I keep talking up the vegan Reuben sandwich at Follow Your Heart to any & all who will listen, but up until now I’ve only had a poorly lit picture to show for it. I am now finally able to present to you indisputable evidence, proving once and for all that Follow Your Heart serves The Worlds Best Vegan Reuben Sandwich. Don’t believe me?

(each half is larger than my hand with all fingers outstretched)

Thinly sliced wheatmeat, sauerkraut, mustard and Vegenaise, Thousand Island dressing on oversized rye bread. Offered with Follow Your Heart cheese or “cottage-style tofu”. All vegan, giant, and about as close to bliss in deli style vegan sandwich form as you’ll ever get. What more do you need to know?

Actually, there is more you need to know. Get it with the cottage tofu. This step is absolutely crucial to achieving maximum religious intensity with this experience. The regular Follow Your Heart vegan cheese version is ok and all but it’s the tofu stuff that MAKES this thing. I don’t care how much you already think you love this mighty Reuben (or any other Reuben for that matter): you haven’t really had it until you’ve had it with the tofu cottage cheese. It’s chunky and crumbly and creamy and hopped up on some kind of herbs. It doesn’t taste anything like cottage cheese or tofu, it just taste like all sorts of awesome all up in your mouth. The tofu is necessary in order to transform it from just good into something supernatural. Something not of this world and ahead of it’s time.

The time is now. The place is Canoga Park, California.
818 represent: No wimpy Reubens allowed.

www.followyourheart.com

I don’t write about Follow Your Heart restaurant in Canoga Park often enough, which is a cryin’ shame because their food is so darn good. I dig the old hippie vibe that infuses both the restaurant and the market (which share the same space) but I also like that their food has a lot more going on than just the stereotypical alfalfa sprouts & avocado sandwiches you’d expect from a hippie restaurant… though you bet they’ve got those too.

Lately I’ve been really feeling the breakfast / brunch vibe, so I’ve amassed a few visits worth of meals to share with you. Pull up a seat and join me, won’t you?

This big beauty is known as Bob’s Breakfast a.k.a. Huevos No Tenemos: “Two Organic Corn Tortillas Covered with Black Beans, Tofu, Sauteed in a Mild Salsa Verde, and Topped with Red Sauce and Feta Cheese (Optional). Served with Spanish Rice, Guacamole, Sour Cream and Grilled Bananas”. Ask for their vegan sour cream and/or even opt for the vegan cheese like I did and you’ve got yourself an honest to goodness vegan lovefest on a plate. No patchouli required.

Seriously though, this dish brings it. They give you huge portions of everything and it’s all delicious, from the simple Spanish rice to the perfectly grilled tofu… and who could ever forget how yummy beans are when they are lard-free? Ah, and then we’ve got the salsa verde which is indeed mild but full of flavor, and whatever that red sauce is all about I don’t know… but I do know I like it. A lot. And hello… grilled bananas? What’s not to love?

Here’s a close-up of your new BFF:

I’d love to eat this anytime of the day, not just breakfast, but I think it’s only available on their breakfast menu. Continuing along the morning food theme I’ve also had a few encounters with the vegan french toast at Follow Your Heart. Here’s the half order I had last weekend:

French Toast: “Thick Sliced Whole Wheat Bread Dipped in Our Own Special Non-Egg, Non-Dairy Batter. Topped with Pecans.” It came served with real maple syrup. I quite like this french toast but I’d say it’s obvious that it’s vegan. It’s more dry than real french toast made with eggs, but once I got my maple syrup and my vegan butter on there to work their magic, it was really quite delish. I like it but I’d also say this is not the dish to win someone over to veganism with, it tastes pretty wholesome… which I dig, but which isn’t what your typical Joe Schmo on the street is looking for in a french toast. Joe is likely to think this tastes too healthy.

On a previous visit I’d had one of their specials which also involved french toast, this time served with their white beans, more of those tasty grilled nanners, fresh strawberries and vegan sausage. I don’t like their sausage and I never have, it tastes like salty cardboard to me, but I’d forgotten to ask for something else instead. The french toast only looks kinda burned in the photo but it really wasn’t. It was still however, like the half order above, a bit too dry. I do like it though, they use some nice spices on there like cinnamon and maybe even some nutmeg… and slathering it on up with maple syrup makes it just right. All the flavors in this dish go well together even if they’re not foods you’d normally think to stick together on the same plate.

Here is one of my favorite dishes on their menu, the Two Bean Hash: “White and Black Beans, Vegetables, Wheatmeat and Spices, Pan Fried Crispy. Served with Two Vegetarian ‘Sausage’ Links, Guacamole and Sour Cream.” As before, ask for the vegan sour cream and you’re set. Like I mentioned above I’m not partial to their sausages so I requested the breakfast potatoes instead and my waitress was happy to oblige. I liked that they didn’t try to charge me extra for that substitution like some places would have attempted to get away with. I love this dish, everything gets all grilled up together in a pile, and they cook it till it gets a nice crispy consistency on the outside… a very tasty and protein packed meal that will fill you up and get you going. I’ve written about the two-bean hash before actually, but it’s just so good I figured you might not mind the reminder.

