-
July 10th, 2009LA restaurants, m café
for vegans in los angeles, m cafe is definitely one of the best places to grab a bite to eat. the macrobiotic eatery has 3 locations around town (melrose, beverly hills, and culver city), and is almost entirely vegan, other than menu items clearly containing fish. i’ve always loved m cafe’s meals, but recently the culver city restaurant gave me two more reasons to dine there—they added a beer and tapas menu.
i hit up m cafe on the west side with fellow vegan blogger happy herbivore and her husband, and everyone was delighted with the alcohol and food options. there was organic beer and wine to choose from, and we settled on a few bottles from the north coast brewing company. i went with the cru d’or, a belgian style dubble, which was pretty strong with a good flavor.
we also shared the crispy asparagus from the tapas menu, which was tasty albeit a little too fried for us. i mean, it tasted really good, but it probably wasn’t good for me. the vegenaise it came with was on point, super creamy with just enough spice to give it a kick, yet not be overwhelming. other vegan tapas options included hummus crudite as well as seitan bruschetta.
for my main course, i ordered the panino margarita, a pressed sandwich filled with pesto, soy cheese and sliced tomatoes. this thing was definitely tasty, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the big macro or bi bim bop. the pesto was delicious, but vegan cheese wasn’t quite melted. for my side, i ordered the white bean salad which was excellent and i highly recommend. it was delicious and filling with loads of creamy beans, huge tomato chunks, and fresh basil leaves.
so if you like beer, macrobiotic food and vegan tapas, give the m cafe in culver city a try. as of now, only the west side location is offering alcohol and appetizers, but hopefully the other locations will start serving this stuff as well.
m cafe de chaya
9343 Culver Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232Sunday thru Thursday
Tags: alcohol, asparagus, beer, beer, culver city, panini, sandwich, tapas
9:00 am – 9:00 pm
Friday & Saturday
9:00 am – 10:00 pm
(the tapas are served from 4pm until close.) -
May 29th, 2008more restaurants (not LA), seattle
there’s nothing like a really great breakfast scramble, and seattle seems to do it best. cafe flora, in particular, offers up some amazing vegetable scrambles that can be veganized by changing out the eggs for tofu. they even come with a delectable piece of vegan coffee cake!
spinach scramble: scrambled tofu with organic baby spinach, leeks and caramelized onions with roasted potatoes and coffee cake $11
grilled asparagus scramble: scrambled tofu with fresh basil pesto and sundried tomatoes with roasted potatoes and coffee cake $11cafe flora isn’t the typical kind of scrappy vegan-friendly restaurant i gravitate towards. it’s expensive, has a long list of complicated opening hours, and several different menus depending on the time of day. it’s actually only open for breakfast (or “brunch” as they call it) on saturday and sunday.
but when they serve the food you see pictured above, that tastes way better than it looks, it’s no surprise that cafe flora was completely full on sunday morning, within ten minutes of opening its doors.
Tags: asparagus, breakfast, brunch, coffee cake, spinach, tofu -