hey everyone! time for a reader review from right here in los angeles. this one comes to us from VeganHeartDoc as she gives us the rundown on vegan factory in tarzana. while i’m not the biggest fan of LA vegan thai myself, it’s nice to know what our options are, and which places stand out above the rest. here ya go:

While some may suggest that vegan Thai food is overdone in Los Angeles, Vegan Factory does it incredibly well.

Located in a strip mall on Ventura Boulevard west of Vanalden in Tarzana, Vegan Factory features soups, salads, curries, and noodle dishes.

The dishes range from relatively healthy to downright decadent. Since I’m a cardiologist, I usually roll with at least a few healthful offerings, but my family, who I was bringing takeout dinner to, like some of the more sinful options.

Slim Gym (Salad Kak): Soy chicken, romaine lettuces, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and alfalfa sprouts. Served with peanut dressing. $7.50

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one thing we have way too much of in los angeles is vegan thai food. from west LA, to silverlake, to the valley, there seems to be a thai restaurant with the word vegan in its name popping up on every corner. after a few of these restaurants turned up sketchy results when we tested their food for non-vegan ingredients a few months ago, i have pretty much been avoiding them all together.

thankfully when i do need a thai food fix, i can head on over to toi on sunset. the omnivorous restaurant has loads of vegetarian and vegan options with plant-based sauces, fresh vegetables and tofu. the fake mystery meat will never be missed.

buddha chili: eggplant, pumpkin and fried tofu in a light soybean and garlic sauce with broccoli, mushrooms and spices. $11.95

toi has an entire vegetarian section on their menu with various noodle, curry, and vegetable selections…all of which can be made vegan. the thing i love about these dishes is their delicious simplicity. the sauces are light, the vegetables are fresh, and the flavors are all spot on.

a some of my favorite entrees include the buddha chili (i get it without bell peppers), a plate of chunky pumpkin cubes, fried tofu, eggplant, and broccoli all mixed up in a garlic sauce—or pad thai with no egg, a vegan take on the popular noodle dish that usually contains fish sauce.

vegi pad thai (no egg!): thai noodles with mixed veggies, tofu, beansprouts, w/ peanuts on the side. $9.95

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as you know, i’m not a big fan of the vegan thai restaurants that have been popping up all over los angeles, with the same menu and questionable ingredients. from the stretchy cheese at green leaves vegan that the staff can’t explain, to the whey-containing soy meats at vegan express, some of these thai places give us plenty of reason to suspect them.

the latest shady vegan thai findings come to us in an email from a tipster called mr. wishbone. while i can’t confirm his findings, he did provide a photograph, and i thought his story was worth posting. mr. wishbone wrote in an email:

“I now feel like the pancake police, because when I went to L.A. Vegan in Marina Del Rey/Culver City and had pancakes they seemed too fluffy to be Kamut and vegan. So I went to the restroom (conveniently in the back of the kitchen) and lo and behold found a big bag of Buttermilk Pancake Mix!

I confronted the waiter/manager and he said it was only for the “cooks use, for their meals” and “we are not vegan”. Needless to say his holding up a tiny bag of Arrowhead Mills Kamut Pancake Mix (unopened) did not convince me that they hadn’t used something non-vegan. I have had many a gritty/yellowish Kamut pancake and these were NOT Kamut flour as described on the menu as “low gluten Kamut Pancake”.

While in the kitchen I looked around a bit and also noticed the margarine they were serving was not Earth Balance, but a commercial tub of regular margarine.(Probably also from Smart & Final) I tried to read the whole label quickly, and did not see whey or milk solids listed but it did have mono and di-glycerides, which are often not vegan.

I got really angry after I left and went into “Pancake Police mode” and returned after-hours for a little dumpster inspection that evening… I found the half-used bag of Smart and Final “Chefs Review Buttermilk Pancake Mix” in the trash, along with a bag of Bisquick Baking Mix. (I think Bisquick IS vegan, but definitely not made from Kamut, so they are liars already.)

…To have a half-used buttermilk pancake mix in the kitchen, and to have thrown both away the night I discovered them and challenged the manager seems like a guilty child trying to throw away the evidence of his crime.

If the word vegan is in the restaurant title, animal products shouldn’t be cooked in that kitchen. (Even of only for the staff. Just my opinion)”

here is the photograph mr. wishbone took of the trash in la vegan’s dumpster. it all seems pretty dubious to me.

buttermilk pancake mix in the dumpster of la vegan thai

some of you may think i shouldn’t have posted this, because i didn’t take this picture myself, etc. however, i think it’s important to bring up the point that just because these thai restaurants have the word “vegan” in their title, doesn’t mean you should trust them. if this were the first instance i’d heard of where a vegan thai place had non-vegan ingredients in their kitchen, i probably wouldn’t post it. however, i hear story after story from customers who feel they’ve been lied to…this one just happened to come with a photograph.

and i have to agree with mr. wishbone that if this is a 100% vegan establishment, that pancake mix shouldn’t even be in the restaurant, let alone kitchen. and i don’t buy for a fucking second that it was to feed the employees. what, they are so pancake obsessed that they need to bring their own non-vegan mix to work just so they can get a fix? it really doesn’t add up.

it’s unfortunate, because places like this really ruin it for the vegan thai joints that are upfront and honest. i for one, know i am pretty much done with vegan thai, and if i am ever forced to eat at any of these places again, it’s gonna be steamed vegetables and tofu, which is unlikely to be contaminated.

i’m not telling you to boycott any of these places or give up vegan thai like i did. i’m just saying, think about it. we should start holding these restaurants accountable.

