• July 7th, 2011quarrygirlLA restaurants, true food kitchen

    i am very much a hollywood creature, and it isn’t often that i venture to the west side. when i do make the trek to santa monica though, it usually isn’t for the cool breeze or sandy beach—instead, it’s almost always to either visit friends or nosh on vegan eats. last week’s visit was a combination of both, when chloe coscarelli invited me for lunch at the newly-opened true food kitchen.

    the restaurant occupies an absolutely massive and elegant space in the recently refurbbed santa monica place, and i was pretty wowed with the atmosphere. there’s a gigantic seating area indoors with comfy booths and an open kitchen, as well as a large patio area outside to take advantage of the never-ending LA sunshine. the service is at true food is excellent, from the complimentary valet on 2nd street to the overly attentive waitstaff.

    the menu is very “california” style—local and healthy for the most part, with a huge focus on “sustainable” meat (grrr!). if you can look past that, they have lots of great vegan items which are clearly marked on the menu. i absolutely love it when restaurants have a separate vegan symbol…it takes all the guess work out of ordering!

    to start, we split an order of the shiitake tofu lettuce cups from the appetizer menu, and they were absolutely wonderful.

    shiitake and tofu lettuce cups: ginger, cashew and toasted garlic. $9

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