To Live and Eat in L.A. – A Vegan Food Photo Blog

Another “Create a Plate” at Hugo’s. I stuck with my favorite roasted beets, roasted yams & sweet potatoes and black bean cakes. I also got their new menu addition of leafy greens with garlic and olive oil.

Super filling and super yum. Ate half and had a whole other meal left over for later.

Oh, and guess who was sitting across the way from me while I was eating this lunch. Go ahead, just guess.

Wrong, it was Fabio. I kid you not. It was the funniest thing, sitting there eating next to Fabio of all people, a mere table away. How ridiculous my life is sometimes! Seeing him made me want to laugh out loud. It also made me want to go wash my hair in luxurious shampoo for some reason, an involuntary reaction which from here on out I shall refer to simply as “The Fabio Effect”.

The “Power of Green” salad currently on the Hugo’s specials menu pretty much rocked my world.

Check it out: “Chopped spinach, green chard, broccoli, green beans, asparagus, organic dried cherries and avocado. Served with toasted sunflower seeds and a Matcha green tea honey herb dressing”. I had it with their fantastic grilled tofu. Note that honey is not vegan so if you don’t eat it you’ll want to have this with a different dressing.

The vegetables all had a perfect texture, still crispy but not tough or woody. The star of the salad was the amazing Matcha dressing which was both very flavorful and yet still subtle and light, letting the flavors of the individual vegetables and the tart-sweet cherries to come through.

This was so great, tastier than it looks in the picture actually. I was riding a nice green chlorophyll rush for the rest of the day.

Here’s the tofu scramble at Hugo’s.

I can’t believe that I’ve been dining at Hugo’s all this time and I’d never tried their tofu scramble until recently. It’s really freaking good! “Organic tofu scramble with sweet potato, green onion, tomato, spinach, garlic and mushrooms with ginger-soy sauce”. The tofu was the super firm kind and it nicely picked up the flavor of the sauce, which was delicious. The addition of the sweet potatoes give it a really nice depth, sweetness and texture. Definitely one of my new Hugo’s favorites.

At Hugo’s restaurant you can get this massive vegetarian club sandwich with grilled tofu and fake bacon. There’s a yummy topping on there too, I think it’s a mix of guacamole and veganaise. Their seasoned french fries are to die for, not an indulgence I’ll often allow… yet displayed here shamelessly for one and all to see (and covet).

The ‘Potato Samosa Quesadilla’ at Hugo’s is fantastic. It’s a whole wheat tortilla stuffed with Indian spiced potatoes, carrots and peas… basically everything you’d usually find inside a samosa. It was served with a delicious mint chutney that was both sweet and spicy, the sort of thing you start to salivate about when you think about it later on, attempting to translate it’s flavor into a blog post.

Up close and personal.

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.

This was a tasty stir-fry from Hugo’s, with organic marinated tofu, snow peas, tomatoes, broccolini, mushrooms, jicama, green onions, cilantro in a seseame chili sauce, served over quinoa.

The cute waitress at Hugo’s suggested I try the “Very Green Casserole”, so I did. Delcious. Thank god for cute waitresses. Here’s the lowdown from the menu: “Sauteed brocclini, spinach, asparagus, zucchini, with garlic and fresh herbs in a tomato basil pesto sauce. Topped with a black bean quinoa patty and melted mozerrela and goat cheese (they substituted with vegan cheese that was very tasty and had great texure and meltyness). Served with organic mixed green salad with sesame ginger dressing.
Inside view: