we are ALWAYS on the lookout for vegan pizza in los angeles, so we were super excited when a quarrygirl forums user called “cakebite” posted this entry about deano’s a few months ago. the gourmet pizzeria is located in the old farmers market near the grove on 3rd and fairfax, it carries daiya cheese, and has loads of vegan options. not to mention gluten free menu items, and whole wheat crust as well! of course we had to check it out.

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heyo! this is just a quick informational post to let y’all know that m cafe has launched a new summer grillin’ to-go menu that they will be offering at all 3 locations through labor day…and unless i’m missing something, it’s ALL VEGAN! (no fish, woo woo!)

the new menu is the perfect go-to food source for any summer bbq, picnic, or party…and features items like big macro patties, seitan cutlets, buns, chili beans, soy cheese slices, and desserts.

MENU AFTER THE JUMP —->

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it’s almost the weekend, and that means madeleine bistro is getting ready to knock your socks off with another incredible tasting menu. from chef david’s blog:

This weekend at Madeleine Bistro, we are offering a Five Course Chef’s Tasting Menu featuring the organic fruit of Etheridge Farms. I’ve known Gene Etheridge for many years, and I can say from personal experience that his fruit is the best that I have ever tried. He is also very passionate about what he does and is always eager to discuss his fruit and how he is able to bring out the best in each piece of fruit. This week, his peak fruits include “tasty treat” plums, “Santa Rosa” plums, yellow and white peaches and heirloom tomatoes. Here is the menu I created:

Panzanella soup
Heirloom tomato “cannoli”, basil oil

“Tasty treat” plum carpaccio
Pickled plums, green papaya noodles, toasted walnuts

Grilled seitan with yellow peach barbecue sauce
Yukon gold potato puree, grilled asparagus, shallot rings

White peach-lemongrass dessert soup and sorbet
Fresh berries, strawberry en gelee, mint oil

S’mores flavors with plum ginger ale
Chocolate ganache, graham crackers, marshmallow fluff

sounds amazing, right?! the menu is going to be on saturday and sunday nights only, and is just $50 per person (dishes also available a la carte)! last time madeleine bistro had a tasting like this, it was $75 per person…so i highly suggest you take advantage of this low price! a quarrygirl reader went to the last etheridge farms meal and loved it so much that he wrote a wonderful review we ended up posting on the site.

reserve a table now—i have a feeling this is gonna be an epic dinner you won’t wanna miss.

madeleine bistro
18621 Ventura Blvd.
Tarzana, CA
(818) 758-6971

hey los angeles, if you like to help animals and enjoy tasty food (who doesn’t?!?!), then you gotta hit up the 8000 sunset veggie grill location on the evening of THURSDAY JULY 22nd, and let them know you are dining to support ARME.

from 5pm-11pm on 07/22/10 when you purchase food or beverages (take-out as well!) and mention ARME, veggie grill will donate 50% of your purchase to the organization! in case you haven’t heard of ARME, they are an incredible non-profit organization that strives to end the suffering of animals through rescue and education. they not only do hands-on rescue, but have made award-winning animal rights documentaries such as skin trade and behind the mask. this organization has already made an enormous difference for animals, but they’ve spent a huge amount of money on outreach and film production and need our help. they even have a new documentary in the works, so let’s MAKE IT HAPPEN.

we all know veggie grill as one of the best places in town to get hearty vegan grub (i HIGHLY suggest the new daiya cheese nachos and el dorado!), and now you can help animals even more just by enjoying their delicious food…with no extra cost to you. go to veggie grill thursday night and mention ARME. there is honestly no easier way to help animals just by eating a tasty dinner.

here is the flyer. check it out, but you only need to MENTION ARME for the discount to count.

huge props to veggie grill sunset for making this happen. we love you, and all the new menu items ROCK…even though you took away the caesar salad. :/

so i will see you all there, right?!

