sometimes i forget how great i’ve got it in los angeles—from basically everywhere, i can head in any direction and find myself surrounded by vegan options within minutes. that is so not the case in downtown fresno. fresno is the kind of town where as a vegan, you may find yourself either going hungry or making an emergency call to the nearest pizza hut.

large pizza: hand-tossed crust, extra sauce, mushrooms and olives

i haven’t ordered food from pizza hut in years, but i found out this weekend that it makes the perfect “when-all-else-fails” meal. and if you are drunk and hungry enough, it tastes pretty damn good!

you see, we booked a hotel in downtown fresno on our way up north assuming there would be tons of vegan-friendly options to choose from. i mean anywhere that has a “downtown” area with hotels and shops has got to offer a wide variety of cuisines, right? wrong. fresno’s downtown area is more like a ghost town: shops and restaurants close early and the streets are lined with mostly thrift stores and steak houses. when we arrived at around 9pm, priority #1 was to find a bar…which we did. i think we succeeded in finding the one bar in town that was open, and even then we were the only customers. the bartender was so excited to have us there, he even bought us a free round of drinks. after much mobile yelping and google-mapping, we decided on subway for dinner. it appeared to be the only restaurant within walking distance. however, when we stumbled out of the bar a couple of hours later, all 3 nearby subways had closed. did i mention i feel lucky to live in LA?

we walked back to the hotel, buzzed with empty stomachs and decided on ordering a from the in-house pizza hut we’d seen advertised. however, we were thwarted again when they told us they only served pan dough pizzas. grrrrrrrrr, we’d done our homework and discovered that the pan dough contains milk! the kind employee did however tell us about a local pizza hut that would be closing soon, and suggested we order food from there directly to our room. so that’s just what we did.

when ordering from pizza hut, vegans must remember to order only hand-tossed or thin ‘n crispy dough, and to always request extra sauce. the normal amount of sauce just doesn’t cut it—the pizza tastes way too dry and bready.

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