• April 15th, 2011quarrygirlLA restaurants, pizza fusion

    did you guys know that april is “earth month”?! and more importantly, pizza fusion in hollywood is giving away free stuff to celebrate?!

    details after the jump.

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  • April 1st, 2011quarrygirlLA restaurants, pizza fusion

    …as if you needed an excuse to eat vegan pizza, right? well over the four days you have 2 chances to stuff your face and help the animals at the same time.

    all you gotta do is eat at pizza fusion in hollywood on sunday april 3rd (from 11am-4pm) and/or tuesday april 5th (from 11am-10pm) and mention ARME when you order…

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  • February 15th, 2011quarrygirlLA restaurants, pizza fusion

    pizza fusion hollywood is continuously looking out for their vegan customers. from carrying 2 types of dairy-free cheese (daiya and follow your heart), to offering cruelty-free specials on both superbowl and valentine’s day…they always seem to have us covered.

    in addition to their incredible pizza menu, i recently found out they have VEGAN BEER FLOATS and a new selection of vegan-friendly wraps. of course, i had to get over there and try this stuff out.

    vegan wrap: romaine, arugula, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, soy cheese, tahini & fresh lemon. served with side arugula salad. $8.99

    first up, the “vegan wrap,” which (naturally) comes vegan by default…

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  • February 4th, 2011quarrygirlLA restaurants, pizza fusion, stores, whole foods

    it’s been almost a week since vegan pizza day, and i don’t know about you guys, but i’m ready for round #2! to celebrate the superbowl this sunday, pizza fusion hollywood and whole foods are both having awesome vegan pizza deals that you won’t wanna miss!

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  • January 24th, 2011quarrygirlLA restaurants, pizza fusion

    heads up, angelenos! BOTH pizza fusion locations in town (hollywood and santa monica) will be offering a 10% discount on saturday 1/29/11 when you mention vegan pizza day. hell yes—time to get your vegan pizza on at a reduced price!

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  • April 10th, 2010quarrygirlLA restaurants, pizza fusion

    pizza fusion is awesome. it’s the only place i can think of in LA where i can relax with some friends and eat daiya-covered pizza, while enjoying beer after beer on draught. as if that isn’t reason enough to head over there ASAP, now the hollywood location is offering some amazing giveaways in honor of “earth month,” to provide some extra incentive…

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  • January 22nd, 2010quarrygirlLA restaurants, pizza fusion

    just a few days ago, we were lamenting that there’s not enough vegan-friendly eat-in pizzerias, where one can relax with a bottle of red wine and a tasty pizza in a comfy dimly-lit environment. well, pizza fusion hollywood has come to the rescue.

    pizza fusion hollywood has been open for a while, but up until yesterday the only vegan cheese they offered was follow your heart. after being spoiled by the countless places to get daiya in LA, i vowed to never eat FYH again…and even wrote an open letter to pizza fusion hollywood begging them to carry daiya. earlier this week, they sent me an email saying they would finally be introducing daiya to their menu (in addition to FYH), and inviting me over for a pizza tasting. of course my reply was, hell yes!

    i hit up pizza fusion hollywood along with brittany from sick of lettuce, to try out their daiya-covered pizzas, and i must say the whole experience was pretty wonderful. when i arrived i was floored by how inviting and cozy the restaurant was. i’d been to pizza fusion in santa monica before, but the hollywood location is much more my style. it’s smaller and more intimate, but with a pretty big bar, and cute tables looking out on sunset blvd. our server was extremely friendly and brought us a drink list with all the vegan options clearly marked.

    we ordered a glass of beer and wine and spent a while poring over the menu, deciding what we could veganize. ahhh, this is so the pizza experience i have been looking for! tap beer, wine, and all the time in the world to just hang out and chill.

    we started out with the flatbread and dip trio appetizer, which is not vegan by default, but can be made animal-free by omitting the artichoke spread and olive tapenade.

    flatbread and dip veganized: served with marinara and olive oil.

    they brought it out with extra marinara sauce and olive oil for dipping, and the whole thing was downright delicious. the portion was huge, but we had no problem polishing off every last triangle. the bread was moist and covered in delicate seasonings, and the sauce was rich and flavorful.

