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

I recently got to enjoy a nice lunch with my fellow blogger in crime, Quarrygirl. After much deliberation, we opted to have our lunch at Real Food Daily. We settled on RFD because we both like it, and also because her man hates it… so she doesn’t get to go there often. I on the other hand have always enjoyed their food and they offer one of the best vegan brunches in town. Quarrygirl has already posted her write up about our lunch at Real Food Daily, so I better pick up the slack here and give you my take on things.

It was a given that we’d start off with the vegan nachos. I mean, who goes to RFD and does not get the nachos? You’d have to be crazy! The “Better with Cheddar Nachos” involve tortilla chips, melted cashew cheese, black beans, pico de gallo, guacamole and tofu sour cream. Now don’t go getting all excited thinking this stuff tastes like real cheese or sour cream, because it doesn’t. That said, it’s delicious. The creamy cashew cheese is more of a melted cheese-like sauce, and it reminds me of those super cheap nachos you can get at places like 7-11 where you ladle the watery cheese sauce out of a heated pool onto a paper tray of stale chips. Only these chips were not stale, the food was not cheap, and the taste is amazing. It doesn’t taste much of cashews and to my tastebuds it’s reminiscent of Cheese Whiz, but in a good way. That’s probably not the comparison it’s creators were after, but there you have it (comfort food is comfort food, regardless of how you slice it). They serve a regular and jalepeno version of the cheese. We got the jalepeno but just like each time I’ve been to RFD in the past and asked for the jalepeno, it wasn’t at all spicy. I never know if they’ve messed up and brought me the wrong one but I’m starting to think that their spicy jalepeno cheese… just isn’t. Spicy or not, I still like it, and there was hot sauce at the table to make up for the lack of heat so all was well.

The sour cream doesn’t come very close to tasting like real sour cream either, but it’s yummy all the same, spiked with herbs of some sort (dill?) and with a nice creamy texture. Mix it all together with fresh pico de gallo, beans and all the rest and you’ve got yourself a rather delicious appetizer.

I’m glad that we were served a generous and filling portion of the nachos because I didn’t get through much of my main entree.

I got the RFD Burger with The Works and I’m sorry to say that it was just awful. You know I’m not very picky and that most of my reviews are usually good ones… that’s because I genuinely like most of the stuff I eat, so I don’t use the word “awful” lightly. The burger is a tempeh vegetable patty that comes with grilled onions (none for me thanks), lettuce, tomato and is served on a rustic roll. When you pay extra to get it with the works you also get avocado, tempeh bacon and cashew cheese. Sounds good right? Nooooooooooooooooo.
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The magic is in the hole! Or so they say over at Voodoo Doughnut, the place itself being a teeny-tiny little hole in the wall the size of a large walk-in closet. Voodoo Doughnut is a well established and somewhat legendary donut shop in downtown Portland. They’re open all night and are an obvious choice for grabbing yummy sweet treats after shows or when the bars let out. I’ve been told the scene there late at night is quite fun and exciting, a real taste of Portland. Truth be told however, I wasn’t there to check out the scene, I was there for the vegan donuts I’ve heard so much about.

We stopped by there in the afternoon and there was a line out the door snaking around the side of the building. There was a brewfest going on just a few steps away by the river, so that may have had something to do with the crowds. The line moved quickly though, especially considering there was only one woman both serving the donuts and running the cash register, and soon enough I found myself with a front row view of the display case. The vegan donuts are nicely segregated on a plate in the spinning display case so you can easily see which ones are available.

Maple bars have always been one of my favorites in the non-vegan donut world, so of course that was my first choice to try here (that’s the one on the back right of the plate, the one that’s not chocolate, or a bar for that matter). It was pretty good, the fact that it was vegan made it better. I do like my donuts to be of the lighter and fluffier variety, while this donut was more of a cake donut, very thick and dense. The flavor was great, the maple frosting delicious, but the actual donut itself was too much for me to get through much of, and I was thankful to have a bottle of water with me to wash it down with otherwise it would have stuck in my throat.

I also tried the donut that you see there at the front left of the plate. I don’t know what they call this one, but it had a very sweet white frosting which was coated in toasted coconut. I loved both those flavor toppings, the white stuff was sticky and gooey in a very good way and well, it’s pretty hard to go wrong with toasted coconut. The donut itself was the same as the maple bar, so again it was thicker than I would have preferred and hard to get down without a beverage. I guess it’s true that for some girls, size does matter. And lube always helps.

They were both very tasty donuts, even though I was only able to get through half of each before feeling totally stuffed and over the craving to have donuts again anytime soon. If they had been a lighter type of donut I could have easily made my way through three or four. Maybe I’m just spoiled by the mindblowingly light and airy donuts I had at Madeline Bistro back in May (which I still haven’t gotten around to blogging for you yet but you can get a peek over at VegYogini’s blog), because those donuts were so incredible that there’s no way you’d know they were vegan, nor would it matter. In my mind those are the vegan donuts that all others will be measured against. I can’t say that the Voodoo Donuts came close in comparison, but I can say that they were quite enjoyable for what they were, and any place that will provide me with fresh made vegan donuts be it 12 noon or 12 midnight is alright by me.
www.voodoodoughnut.com

Here’s a cute 10 minute documentary about Voodoo Doughnuts called Gimmie Doughnut (some of which is NSFW)

Stayed tuned for ‘Foodeater Does Vegan Portland’, Pt. 7!