Pure Luck is yet another new addition to the growing roster of Los Angeles vegan restaurants. The vegans are taking over this city I tell you. It’s totally vegan town on N. Heliotrope Dr. where Pure Luck is located considering that it’s across the street from Scoops, a dairy and non-dairy ice cream joint with an array of flavors that are out of this world. More on that later, for now I’m here to tell you about Pure Luck.

Pure Luck is not only a restaurant, it’s also a pub with local microbrewed beers on tap. They’ve also got a trio of delectable cocktails made with Ku Soju, a vodka-like alcohol made from sweet potatoes. I had the Tamarindi, made with tamarind, soju and lime. It was deliciously sweet, cold and refreshing. The alcohol flavor was very mild- though deceptive, by the time I got to the bottom I realized it was quite a stiff drink. Nice! Next time I must try the Tunisian, described as “spicy and exotic, made with soju, pomegranate juice, cardamom and tea”.

First the appetizers. These are what are known as Potato Pals, “Small potato dumplings (gnocchi) lightly fried, with a “creamy, tangy” dipping sauce”. Yes you read that right, fried gnocchi. They were every bit as tasty as they sound, mushy and chewy with a very cheese like consistency. I don’t know what the sauce was all about but it was very good too… my guess would be a ketchup base, maybe mixed with Vegenaise.

My friend ordered the BBQ Pickle Fries, which you can probably guess are fried dill pickles and french fries with BBQ sauce. They were ok but a bit on the soggy side, both the pickles and the fries. The BBQ sauce was great.

When asked about the Sweet Potato fries, the waitress said they were nearly out and didn’t have enough to make a full order, so she gave us what they had left for free. These were good, but also a little soggy. They need to perfect their frying a bit so their chips have more of a crunch. Still they were pretty good.

For my main course I had the jackfruit “Carnitas” burrito. The way they cook the jackfruit really does give it a meaty, carnitas-like texture which apparently takes on the flavor of what it’s cooked with, like tofu. The burrito also had beans, rice, avocado and tomatillo salsa. It was delicious and huge and I was really impressed by the whole jackfruit situation. Who knew?

The burrito came served with a vegan Caesar salad. As you can see, they need to work on presentation a bit. It’s kinda sad looking. And small. And of course I was initially appalled by all the onion action going on, but luckily they were large pieces that I could easily get rid of. Once the onion situation was under control I ventured for a bite of the few pieces of lettuce and croutons and found that the Caesar dressing was pretty good. Overall though the salad was not all that thirlling. Thankfully the burrito more than made up for it.

Here’s a bad closeup of the burrito’s insides. Unfortunately you can’t really see the jackfruit (or much of anything really) in this picture (I realize this whole set of pictures suck), hopefully I’ll get a better one next time. There will be a next time for sure, there are many other very tempting options on the menu I must try, the Plantain Tacos with sweet cream being just one example.

... If you liked this article, please give it a Stumble!

1. Pure Luck gets their lunch on.
2. Pure lunch at Pure Luck
3. I like big buns and I cannot lie.
4. Melrose Avenue (vegan) Muffaletta
5. Vegan breakfast burrito with tofu and sweet potato