and griddled hash browns, served with a side of Tony’s house ketchup. It’s clear that Tony’s Darts Away has gone a different direction with the regular tofu scramble using quinoa as a base, with finely cubed firm tofu – it makes for a lighter, though equally filling mix. The hash browns were nice n crispy, but not too greasy and the veggie bacon came with maple syrup drizzled on it for good measure.
vegan breakfast plate: quinoa and tofu scramble with onions and peppers, a side of vegan bacon, and griddled hash browns, served with a side of tony’s house ketchup. $10
The plate was both tasty and filling – just about right for an early morning feast. We also ordered the Vegan Breakfast Burrito, stuffed with the same quinoa and tofu scramble but wrapped in a flour tortilla with with onions, (again, we declined the optional peppers), Daiya cheddar cheese, and Tony’s house salsa.
vegan breakfast burrito: quinoa and tofu scramble wrapped up in a warm flour tortilla with onions, peppers, daiya vegan cheddar cheese, and tony’s house salsa. $7.50
Of the two dishes, the burrito was less food, but our favorite. There’s just something terribly convenient about getting your entire meal wrapped up, and the texture of the tofu scramble was made for packing into a burrito. I’ve certainly had bigger, fancier breakfast burritos but the simplicity of this one hit the spot.
burrito innards
Although we sat inside, the new patio looked lovely – replete with heat lamps and cafe-style seating I can see that it would be a great spot on a fall afternoon to enjoy a cold beer and watch the Magnolia Blvd. traffic whiz by.
(not to mention the adorable bulldog who was seated in the patio area)
Full of beer and burritos, we set off on the 15-minute drive to Golden Road Brewing, where the blue building is open for growler fills on Saturday afternoons.
We topped up our two small growlers with Golden Road’s Point The Way IPA, a nice and hoppy session beer that goes surprisingly well with food.
Then, we about-tailed to I5 and headed straight to Mohawk Bend where we settled into a nice seat at the bar, ordered a couple more Golden Road Hefeweizens, a Point The Way IPA or two and indulged ourself with a light lunch, bearing in mind that we’d just stuffed ourselves with brunch.
flatbread with black-eyed pea hummus. $6
We got the tasty and filling flatbread with black eyed pea hummus with the intent of ordering the bangers and mash or burger as an entree, but found ourselves quite unable to eat another bite!
So, we hightailed it home, and enjoyed the afternoon on our deck with a couple of mini-growlers of Point The Way IPA.
We really love what Tony is doing, and hope to repeat our Tony crawl again in the near future. For sure, we’ll certainly be hitting up Tony’s Darts Away for brunch regularly, and we’ll be frequenting Mohawk Bend as much as we can.
Of course, all bets are off when Golden Road opens its tap room, pub and restaurant – we’ll probably just rent a place close by and basically live there.
Thanks, Tony for feeding and watering us so well.
18 responses to “A Walk Down the Golden Road with Tony” 
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Now I know what I’ll be doing Saturday morning. See you there, QG??
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Hmm “…LA’s ONLY vegan brunch…” not entirely accurate.
Flore Vegan in Silverlake (3818 W. SUNSET BLVD. SILVERLAKE, CA 90026) has an entirely vegan brunch every Saturday and Sunday from 10am – 1pm!!Delicious biscuits and gravy, waffles, pancakes, did I mention the biscuits and gravy?!?! (Don’t even get me started on the cupcakes!!)
I haven’t checked out any of the above locations (but it looks delicious and I definitely will) so I can’t compare but just wanted to throw it out there that there are other vegan brunch options!
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QG has several posts on Flore’s Weekend Brunch! Check the archives, yo!
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voodoo November 3rd, 2011 at 18:38
Yeah, Flore is GREAT and offers way more selection that Tony’s, but the beer on tap (and one of the best selections in LA to boot) really tips me over the edge.
Can’t wait to try the brunch!!
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Pxystx November 3rd, 2011 at 18:53
Something I’ve been wondering about. I love a good burrito, but how do you know the flour tortilla is Vegan. They’re hard to find in stores, so I wonder what they use at Tony’s. Do you know which brand they use?