YES! THEY ARE HERE! i blogged about these babies last month and told you they would be available at ralphs soon. well we waited and waited through delay after delay, and the vegan frozen pizzas never hit the grocery store shelves. but today we can finally say, “ralphs?! fuck that shit! these pizzas are AVAILABLE AT LOCALI!”

locali may be a bit overpriced and not entirely vegan, but they always get the cool vegan products before anyone else. they were the first in LA to carry amy’s vegan mac and cheese, and now they have the brand new tofurky pizzas with daiya cheese! GO GET SOME NOW. they are really good. read my old review if you wanna know more of my thoughts on these pizzas.

FINALLY it’s here! if you want authentic, vegan, amazingly delicious chicago-style deep dish pizza in los angeles…look no further than masa of echo park. the restaurant has offered vegan pizza for awhile, but as of a few days ago, they have perfected the art of the animal-free deep dish using the new and improved stretchy teese from chicago soydairy.

i want to start by saying, this pizza is a million times better than any other deep dish we’ve covered on this blog. when i say it’s “authentic” chicago-style, i mean it…and that’s something that masa takes very seriously. in a letter on the restaurant’s website, owner rob rowe explains that he was born and raised in chicago, has worked in chicago pizzerias, and is passionate about making chicago pizza. each pie consists of a 2 inch deep cornmeal crust, filled with whole pear tomatoes, chunky garlic, and cheese underneath the sauce.

to say this pizza is incredible would be a gross understatement. it’s perfect in every way from the extremely flavorful sauce, to the melty-ness of the teese, to the soft cornmeal crust that basically melts in your mouth. the crust is the most amazing pizza crust i’ve ever tasted, in fact.

masa also serves tap beer and wine, which is good news, because their authentic deep dish pizzas take about 40 minutes to bake. this is definitely a great place to come and unwind, have a few drinks, and wait patiently for pizza perfection to emerge from the oven. if you don’t want to wait though, you can always call and order your pizza ahead of time.

please take my advice, and check out masa as soon as you possibly can. order the deep dish with the new stretchy teese, and enjoy what will be without a doubt some of the best vegan pizza you’ve ever eaten.

Masa of Echo Park
1800 West Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(213) 989-1558

PS: masa butters the crust of their deep dish pizzas, but when you order vegan cheese they instead use olive oil. i’m just letting you know, because you may wanna remind them NOT to butter your crust…even though it’s policy not to. i’m just paranoid like that.

okay, so i know i already posted the menu for this week’s chef tasting menu at madeleine bistro…but i had a chance to actually try out a few of the 5 courses today, and WHOA, this stuff is not to be believed. i don’t know what you have planned tonight and tomorrow, but you should seriously work in a visit to madeleine. this stuff is mind-blowing, even by dave anderson standards. oh, and i just wanna mention that the 5 course tasting menu is ONLY $50 (a steal), but each dish is also available a la carte for a lower price!

the first thing i tried was the “egg” in the hole, a vegan take on the breakfast classic. nothing could prepare me for how good this thing was. it came with a soy-based egg stuffed in a piece of fried bread with portobella bacon and hash brown style rice balls, all of which were divine.

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okay, so i know i have raved, and raved, and raved about the burgers, sausages, and fried delicacies from chili addiction…but lately i am straight up obsessed with their bowl of chili mac. this thing is SO FREAKING GOOD, it makes me wanna re-write the vegan bucket list just so i can add it.

chili mac: any of our delicious chili varieties as a topping on a bowl of elbow macaroni. $8

the chili mac is simple: you pick any of the restaurant’s amazing chilies to top off a hearty bowl of elbow macaroni. there are usually 2 vegan options to choose from, and lately i can’t get enough the 3 bean euphoria…a mix of garbanzo, pinto, and black beans. if you are craving meatiness, chili addiction also always has an amazing option containing match (the most convincing vegan meat EVER).