    very vegan: crimini mushrooms, roasted garlic, tomato sauce, and daiya cheese.

    the first pizza we tried was the only one that is vegan by default: the very vegan. it came with mushrooms, garlic, tomato sauce and daiya cheese. i’ve had this pizza before with follow your heart, and i must say this was a huge improvement! they didn’t put too much cheese on the pizza, but rather just the right amount, so it wasn’t overly gooey. mushrooms and garlic are pretty much my two favorite pizza toppings anyway, so this was right up my street.

    vegan bbq chicken pizza: bbq sauce, roasted red onion, fresh garlic, basil, daiya cheese.

    the next pizza we tried was the bbq chicken pizza, with daiya and vegan chicken strips. this thing was awesome, and the faux chicken was soft and chewy. it was pretty light and healthy tasting too, again pizza fusion didn’t overload the thing with cheese and soy meat. sweet and tangy with a kick of garlic, this pizza was perfect.

    farmer's market vegan: roasted artichoke hearts, red onion, zucchini, roasted portobello, tomato sauce, and daiya.

    the last pizza we sampled was a vegan version of the farmer’s market, a pie loaded with roasted vegetables. pizza fusion did not skimp on the toppings one bit; there were huge chunks of everything from portobello mushrooms to zucchini to artichokes. while we chose the white crust option for the first two pizzas, we got this one with multigrain crust. i’m not gonna lie, i like the white crust better, but the multigrain one was pretty good as well.

    just when i thought i was gonna explode, they brought out some brownies and ice cream for us to try as well. the brownie was vegan and gluten free, and while i’m used to more decadent desserts, it was definitely great for a GF item. i’d had a pizza fusion brownie before at the santa monica location, and this one was much better and softer on the inside. the real star of the dessert plate though, was the vegan strawberry ice cream. completely rich and insanely delicious.

    overall, our experience at pizza fusion hollywood was lovely and i can’t wait to return. the food was good, the vibe was chill, the staff was nice, and the beer was on tap. plus the place is really easy to get to, close to my house, and validates parking for up to an hour. for convenience and atmosphere, pizza fusion hollywood has everywhere else in town beat.

    so check this place out when you have a chance. get some vegan pizza and take your pick of either daiya or follow your heart. isn’t it great to have all these options?

    pizza fusion hollywood
    7950 W. Sunset Blvd.
    Suite 104
    Los Angeles, CA 90046
    Phone: 323-375-3390

    Sun–Thur 11am – 10pm
    Fri–Saturday 11am – 11pm

    PS: the pizza fusion in santa monica also carries both daiya and follow your heart. yay!

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  • dear pizza fusion I WANT DAIYA

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  • July 7th, 2009quarrygirlLA restaurants, pizza fusion
    very vegan: crimini mushrooms, roasted garlic, tomato sauce and soy cheese. $16.99

    very vegan: crimini mushrooms, roasted garlic, tomato sauce and soy cheese. $16.99

    there’s been a lot of vegan-friendly places popping up around los angeles lately, and one of the most recent is the “organic” and self-proclaimed “eco-friendly” pizza fusion in santa monica. the green pizzeria offers both vegan and gluten-free crust options (although the two are mutually exclusive), along with vegan cheese supplied by follow your heart. while an environmentally-conscious pizza place with clearly marked vegan options is undeniably a major score, i can’t help but wonder what it would have felt like had pizza fusion arrived on the scene a year ago.

    lemme take you back. in july of 2008 we were just coming off the fact that zpizza’s soy cheese was not vegan. the only place to get a huge vegan take-out pie was at damiano mr. pizza pizza on fairfax. although it wasn’t ideal, we lived with damiano for 6 more months until something magical happened—purgatory pizza in boyle heights announced that they would be rolling out their popular nyc style pizzas with vegan cheese. but not just that follow your heart stuff, no, purgatory were first to offer the best vegan cheese available stateside at the time, teese cheese from chicago soy dairy. and it’s on that day—february 1, 2009—that vegan pizza in LA was forever changed. companies started to realize that vegans wanted pizza more than anything, and we didn’t just want this old, un-melted follow your heart crap. the next pizzeria to have satisfactory vegan offerings was lucifer’s pizza in los feliz. they first offered a falsely advertised non-vegan soy cheese, but after coming under some fire, they changed their tune and started serving up huge thin and crispy pies with teese as well.

