as you may or may not know, i’m a huge fan of native foods. it’s a westwood vegan establishment with several original options whose ingredients i completely trust. imagine how delighted i was on my coachella vacation last weekend when i looked up the nearest vegan restaurant to my hotel in palm springs and found a native foods just 2 MILES AWAY!
…bliss!

latino lover pizza: mexican marinara, soy taco meat, salsa fresca, corn, avocado, cilantro, and vegan sour cream. he cha-cha! $13.95

yes, luckily my parents happened to be in town, and i definitely owed them lunch for saving my ass. so what better place to treat them to a meal at, than the quarrygirl.com approved native foods?

now, while i LOVE native foods, my only problem with this restaurant is the ubiquitous unadvertised bell peppers which DRIVE ME MAD and are sprinkled all over most dishes. no matter what i do, i can’t seem to remember to ask for my meals without them. i digress. back to the wonderful food!

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Ordering pizza was one of my favorite activities before I became a vegan. Now, though, that avenue of pleasure is firmly closed off to me since I don’t eat dairy. All is not lost, though — if you live close to Hollywood in LA, there’s always Damiano’s, but their delivery customer service is appalling (last time I ordered it took them nearly two hours to deliver a cold pizza — and that was when I lived under two miles away). There’s a reasonable frozen pizza option, but nothing beats freshly made pizza with ingredients you can select and add at will.

So, I set about creating a similar experience to delivery pizza in terms of taste, timing and effort. I succeeded in two of those (taste and timing), but on the effort front, nothing beats the convenience of calling a ‘phone number to get hot food delivered to your home, just as nothing beats not being milked to death if you’re a cow.

When I used to order pizza, it would take around 40-50 minutes from picking up the ‘phone to the local Pizza Hut to when it arrived on my doorstep. This method of preparing this pizza takes a little less time, but the end result is very comparable to delivered pizza if you’re happy to put in the effort.

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NEW UPDATE 07/25/09: ZPIZZA is replacing their non-vegan soy cheese with DAIYA VEGAN CHEESE! the NEW VEGAN CHEESE is AVAILABLE AT THE WEST HOLLYWOOD LOCATION. soon, it should be available at all zpizzas!

UPDATE: VEGANS, DON’T EAT SOY CHEESE AT ZPIZZA 🙁

this truly is a sad day because i have to recommend that my fellow vegans refrain from feeding their mock-mozzarella fix with zpizza soy cheese. i am sorry to announce that sources have confirmed the soy cheese at zpizza lacks total veganocity. i’ve gotten many mixed messages from both fellow vegans, and the corporate office of fransmart (the company behind the zpizza franchises) regarding the casein content of their soy cheese…to the point that i definitely don’t feel comfortable eating it! details to follow. and many thanks to scvegan for bringing this issue and new information to my attention.

now, all you awesome vegans can resume eating at damiano’s.

it is with great pleasure and relief that i can finally announce to the world, vegan zpizza in west hollywood is back!

for 3 weeks there was a huge gaping hole in my life, when zpizza mysteriously stopped carrying their amazing soy cheese. this was seriously life-altering cheese that made it possible for me to be a vegan. i’ve never found anything like it, follow your heart came nowhere near. it melted almost like REAL cheese, and i’d grown addicted to it, needing zpizza once a week at the very least!

that being said, you can imagine how my dreams were crushed one friday night when i called in an order after a peroni session at the formosa cafe only to find they were out of soy cheese! damn…surely it will be back tomorrow, i thought. but when i tried again the next day, still nothing—and it didn’t stop there! weeks passed as i called and called the restaurant and each time they assured me the cheese would be back soon. i was beginning to believe i would never taste this beautiful zpizza again.

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it’s rough coming home from a gig late at night, half drunk and too lazy to cook. luckily, tofutti has it all taken care of for us.

in 25 minutes max (that is, if you follow the “for the best results” instructions) you can have a crispy mouth-watering pizza, with MELTING vegan cheese ready to suit any occasion.

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being a vegan, it’s pretty hard to find a safe pizza in los angeles….or should i say, it’s easy to find vegan pizza that merely omits the cheese, but rarely do i come across a restaurant that serves a standard pizza with a non-dairy cheese substitute. luckily, damiano mr. pizza pizza on fairfax has survived as the bastion of vegan(pizza)ism in los angeles—it’s pretty easy to grab an enormous, fresh, tasty pizza there…when all else fails.

the downside? well, the pizza pictured above cost $36 before tip. seriously. an extra large w/ vegan cheese, mushrooms, tomatoes, and chopped garlic will completely break your bank. but i guess it’s worth it. just try not to think about the fact that a beautiful cheese and mushroom pan pizza from pizza hut would only cost you $14.24.in mr. pizza pizza’s defense, though, the food is damn good.

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