i am in love with the december specials at hugo’s restaurant, and the best one i’ve tried yet is the south of the border casserole.

a hearty blend of slow-cooked vegetables, spices, and (in my case) tofu, this dish has everything going for it. plus, it’s pretty big, and comes served with a giant mound of brown rice for the mixin’…

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UPDATE 12/21: we have found that hard times pizza uses follow your heart as their vegan cheese. also, we tried it and it was AWESOME.

it’s time for another quick bite! this one comes to us from trishells, who recently hit up hard times in silverlake. the pizzeria has recently started serving vegan pizza, and according to some tweeps, it’s available by the SLICE. whoa. we aren’t sure what vegan cheese they are using, but people who have eaten it are saying it seems like the new teese. we are gonna try to get to the bottom of the cheese brand issue and report back. as we know, it’s a pretty important thing to find out. meanwhile, here’s trishells’ review!

my new favorite pizza is at Hard Times! on a lazy saturday night i ordered vegan pizza for pick up with garlic, jalapenos, mushrooms, and olives…

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UPDATE 9/5/11: before dining at the wynn, please check your restaurant’s dress code. i’ve heard some horror stories of nice vegans being turned away for not being fancy enough. boo! just a heads up!

BIG UPDATE: since the writing of this post, we’ve gotten a ton of menus for more places at the wynn. huge thanks to awesome quarrygirl reader matthew who sent us a PDF with vegan menus from FOURTEEN of wynn’s restaurants!!! this should help you plan your trip. click here for the menus.

hey readers! it’s been all up in the news lately that since mogul steve wynn went vegan, EVERY restaurant at his hotel on the las vegas strip has vegan options! awesome, right? YES.

however, the bad news is, the menus for these places aren’t officially posted anywhere online. we went to vegas last month and decided to start collecting vegan wynn menus for your benefit. we were there for a couple hours, and hit up every place we passed that was open…but we still only scratched the surface. i urge you, readers, to take these menus as a starting point to see what’s out there. and if you ever go to the wynn and get your grubby little hands on more menus, SEND THEM TO US. we will post them. the restaurants all appear to act independently, so we’ve seen everything from innovative options to salad sans cheese. here’s what we’ve got:

let’s start with the buffet…

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we all know that doomie’s is opening up this weekend, but there are a couple other awesome vegan events that should be on your radar as well.

remember those insane donuts i raved about last year from the righteous fryers?!…

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hey everyone, just a reminder that doomie’s home cookin’ is opening up in hollywood this weekend…and you are gonna need a reservation if you wanna get in. we checked them out last weekend during their test run/soft opening, and i can promise you the food is amazing.

chili cheesebuger: smothered in homemade chili with real or vegan cheese. choice of side. $8.95

of course we ordered way more than we could eat, starting with the chili cheeseburger and onion rings…

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there was a new food truck on the block during lunch today – which is a big deal to me because my options for food, especially within walking distance, are limited and starting to get a little old. so i strolled by the clean street food truck because i heard they had a vegan sandwich. and GUESS WHAT, they do!

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hey, animal lovers! just a quick heads up that my friend sara radovanovitch over at alchemy tattoo in silverlake offers VEGAN TATTOOS IN LOS ANGELES.

you might be thinking, “what is non-vegan about a harmless tattoo?!”. but the sad fact is, most inks include animal bone or even animal fat. you could get a totally gnarly death-filled tattoo job without even knowing it! do you want that stuff inside your body for the rest of your life?! i didn’t think so. if you want to get inked up in LA, i highly suggest you do it with sara. as a longtime vegan and animal rights activist, she uses only vegan inks and products (something very rare in this town)…

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this holiday season, i can’t think of a better gift to give anybody than a membership to spork online. the website was launched last month by the sisters at spork foods and features an array of vegan resources including HD video cooking classes, downloadable recipes, a section to get your questions answered, and more.

let me back this up a bit. the spork sisters, jenny and heather, and their popular los angeles cooking classes have been on my radar for quite a while; both vegans and omnivores alike have raved about them, saying they are all kinds of fun and super informative. i even got a chance to try the spork sisters’ fantastic food at the launch party for their new space, and was instantly smitten.