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They’ve screwed stuff up before (“vegan” s’mores) so the flour tortilla is probably not vegan either
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hey do u guys have any concerns over soy? I have been reading some really frightening things about how 95% of all the soy in the country has been genetically modified, and there are some scientists who claim that there hasn’t been enough testing of how genetically modifying the soy may affect people, thanks to the lovely people from Monsanto who have done some very unsavory genetic tampering of soy, corn and canola. I went to the green festival in Downtown over the weekend, where I learned all about this and became very upset. there is a petition going around, which i signed, that makes it a requirement that any food which has been genetically modified be labeled as such. However at this time there is no Labeling for GMO foods. Have you heard anything about this? Do you make sure that the soy you order at restaurants has not been genetically modified?
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Gregalor November 3rd, 2011 at 21:42
Vegan flour tortillas hard to find? Hardly.
Maybe at big chain grocery stores where every brand of tortilla has a million unpronounceable chemicals in it. Those taste disgusting anyway, so who wants those?
Any Trader Joe’s in the country has delicious tortillas made out of a whopping three or four ingredients.
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here’s a wonderful article on soy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/01/anti-soya-brigade-ignore-scaremongering/print
gmo is never a good thing, however i think most vegans are conscious of this and conscious of what we put in our bodies. at an omnivore restaurant perhaps it would be a concern, however i think most of the gmo soy is the type used in cheap commercial foods, in soybean oil and as a meat filler (obviously not vegan). soy really is in EVERYTHING these days. and i’ve really never heard of gmo tofu either, i mean i could be wrong and it does exist somewhere but i’m pretty sure it doesnt.
whenever i buy soy milk and meat substitutes i can always see somewhere on the label to point out organic or non-gmo soy. this is more common than not, and i’m pretty sure the basis of the vegan food you will eat at a restaurant comes from the same sources. so yes it is a concern, but nothing to lose any sleep over. we’re fine.
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Mohawk is the place that accidentally used honey, not Tony’s idiot. They have completely different chefs and staffs. Just owned by the same person. Tony’s is legit.
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If soy were so bad for you, why aren’t more people in China and Japan dying younger than us? America’s always paranoid about the wrong things.
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According to the people i chatted with at the green festival recently, genetically modifying soy and corn is mostly happening in America, and it’s a fairly recent phenomenon. Many other countries do not want to purchase our soy or corn for this very reason. No one seems to know what the long term (adverse) effects of ingesting genetically modified organisms may be. I was asked to sign some petition that would force companies to give full disclosure if there was any non-oganic, genetically engineered corn or soy in a processed food item. I have been reading up on the subject on the net for the past week, and it is alarming…
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GMOs ARE scary and something to be concerned about, but like Torie said, most tofu and tempeh that I see has a non-GMO label. Even stuff you can buy at a regular supermarket, like House Tofu and Silk Soymilk. The GMO stuff is being used more as animal feed, soy oil and additives. Just don’t eat a lot of crap from companies like Kraft and Pepsico and you’ll probably only run into a small amount of GMO soy.
Corn is another matter, however, and I usually try to buy it organic. A big problem with GMO foods is the seeds blow into farms growing non-GMO foods and cross-pollinate. Then Monsanto sues them for using their seeds!
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I just recently read an article that mentioned Tony Yanow and his new(ish) brewery… Golden Road. What I found to be of particular interest in the article is that Golden Road is working with Ace Beverages for distributing their beer. Ace Beverages being a partner/subsidiary of AB InBev and them working with a supposedly independent “locally” supportive brewery seems quite contradictory to the ethos of what is being presented as small craft underdog… InBev being what many consider a deplorable corporate behemoth. I live in LA and have heard so much about Tony and his enterprises… and am actually a huge fan of Tony’s Darts Away… but i feel that the fact he is working so closely with InBev should be far more common knowledge or at least something that is addressed in the cultural conversation.
Anyhow. here is a link to the article I read.
http://www.beersinparadise.com/?p=7294
I know you focus mostly on vegan issues here but the ethics of business practices goes hand in hand with general compassion… I feel personally… and I think it would be rad to help bring this issue to more light. Perhaps in discussing it we can find more out and discover it to be less insidious than it seems to me right now.
samil November 3rd, 2011 at 08:57