i know a serving of chili spooned onto a bowl of noodles may sound like something you can make at home, but i can assure you that it isn’t. chili addiction puts so much time and effort into each of their chilies, i swear it’s like nothing you’ve ever eaten. this stuff tastes like it has been cooking for days, with unique flavors and spices buried deep in every bite. i can’t even describe how good this chili is, you just need to go experience it for yourself.

as if the bowl alone isn’t awesome enough, chili addiction also has a self serve condiment bar with limitless jalapenos, onions, and cilantro. you seriously gotta try this meal out—i’m drooling just thinking about it.

chili addiction
408 N. La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 203-1793
lunch 12pm-3pm
dinner 5:30pm-9pm

a couple weeks ago two of my good friends got married (yay!), and to celebrate they planned a beach camping trip out in oxnard. camping for me means i’m stuck eating snacky things like chips and peanut butter pretzels because i’m not going to cook a veggie dog on a grill that’s covered in meat residue and i don’t have the foresight to bring, say, a sandwich. i’m good at being prepared like that.

so after a night of shoving my face full of tortilla chips and salsa, the next morning when one of my friends suggested we go in to ventura to check out the thrift stores i was all for it, hoping to find some real food.

we came across nature’s grill on main street, walked up to the counter and checked out the menu. honestly i saw the word “tempeh tacos” and didn’t really look at anything else.

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as you probably know, madeleine bistro is the best vegan restaurant in town. recently, they’ve changed their hours and have decided to offer a different tasting menu every weekend, as well as a new delivery menu every monday. their website doesn’t reflect this change yet…so as a service to you, the readers, we are going to post the menus here each week for your enjoyment.

check out what madeleine has in store this weekend—it looks freaking fantastic. from a vegan “egg in the hole” with portabella bacon, to summer gnocchi, and wild mushroom wontons.

here is the glorious menu.

i just can’t get enough of tony’s darts away!

it’s the only real bar in los angeles with a vegan-friendly menu, the food is excellent, and they’ve got over 30 beers on tap. seriously, tony’s is amazing. i hit up the burbank boozer recently with a couple friends, and as to be expected, we had an excellent time.

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SWEET! i just received this email from the executive chef of cru (one of our favorite raw restaurants in town) regarding their stance on honey. it looks like the restaurant is going to quickly become even more vegan-friendly. check it:

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If you were a quarrygirl.com reader just about a year ago, you’ll probably recall reading Operation Pancake, where we investigated 16 Los Angeles area vegan restaurants, and found that six of them tested positive for certain non-vegan ingredients. In the report (which you really should read if you have not already), we singled out Green Leaves Vegan in Los Feliz as being particularly non-vegan as they were apparently putting real cheese into some of their dishes.

quesadilla from green leaves

Soon after our post, things got nasty. We were threatened with legal action by an attorney claiming to act on behalf of Green Leaves Vegan, and yet another lawyer contacted us privately to see if we’d join in a lawsuit AGAINST Green Leaves for “emotional distress”. In fact, it was amazing to see the strength of feeling that patrons of Green Leaves Vegan displayed (check the comments on the post!). Many people had been eating there for years and were shocked to discover that they had apparently been eating non-vegan food.

So one year on from Operation Pancake we decided to return to Green Leaves Vegan to see how things had improved. Posing as a customer, I asked a very accommodating staff member if the restaurant was entirely vegan. She stated “This is a vegan restaurant, and everything here is vegan.” I asked if she was sure as we’d heard rumors to the contrary, then she said “Look, we’re certified as vegan by the LA County Health Department”, and pointed to a certificate on the wall by the entrance door.

super authentic-looking "official" certificate by green leaves

I was beside myself with joy! A “vegan certification” could only be a good thing for the LA vegan community. Well, the problem was that it WASN’T a vegan certification. Far from it. It instead appeared to be a “Truth in Menu” certificate which is used to verify that certain ingredients are what the restaurants claim. They’re used to indicate, for example, that if somebody is selling a “Japanese Kobe Burger” that the meat is, in fact, Japanese beef and not some domestic knock-off. These certifications are also used on occasion to verify that uncooked weight is accurate: An 8oz burger, really is 8oz when it goes on to the grill!

