pizza, cheesecake, and buffalo wings?! yep, it’s new menu time again over at native foods. they are rolling out EIGHT new vegan items tomorrow, and they’ve sent us a sneak peek along with a few snaps. it all sounds delicious, check it out!

Sweet Potato Taquitos: Crispy corn tortillas filled with coconut mashed sweet potatoes, drizzled with Native Chipotle Crema and served with guacamole. $6.95

seven more after the jump…

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i’ve got some very exciting news! native foods is launching a whole new menu tomorrow, and they’re giving quarrygirl readers a sneak peek at the goods! chef tanya has created some fantastic dishes for the winter season, and i don’t know about you guys, but i’m totally jonesing to try them all. have a look at the 8 new mouthwatering items.

first up, there are 2 new appetizers:

Creamy Artichoke Spinach Dip: Served warm with crispy crostini and dipping veggies. $6.95

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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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we’ve been fans of the healthy vegans for quite sometime. their entire blog focuses on starch-based recipes and restaurant reviews, all with very little fat and no oil whatsoever. lately i have been loving their menu hacking posts where they go in to restaurants and modify items to be extra healthy at no additional charge. we dined with them over the weekend at native foods, and got a first hand lesson in how to hack the menu to mcdougall standards.

tijuana tacos made extra healthy. $7.95

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In 1796, the 1st Duke of Wellington set off from his native England to the Martha Empire, a Hindu state in what is now known as India. Sadly, his mission was not an honorable one as he was there to overpower the local resistance. Upon hearing, however, that the native Hindus held the cow as a sacred animal and therefore don’t eat beef, he asked for his food supplies to be wrapped carefully in dough such that they “could be easily transported and enjoyed in their entire splendour without offending the local indigenous”.

This ingenious combination of stealth, convenience and taste created the now-centuries-old tradition of his name-sake “Wellington”: A veritable cornucopia of foodstuffs wrapped tightly in crispy pastry giving way to a highly portable, easy to cook and VERY tasty meal.

Fast forward a couple of centuries to Southern California, circa 2010, and one of our favorite vegan restaurants, Native Foods, has a completely unique and interesting take on the Wellington: The Spring Wellington, a dish that I’m sure the 1st Duke would have reveled in while he was busy fighting wars and all.

Spring Wellington (serves 8): puff-pastry filled with fresh asparagus, garlic-roasted mashed potatoes, carrots, Native Seitan, caramelized shallots, green peas, organic kale and portabello mushrooms, served with a lemon tarragon hollandaise sauce. $39.95

Chef Tanya and her team have really excelled themselves this time around, creating an absolutely scrumptious dish that bakes in under an hour, feeds an army of eight people and has a list of ingredients that reads like a massive main course menu:

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as you may or may not know, native foods in westwood changed their menu, and in doing so eliminated most of my favorite dishes. so after my most recent and somewhat disappointing lunch there, i decided to go home and dust off the old native foods cookbook that i’ve been meaning to put to use. it’s filled with old recipes so i figured surely it could help take me back to my happy native foods place and give me a taste of the dishes i remember.

since native foods put the kibosh on farrah’s fatoush, my regular order and favorite dish, i decided to whip up a greek-style feast with all the cookbook had to offer. i varied it a little depending on preference and available ingredients, but i pretty much wound up with some quinoa tabouli, harry’s hummus, and a gorgeous greek salad. (btw, the cute names of the recipes make me wanna smash something.)

quinoa tabouli, harry's hummus and the gorgeous greek with tofu feta. all from the native foods restaurant cookbook

lemme start off by saying the meal i actually wanted to make was the bali surf burger. it’s this crazy-good tempeh concoction and i couldn’t wait to get my grubby little hands on the secret. well here’s what the cookbook said:

native foods recipe for the bali surf burger

ok, now normally i would never post a scanned picture of recipe from a cookbook. it’s unethical. but in this case, as you can see, i’m giving nothing away. there are so many things wrong with this freaking recipe, i don’t know where to start. first off, the recipe is for a burger, but at the top right, the serving size is 2, “because you can’t eat just one!” and then the book goes on to just double all the ingredients in a really simple way. man, if i wanted 2 burgers i could figure it out for myself, trust me.