    then along came daiya…i’m sure you have heard all about it by now. daiya is a stretchy, tasty, melty vegan product that behaves almost exactly like real cheese. i’d go as far as to call it game changing. it hit the blogosphere first, then showed up at the online vegan store pangea available for personal order. just when it was beginning to make a major splash nearing the end of may, one LA pizza place got their hands on daiya and completely raised the bar. cruzer pizza, with locations in los feliz and glendale, started using the new stretchy cheese, along with an arsenal of fake meats and pasta dishes.

    in less than 2 months, vegan pizza in LA went from hard to find to readily available. within a short period of time, purgatory also adopted daiya cheese and even several local whole foods began selling daiya covered pizzas at a very low price. wow. it used to be bloody impossible to get animal-free pizza in los angeles, and then all of a sudden amazing, stretchy, revolutionary vegan cheese was available as close as the nearest whole foods. epic.

    oh, and then came pizza fusion. a chain started in 2006, pizza fusion is an eatery dedicated to being fashionably green. they deliver pizzas in hybrid prius vehicles, boast that all their ingredients are organic, and have token vegan menu items including a pizza covered in follow your heart cheese, as well as a gluten-free brownie.

    pizza-fusion-vegan-cu

    let’s start with the vegan pizza. i can’t even tell you how stoked i would have been about this pie in july of 2008. a decent pizzeria with cruelty-free options was basically unheard of back then. i would have eaten at pizza fusion everyday! but one year later, what with the introduction of vegan new york pizza with teese, and now with this amazing daiya cheese product…i find it kinda difficult to get stoked on a thin crust organic pizza with follow your heart, aka vegan cheese 1.0.

    sorry dudes, pizza fusion is decent, don’t get me wrong. if i were in sanmo i would probably hit up this place frequently, i just feel that LA has much better options now. i’m so stoked that this is a chain serving vegan pizza, but until they step up the quality of the sauce, crust, and vegan cheese…why not just go to your local daiya-serving whole foods location, which is bound to be way cheaper than pizza fusion. oh and on a side note, the staff were also pretty unknowledgeable about the vegan-ness of the food. it took us about 10 minutes of back and forth with the waiter to determine whether or not the crust was vegan…and we found out the gluten-free crust is not, but the normal crust is. gah, it was too much confusion for me to handle!

    although it wasn’t as good as the stuff we get at purgatory, cruzer, or even whole foods, our pizza from pizza fusion was definitely edible…which is more than i can say for the brownie. with a hungry stomach, i ordered the vegan and gluten-free treat that the menu describes as “delicious”. i hate to say it, but i took one bite of pizza fusion’s brownie and didn’t even want to bring it home. marginally tasty, it reminded me of diet food. perhaps i am just too spoiled with so many talented vegan bakers living in los angeles, but this stuff just tasted like a gym snack.

    fresh homemade vegan brownie. $4.99

    fresh homemade vegan brownie. $4.99

    so pizza fusion, is it worth your time? maybe. however my opinion is that it’s too little too late. if they wanted to show up on the los angeles scene with an all vegan, organic, follow your heart cheese option, maybe they should have arrived before i was spoiled with cruzer, purgatory, teese, and daiya.

    to put it as nicely as possible: if i was a new vegan, pizza fusion might impress the fuck out of me. but now, i simply know better.

    you should still go and check pizza fusion out…because, they have vegan stuff, eco-friendly containers, and prius cars. they also have tons of literature boasing about free-range meat. i hate to see places preaching about the environment while at the same time bragging that they ‘humanely’ murder animals. this place could be serving everything in styrofoam containers, and it would be doing a better service to the planet than selling animal flesh. they just don’t get it. ah well.

    so santa monica residents, this is a great place to visit when you can’t make it further east to cruzer, purgatory, or….when whole foods is closed.

    pizza-fusion-ext

    pizza fusion
    2901 Ocean Park Blvd
    Santa Monica, CA 90405-2919
    (310) 581-2901

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