i’ve always wanted to take one of their classes, but the thing is, i’m super shy. i’m also not very good at cooking, so hanging out in a room with lots of other humans who are better in the kitchen than i am seemed liked it could be intimidating. imagine how excited i was when i heard that jenny and heather were launching spork online. a place where i can browse videos of different classes, watch how to make individual recipes, and ask the sisters questions if i run into trouble…all in the privacy of my own home?! YES, PLEASE!

here’s what a membership will getcha:

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curasé is a local company that specializes in “raw chocolate remedies“, organic vegan chocolates prepared by hand, one batch at a time.

recently jessica erler, the creator and maker of curasé chocolates, sent me a box to sample and they completely blew my mind. this was some of the best chocolate i’ve tried in my entire life (vegan or not)…

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Just hours before our recent trip to Las Vegas, a vegan friend (and Vegas native) recommended Mint Indian Bistro, a vegan-friendly Indian restaurant a couple of blocks off the strip. After we checked out the menu online, and saw that almost all their vegetarian dishes are “vegan friendly” by default, we made up our mind to visit at the earliest opportunity.

We’d originally planned out our meal from the online menu, but were a little disappointed when we arrived to find that they had taken a reservation for a large party (of 40 people!) and so would be doing a fixed price buffet service rather than a la carte. Of course, it was just our luck that this was the first time ever the restaurant had operated a buffet in the evening and so the regular menu wouldn’t be available.

We asked if the buffet had any vegan items, and were told “there are lots of vegan options, you won’t go hungry!”. Even with that reassurance, we checked out the buffet tables before we settled in, and any hint of disappointment was swiftly dissipated by what we found…

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hey everyone! tuesday and wednesday of this week, native foods is kicking off “native days,” their monthly celebration of the environment, animals, and food.

Turkey Loves Rye Sandwich: Organic toasted marble rye stacked with warmed thinly sliced seitan, native stuffing, cranberry orange sauce, shredded lettuce, and dijon mayo. Served with a side of mushroom shallot gravy. $9.95

to get you in the mood to party, they’ve got a new special holiday entree called the turkey loves rye sandwich, available exclusively for native days (this tuesday and wednesday only!). you better go eat this thing, because it sounds insane: thinly sliced seitan, stuffing, cranberry sauce, lettuce and dijon mayo on marble rye with mushroom gravy. it’s a crime that it will only be offered for two days!

native foods will also be debuting two new desserts…

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cookie fans, get excited! isabella’s cookie company specializes in natural treats (no artificial ingredients or preservatives) and they happen to make four vegan cookie flavors that are available in whole foods locations all over los angeles.

isabella’s sent me a huge box of sample cookies recently, and they were super tasty. as they say on their website, the cookies “only have a fourteen day shelf life before they begin to lose their freshness, but they never last that long!!“…

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daiya vs cheezly. cheezly vs daiya. it’s an epic battle, and i don’t know who would win. have you tried both? do you have a favorite?

daiya pizza on the left, cheezly pizza on the right

i recently had the chance to eat both a daiya and a cheezly pizza back to back…and choosing between the two would not be an easy task. if only the new teese (which i love) would have been there, my mind would have been blown.

so which one looks better to you:

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hey everyone! time for a vegan field report. this one comes to us from all the way across the country in west palm beach, florida. check out chicavegan’s review of darbster!

Last week, I went to South Florida to visit my family there before the Holidays and for my little sister’s 18th birthday. I had already dined at Sublime before, and Miami is a little too far for me, so I decided to go up to West Palm Beach to try “Darbster” for the first time, a dog-friendly restaurant, tucked away from the busy Dixie Hwy. My older brother and younger sister came along; neither of them are vegan, and were quite curious and intrigued.

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the quick bite series continues! this one comes to us from tettes, who recently hit up gracias madre in san francisco. as of recently we are HUGE FANS OF GRACIAS MADRE….so we were super excited to receive tettes’ glowing review. here goes:

I visited San Francisco during the Thanksgiving holiday, and I went to Gracias Madre twice.

Here are a couple of pics of food items that Quarrygirl didn’t order, including a butternut squash tamale smothered in mole sauce, a butternut squash quesadilla and one of the best items I’ve ever eaten: roasted brussel sprouts in a cashew cheese sauce baked with garlic breadcrumbs on top. OMG!!!

This place is beyond amazing. Perhaps the best vegan place I’ve ever visited!

Butternut squash tamale smothered in mole sauce with a side of refried black beans and spicy pickled vegetables.

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