This lovely arrangement is the ‘Kelp Noodle Salad Bowl’ at Hugo’s. The kelp noodles (which you can barely see under there) are topped with “julienned vegetables, sprouts, snow peas, cilantro and scallions. Tossed with orange-mango-sesame-chili dressing. Garnished with mixed sea vegetables, pickled ginger and toasted sesame seeds”. They offer a choice of protein, mine was the grilled tofu. It was fantastic, the dressing was very subtle and let the flavors of the other ingredients come through. The pickled ginger took it over the top.

I like to treat myself to their Green Tea Matcha latte once in a while. I get it with soymilk and vanilla which makes it just perfect. It’s also really good iced, but it was cold out today so the heat hit the spot.

Baked seseame-ginger tofu and kidney beans with a dash of lime juice, nutritional yeast, black pepper and chiffonade of basil from my windowsill. I love it when I have a genuine reason to use fancy words like chiffonade.

Oh sweet Lord! Here’s another delectible dessert from Vegan Express, the “Chocolate Banana Peanut Butter Cake” which it appears they get from a company called “No Udder Desserts”. It was fork-lickin’ good… thick and moist and chewy, the taste of the frosting reminded me of Abbazabba candy (but not as salty). Ingredients: Unbleached flour, brown sugar, water, mashed banana, vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips (there were nice chunky bits in the cake), canola oil, baking soda, vinegar, vanilla, salt, frosting (powdered sugar, peanut butter, walnut, peanut, soymilk). Whatever mojo they did there with those ingredients was pure magic.

This is the Lentil Wrap at Vegan Express which had a lentil filling along with avocado, lettuce, tomato and alfalfa sprouts in a whole wheat lavash bread. The sauce that came with it I think is their Tahini dressing. It was really good, and as you can see, quite large. The lentil filling was oniony, and I hate raw onions, but the tasty flavors of everything else masked it enough so that the onion flavor didn’t ruin it for me at all.

Native Foods restaurants rock so hard. My only previous visit was to their location in Costa Mesa but I’m pleased to report that their Westwood kitchen is just as awesome. Parking sucks because it’s right in the middle of the Village, but so what. If you’re within driving distance of this place, you should be grateful anyways. If you’re nowhere near a Native Foods (most of the world outside of southern California) than, well… eat your heart out friends!

The Indonesian Tempeh Chips: “Crispy battered tempeh strips served with Ketchap (a slightly sweet soy dip)”. I am in a happy place now.

The Ghandi Bowl: “Jasmine and brown rice, steamed veggies and blackened tempeh topped with cranberries and wild curry sauce.” So, so, so good… this food is the opposite of a hunger strike. The bright slice of something yummy on the left tasted just like a grilled mango to me, though the menu said it was supposed to be banana squash. Does banana squash taste like mango?

The only thing that could make Native Foods even better is if they were to open one up even closer to where I live. Too bad that I can’t twitch my nose and make places like this replace McDonalds everywhere. If I could I totally would.

I’m so glad that I decided to give Vegan Express another try. I’d eaten there once before, years ago, and left dissatisfied (didn’t like the food, didn’t like the guy behind the counter). Recently though I’d read a pretty good review of them somewhere, so decided to give it another go. This time I had a much better experience, and I now I really like the place!

They had so many tantalizing choices on the menu, including Asian dishes (it’s owned by a cool Thai lady), salads, soups and curries, burgers & wraps and even breakfast (served anytime!).

I finally opted to try the “Cowboy Burger”, which is a seitan patty grilled with garlic, cilantro and Braggs. It’s on a wheat bun with romaine lettuce, tomato, sprouts, veganaize, avocado and soy cheese. If you would have told me it was a chicken patty, I would have believed you. It was excellent in every which way.

These were the grilled seasoned potatoes. Very tasty, and even the ketchup was fantastic (it had a slightly spicy kick).

I took this little lovely home with me for later, it’s a vegan cheese cake with a graham cracker crust, the strawberries were my own touch. I really don’t think there are appropriate words to describe how good it was, so I’m not even going to try.

Steamed edamame. Tossed with rice vinegar, coriander, lemon pepper, ginger powder and seseame seeds.

This really hit the spot after a hard workout. First I steamed asparagus, orange bell pepper and grilled seitan (the seitan comes premade at Whole Foods, they in turn get it from a local place called Vegan Kitchen). Stopped steaming as soon as the asapragus was tender then added in some canned kidney beans and mixed it all up with a little bit of flax oil and roasted red pepper dressing from Seeds of Change (I tell you, that stuff is good on anything!). Topped with a sprinkle of nutrional yeast and some basil from my windowsill.