Last but not least, here’s a look at the Wok Stir Fry: “Fresh Vegetables and Organic Tofu, Stir Fried with Garlic, Ginger and Tamari. Served with Organic Brown Rice.” It’s not actually a breakfast item but is available on the regular all-day menu. It’s a simple and straightforward stir fry of vegetables and tofu, but they do simple well here, and both the rice and the ginger & tamari sauce were very nice. A good choice for when you want something healthy, filling and yummy.

One thing which doesn’t get talked about as much as the restaurant is the well-stocked market that is also under Follow Your Heart’s roof. It’s an all vegetarian market with a fresh, organic produce section- which is small but usually will have just about whatever you need to whip up a great meal. There’s a decent sized bulk bin section as well as an aisle for natural medicinals, herbs and body & beauty products. My favorite part of the market is the refrigerated section where they keep all the pre-packaged goodies, including many of the local delicacies such as Taste of Life’s mac & cheese, Cru’s chocolate truffle cake, California Vegan’s pad thai, Nature’s Express wraps and so on and so forth. In other words it’s an entire row of action packed vegetarian, vegan and raw food grab & go awesomeness.

They also stock Sweet & Sara vegan marshmallows which are like my favorite sweet treat EVER. They carry the regular marshmallows, the toasted coconut and the amazing Smores (luscious marshmallow atop a graham cracker cookie enrobed in rich organic Belgian dark chocolate). Enrobed! Of course I had a smore, there’s no avoiding it’s sweet, mushy, sticky and crumbly sirens song. These are always the very first thing I look for when I walk into Follow Your Heart, and on the rare occasions that they’ve been out… I’ve left crushed. Thankfully they usually always have at least one variety, if not all of them.

In a nutshell, Follow Your Heart is a great place to go and spend some money. Enjoy a leisurely breakfast, lunch or dinner, then fill up your fridge and pantry while satisfying your sweet tooth. I’ve never taken anyone there that didn’t like it, not even my dad who definitely isn’t into hippie-dippy shit (he loves their nutburger, go figure!). When you’re done pigging out I suggest walking off some of those calories with a brisk hike through Chatsworth park or a scramble up Stoney Point which is right nearby… the scenery up in those hills is spectacular.

www.followyourheart.com

Here’s a great stick-to-your-ribs breakfast I recently tried for the first time at Follow Your Heart, the “Two Bean Hash”.

“White and Black Beans, Vegetables, Wheatmeat and Spices, Pan Fried Crispy. Served with Two Vegetarian “Sausage” Links, Guacamole and Sour Cream.”

This was delicious, a simple and straightforward combo of flavors and textures that all went very well together. Mixing in the guacamole, salsa and sour cream gave the dish a nice Mexican flair. If Emeril Lagasse were here he’d probably say that they kicked it up a notch. The sour cream was vegan but make sure your server knows that’s what you want just in case.

I didn’t like the sausages much at all; they tasted like your average fake-sausage from the freezer, and not of an amazingly realistic or particularly tasty variety. Spiced, smoked cardboard comes to mind. Nevertheless, the hash was lovely and I highly recommend it. Next time I’ll ask for a side of fruit or something instead of the snausages.

I love the food at Follow Your Heart but it’s more on the hippy end of things, so I wasn’t sure how well they would pull off Indian Food.

This is the ‘Tandoori and Curry’ plate, and I’m pleased to report that it was fantastic. “Tandoori Spiced Vegetarian “Chicken” and a Savory Tofu Curry, Served with Basmati Rice, a Vegetable Samosa and Mango Chutney.”

It was a large serving of food. The chicken was some sort of gluteny-seitan concoction. It was a bit on the chewy side, almost jerky-like, but that was a good thing. The tofu was also firm with a really nice texture, and both the tandoori and curry flavors were great. The samosa was tasty, though nothing special. The mango chutney was sweet and I enjoyed it with the rice. Overall a very yummy dish. FYH, sorry I doubted ya!

The vegan Reuben at Follow Your Heart has long been at the top of my list of favorite foods to eat in Los Angeles, and I was loving this sandwich long before I was ever even a vegetarian or vegan. Yeah, it’s that good.

This monster serving consists of: thinly sliced wheatmeat, sauerkraut, mustard and Vegenaise on oversized rye bread, with oven-baked baked fries. Served with dill pickle and Thousand Island dressing. It normally comes with Swiss cheese, but they offer it with their amazing non-dairy “cottage-style tofu” instead to make it vegan, and I tell you, that stuff is so delicious. I preferred it to the real stuff even when I was a cheese eater.

Despite how huge it looks in the picture, this really does not do justice to the size of this beast. It’s truly a giant sandwich. One half of it is probably enough to feed two people, so you can imagine that I was working on leftovers for a while. I’m not exaggerating when I rave to you about how yummy this sandwich is. It’s the sort of thing that you suddenly get a craving for late at night, long after the restaurant has closed and there’s not a thing you can do about it but wait until daytime. I’ve been going to Follow Your Heart specifically for this meal since I was a teenager and I still love it. They’ve got so many other fantastic items on their menu but I’ve tried only a few of them, because every time I go there and start checking out the menu, it’s always the Reuben that calls my name.

That said, I did have something different there recently… more on that soon to come.

p.s… Thank you Don Bolles, because if it wasn’t for the little review you wrote about this sandwich in the L.A. Weekly many years ago, I may have never learned of it’s existence. A tip of the hat, and a squirt of Dr. Bronner’s soap to you, Sir.