I was puzzled as to why the City of LA would give such a certification to a vegan restaurant with such a large and broad menu when I noticed some strange things about the document. First, it said “Food Official Inspection” on it: language the government would never use. Second, it was reproduced on plain white stock paper, not official LA County certificate paper (that would have a watermark of City Hall). Also, it was clearly printed on a consumer-grade color inkjet printer (the kind I have at home), there was a grammatical error and the City of LA logo was low resolution and badly cropped. Finally, there was a small yellow sticker on the lower right of the certificate with unintelligible writing on it which appeared strangely suspect.

Frankly, it appeared to me that somebody had knocked together a fake certificate using the logo from the City of LA website, and hung it on the wall. The more I looked at the “certificate” the more I realized it was completely fake. I was outraged, and decided to leave the restaurant. Before I did, though, I pulled out my ‘phone and snapped a high resolution picture. I was tempted to rush home and knock out a blog post about this, but I know I’m not an expert in local government documentation so I decided to verify the authenticity of the certificate directly with its alleged provider: The City of LA Dept. Of Public Health.

From my car, I started calling the City of LA (that 311 ‘phone number that Mayor Villaraigosa introduced is a really useful thing!) and was eventually transferred to a Health Inspector at the Environmental Health Dept. I explained to her what I’d seen and she said that she’d contact the local field office and make a request for somebody to visit. Frankly, I didn’t think that anything would happen – these people must be so busy that spending time to investigate some paranoid vegan crackpot’s suspicions would hardly be high on their list of priorities!

Before I hung up with the lady I got her email address (NO, NOT FOR THAT. Get your mind out of the gutter.) so that I could email through the photo I’d just taken. Within seconds of sending it, I received a nice reply:

click to enlarge

Well, as I expected, July 8th came and went without hearing anything from the Health Inspector. BUT, yesterday afternoon (Monday July 12th) the following message popped into my Inbox:

click to enlarge

As soon as I read it I called a vegan friend who works in Los Feliz and asked him to pop down to Green Leaves and see if the “certificate” was still there. An hour or so later, he called me to confirm that there was an empty space where I’d seen the document just a few days ago. Again, I was intrigued to know what was going on, so I called up Green Leaves and asked to speak to the manager. The call went like this:

QG: Hi there, is your restaurant completely vegan?
GLV: Yes, 100% everything is vegan.
QG: Oh, that’s great. A friend of mine said you had a certificate that your menu is vegan. Can I see that when I come in?
GLV: (long pause) er, we have no certificate but we are 100% vegan.
QG: Oh, my friend saw the certificate only last week. Did you take it down?
GLV: I don’t really know about a certificate, sorry, but we are a vegan restaurant and the food is good!
QG: OK, thanks very much.
GLV: Welcome

I think that any intelligent person would have a pretty good idea about what the bottom line is here. I reached out to a few vegan friends, one of which told me that he’d been shown the certificate as a reassurance of Green Leaves Vegan’s honest menu some weeks before, and never thought to question it. I wonder how many other people were sucked in by this fake certificate and who continued to trust Green Leaves Vegan, a restaurant which never, ever seems to learn a lesson.

I’m going to research the hearing date for the Public Health Dept. and I may go along if it’s a public hearing – I really have to be a fly on the wall when the owners explain an alleged forgery of a government certification.

a couple weeks ago the frysmith (or as i call them, ‘frysmiff’) parked their glorious tank of vegetable oil up the street from the building i work in. i love the frysmith, i really do, but the portion size of an order of fries is huge and i can’t handle all of that deep-fried goodness without feeling 1) a little gross and 2) a little guilty. SO i was really excited when they had “potacos” as a special.

potacos at frysmith

what is a potaco? it’s a tacos with fries as the filling. DUH. fucking GENIUS!

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want FREE FOOD from cowboys and turbans this weekend?

check the DETAILS…

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