next, this isn’t even really a recipe. it’s a list of ingredients and a dummy’s guide on how to assemble a hamburger: “spread each side with 1/2 teaspoon mayonnaise. on bottom bun, place sauteed tempeh…” whaaaaaa? seriously? i dropped 20 bucks + shipping on this cookbook and you are wasting a page telling me how to physically put a hamburger together? stop it.

they may as well just give a tempeh recipe and be like, “this is awesome. make a burger with it if you so choose.” i don’t need a whole rundown on how to put mayo on a bun. …and not just that, but the tempeh recipe on page 65 is no big shakes either. it just tells you to go out and buy some tempeh, then sautee it. i won’t give away the “secret” or anything, but it feels like kind of a jip. basically everything with fake meat in the cookbook just provides ingredients, and then sends you to a website where you can order the soy meat products. hmmmmm. not cool.

so i decided to make something with ingredients i could find, that actually required some preparation. bring on the greekness!

k, lemme tell you what you’re looking at here. there’s harry’s hummus, the book describes it as a lighter hummus which doesn’t include tahini…then there’s quinoa tabouli, a blend of quinoa and parsley on a bed of greens (i omitted the mint because i didn’t have any, and used spinach instead of lettuce)…then there’s the gorgeous greek, a mixture of vegetables and tofu feta (i made it without bell peppers).

overall, everything tasted great, but i gotta say…there was SO MUCH FREAKING OLIVE OIL. in everything! i couldn’t believe my eyes when i was reading the recipes. i decided to half the oil in everything, and even then, as i was pouring the olive oil into the measuring cup i was like, ok i gotta stop, this is gonna fucking kill me before i finish it. i calculated all the recipes together, and in total, all the dishes would have required 2 CUPS OF OIL! seriously. granted there would have been left-overs and such, so it wouldn’t have all been eaten in one sitting…but i used left than half that amount and my food was still swimmin’ in it. gross.

my last criticism about the cookbook is that every recipe requires you to prepare something from another page. like to make the salad, i will need x amount of tofu feta, then i have to go to the tofu feta recipe page and not make the entire recipe, but figure out the right proportions to just make x. sometimes 2 or 3 times for one recipe. seriously, i’m no idiot, and scrambling around, flipping through pages and doing calculations got both tiring and mathematically taxing.

all that aside, the recipe came out great! everything was extremely delicious, albeit pretty heavy on the oil side. the best part was for sure the tofu feta which was lemony and tart, and didn’t taste like feta at all.

tofu feta from the native foods cookbook

although the food was tasty, i’m gonna wait a few months before using the native foods cookbook again. it was hard work, and i think i should give it quite some time before consuming that much fat again. i mean, that’s what eating out is for!

i love to eat at vegan restaurants, but as you know from earlier posts, i’m slightly sick of the numerous thai restaurants with the word “vegan” in the title, who serve nothing more than a noodle-ridden sodium-filled menu with faux meat replacing chicken and beef. don’t get me wrong…i enjoy california vegan, vegan express, vegan glory, truly vegan, and the vegan joint. but come on, just A LITTLE originality goes a long way! plus, as i read more and more, some of these places (not all of them, to be fair) are having their veganocity and the integrity of their ingredients called into question. this doesn’t mean i don’t eat at and enjoy these establishments (so DO NOT call me a hypocrite if i write a post in the future singing their praises), it just means that i am utterly grateful for a vegan restaurant with an original menu. enter native foods…

malibu veggie burger: a native original veggie burger made with soy, quinoa, oats, veggies, and delicious seasonings, sprouts, carrots, onion and vegan mayo. makes waves! (pictured above with a side of jasmine rice) $7.95

farrah’s fatoush: a middle eastern crusty bread salad with chopped tomato, cucumber, onions, tofu feta, tossed with a lemon olive oil dressing on salad greens, hummus and kalamata olive garnish. $8.95 (BEWARE the mother fucking bell peppers, keep reading!)

let me just say, these pix don’t do the food justice. it’s absolutely spectacular. in the same league as pure luck (sorry native foods, you don’t have tap beer…and therefore, i will never love you as much as PL), this restaurant offers fresh and tasty dishes without a hint of fake canned meat, or “choose your protein” pad thai. (vegans: you know what i’m talking about! this place is a find.) it’s JUST like a normal LA restaurant. without the death.
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