If you’re lucky enough to be a vegan living in Southern California — particularly Los Angeles – your favorite cuisine will, of course, be vegan Thai. From the Westside to the Southland to the Inland Empire there are over 9,500 vegan Thai restaurants, each with a totally diverse menu (except, of course, for everybody’s favorite “Cowboy Burger” and “Garlic Pepper Seitan”, which are faithfully included on every restaurant’s menu). The unique combination of fine dining, surprising menu options and incredibly attentive servers is offset to the negative by long waits (reservations at the Beverly Hills “Taste of Vegan” restaurant usually need to be made days in advance), and the famous “Vegan Tasty” in Alhambra usually has a 4-5 hour wait for a table.

vegan tasty in alhambra

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so recently a good friend of mine at work found out that i’m a vegan blogger. i have been doing a pretty good job of keeping it a under wraps for quite some time, but when someone around the office found out about my twitter account, which links to my blog, my secret identity was blown. anyways, this friend really wanted to go to lunch with me and eat some vegan food that would eventually get reviewed on this site, and insisted we go somewhere new that i’ve never been before. i remembered hearing about this place on vegan-la.com called mama-z, a recently opened 100% vegan restaurant inside the already vegan-friendly (and quarrygirl favorite) sante la brea. basically, mama-z is a restaurant inside another restaurant with a separate kitchen and a separate menu. i know, it sounds kind of confusing. well anyway, we decided to check it out.

we headed off to sante la brea on our lunch break and a super-friendly waiter seated us and handed us the huge and appetizing sante menu. when i requested to eat off the mama-z menu, he hurried away into the kitchen and returned with 2 sheets of paper boasting several vegan thai food options and a few raw desserts. my heart kind of sank when i realized mama-z was a thai restaurant—there are already like 80 million vegan thai restaurants in this town! even though the sante menu looked much more appetizing, we decided to stick with plan a, suck it up, and order some vegan thai.

for a starter, we ordered the chicken satay, but mama-z was out of soy chicken, so they kindly made it with soy pepper steak instead. the result was delicious…and surprisingly, unlike anything i’ve had at the other vegan thai joints in la. the skewers were covered in a yellowish creamy sauce that was really tasty and salty, and the meat didn’t have that annoying sweet flavor that ruins so many soy pepper steaks. my friend was equally impressed; maybe thai food wasn’t such a bad bet after all.

pepper steak satay. served with peanut sauce and cucumber. $6

after eating our appetizers, we waited for our entrees to arrive. we waited and waited and WAITED. our server kept checking on us, refilling our water and apologizing for the delay…but after about 45 minutes when our parking meter was about to expire, we decided there wasn’t enough time to finish our meal and make it back to the office at a reasonable hour, so we asked for our food to go. the waiter was very sorry and even took our drinks and appetizer off the bill. what a great gesture, not all restaurants try to make it up to you when they fuck up.

although we had to grab our lunch in carry-out containers and eat it back at work, there is no denying that the food was incredible. after the long wait, i really wouldn’t mind giving this place a bad review…but the awesomeness of our meals transcended all the fuckery.

burrito chapatti. with scrambled tofu, vegan cheese, and choice of plain, brown rice or yam. $9

i ordered the burrito chapatti with scrambled tofu and yams, something similar to the breakfasts that most other los angeles thai vegan places offer. what made this special though, is they were able to make me the tofu scramble without bell peppers, which i abhor. i’ve tried to get this from the vegan joint, truly vegan, and vegan express, but all those places have told me that their scramble is pre-mixed and they can’t prepare it without peppers, no matter what. mama-z, however, was happy to accommodate me and my pepper phobia. everything else about the wrap was a cut above other places as well. the tofu was much more light and airy, the vegan cheese was perfectly melty and the chapati was warm and soft. plus, the wrap didn’t even fall apart. super good stuff.

mock duck curry. pineapple, tomato, bell pepper, soy meat, sweet basil leaf and coconut milk. $10

my friend ordered the mock duck curry, and while i didn’t try any of it, it must have been good because she wouldn’t shut up about it. she eats a lot of normal duck curry, so for her to love this was a big deal. she kept going on about how fresh the ingredients tasted and about how light and non-oily it was. she even texted me at 10pm to tell me the leftovers were amazing. so take that as a ringing endorsement.

so even though the food took forever at mama-z, it was totally worth it. i am usually pretty ambivalent about thai vegan food, but this shit was off the chain. about the long wait…maybe they were short staffed or something, or maybe taking the bell peppers out of my wrap was a 30 minute process…either way, i’m willing to give them another shot. plus, i’ve been to sante before and the wait wasn’t long at all; i can’t imagine cooking thai food would take that much longer.

so next time you think about going to vegan house, or ca vegan, or vegan plate, or any of those other generic vegan thai places…hit up mama-z instead. just make sure to allow time for potentially slow service.

oh, and here’s the mama-z menu for you to check out, since it’s not up on sante’s site.