LA’s finest vegan restaurant, madeleine bistro, is switching it up a bit this summer. they’ve changed their hours, their menu, and they are now BYOB (with NO CORKAGE FEE, woo!). the new menus are looking pretty insane, and we have all the details right here. so listen up!

new vegan guilty pleasures menu

over the summer, madeleine bistro will only be open friday through sunday, and will offer a new “guilty pleasures” menu and a chef’s tasting menu every night, as well as brunch during the day on the weekends. the guilty pleasures menu consists of decadent vegan comfort food like onion rings and shamrock shakes, and the tasting menu will change each week with 5 elaborate courses for just $50! this is a great deal, considering madeleine bistro holiday tasting menus can cost upwards of $100. i suggest you jump on this while it’s available. madeleine is also now doing weekly home delivery, find out more on that here.

new weekly chef tasting menus

here are the new menus and hours:

Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: since this post, doomie’s has closed for business. this is very sad news, and we hope they will be back up and running again soon. for old times’ sake, the original post on doomie’s follows. but please note, the restaurant is CLOSED.

a new vegetarian restaurant opened in los angeles this weekend, and i can tell you it is incredible. doomie’s home cookin’ veggie-vegan serves up a huge menu of sinful comfort food, all of which can be prepared vegan, and a offers a pretty nice selection of draft beer. i think i have found my new favorite place.

special thanks to reader and commenter jason, who told me to check out doomie’s!

check out the menu here:

take the chilled out bar atmosphere, nice seating, and good beer from pure luck then combine it with the ridiculously “real” tasting junk food from the vegan spot and you have doomie’s. i think any meat-lovin’ carnivore could dine out and doomie’s and completely forget they are eating a vegan meal. everything i tried was insanely delicious.

philly cheesesteak: strips of beef smothered in vegan cheese piled with green onions, peppers and mushrooms. served with homemade onion rings. $8.95

when i go to doomie’s next time and try something new off the menu, i know this sandwich will be extremely hard to beat. i threw caution to the wind and scarfed the the whole thing down pretty quickly, it was just soooOOOOOOOoooOOOOo good. the vegan cheese was absolutely amazing. it had a sour taste that seemed exactly like real cheese, and it coated the juicy beef strips and greasy vegetables perfectly. it was a globby cheese, kind of like the stuff on the mac & cheese over at a taste of life. not so much like the thick stretchy cheese on the sandwiches at the vegan spot. this just mixed in and covered everything in the sandwich, making it taste like cheesy deliciousness.

additionally, doomie’s gets extra points for this sandwich because they were able to make it for me without bell peppers. i absolutely fucking hate bell peppers, and they come in so many vegan things. often at restaurants, when i specify that i want my dish sans peppers, they apologize and say it won’t be possible because the vegetables are already in a mix together that was made at the beginning of the day. doomie’s on the other hand, supplied me with a pepper-free sandwich without any fuss, even though they also had a pre-made mix that contained peppers. it was great to see a restaurant go out of their way to accommodate my request with a smile, even though it meant more work for them.

the side of homemade onion rings the sandwich came with were also out of this world. freshly battered and steaming on my plate, i could tell they had just been cooked. there were a lot of them too, $8.95 is a great deal for such a hearty sandwich and a huge side.

crispy onion-ringy perfection

for you healthy eaters out there, doomie’s also has a wide variety of salads. we got the chop salad with ranch dressing and vegan cheese, and it was pretty damn tasty.

chop salad: chopped and tossed for goodness in every bite. this one has it all! you pick the dressing. real or vegan cheese. $8.95

while this salad is still pretty decadent, it’s probably a lot healthier than some of the meatier-cheesier stuff on the menu. all the vegetables were fresh and finely chopped, and the creamy dressing was delightful. i know anyone, vegan or otherwise wouldn’t be able to tell this stuff was lacking dairy. it’s just delicious, period. not delicious for being vegan.

lastly, we couldn’t leave without trying something really intriguing off the dessert menu…vegan gell-o. i gotta say, it tasted even better the bone-filled jell-o from when i was a kid. this stuff had the same sweet flavor but was just a little bit thicker. a big improvement, and no bones!

gell-o $1.50

on top of serving up arguably the best vegan food in the city, doomie’s has a pleasant outdoor atmosphere and friendly knowledgeable staff. it’s located in a place called roberto’s that turns into a swingin’ nightclub after dark. there are some seats inside and a huge sunny patio with tons of seating and a view of chinatown.

we had a couple questions about the veganocity of our food, and within moments the chef, doomie himself, joined us outside to chat with us and answer any of our concerns. he really knew his shit, as he talked about which menu items contained organic sugar and which products had been purchased from other companies whose sugar source couldn’t be verified. so even if you are the strictest vegan, this guy will have all the answers and be able to put your mind at ease about what you are about to consume. doomie also talked a little about his reasons for starting up this restaurant, explaining that he wanted to open a place that vegans and non-vegans alike could visit and enjoy really good food. not healthy-tasting vegan food, just GOOD FOOD, that everyone would love no matter what they were used to eating. i think doomie definitely succeeded. you really need to check this place out.

roberto's club, home of doomie's restaurant

pleasant outdoor patio seating

a couple things to note: doomie’s is CASH only. but they do have an atm. i suggesting coming prepared, however, with enough money so you don’t get bitch-slapped with an atm fee. also, on sunday afternoons there is some biker event or something that takes place on the patio. you can still eat there, you will just be surrounded by rowdy bikers. they are actually pretty entertaining and i didn’t mind them at all, it’s just something you may want to know about going in.

also, while we were lunching at doomie’s on sunday afternoon, we had the fortunate experience of bumping into another vegan blogger, foodeater from to live and eat in LA. she was eating something completely different than us, which looked just as tasty. be sure to check her blog often, i’m sure her review and pictures will be nothing less than drool-worthy.

so head on over to doomie’s home cookin’ veggie-vegan, get a huge plate of vegan comfort food and a tall glass of cold stella. this place is giving all the other vegan restaurants a huge run for their money.

doomie’s home cookin’ veggie-vegan
@ roberto’s 686 n. spring street
chinatown, LA 90012

(714)883-7657

myspace.com/doomieshomecookin