To Live and Eat in L.A.

I knew that Nite Moon Cafe was located inside of a Yoga studio, and for that reason I’d put off going there even though I knew they served vegan food. I imagined a rinky-dink little studio that reeked of sweat, floors covered in that soft blue padding like at the Tae Kwondo studio, and with a tiny little juice bar or somesuch tucked over in the corner near the bathroom serving some kind of raw hemp coconut balls. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

In reality, Nite Moon is located within the huge “spiritual village” known as Golden Bridge Yoga, which according to their literature is the premier center for the study and practice of Kundalini Yoga and meditation in Los Angeles. The space inside is beautiful. It’s located directly behind the Arclight in Hollywood and from the outside you’d never know there was such a large & bustling community center situation going on inside the drab gray building. You’d certainly never guess that it’s home to an excellent vegetarian restaurant unless you stepped inside. I highly recommend that you do so.

The food served at Nite Moon is all vegetarian and most of it is vegan… not all of it though, so you have to read the (not very big) menu carefully and ask if you have any questions. There are a few soy cheese options available, but when I asked if the cheese was vegan the guy working the kitchen at the time didn’t know, but was kind enough to let me look at the packaging. The soy cheese did contain casein so it’s not vegan. In other words, don’t order the soy cheese quesadilla and just about everything else other than the goat cheese sandwich should be vegan safe.

On my first visit to Nite Moon I had the Tiki Masala Veggie Burger: Tempeh patty, caramelized onions, mango chutney, fresh basil on a whole wheat burger bun with veganaise. All sandwiches also come served with their house organic salad.
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I’m not a raw foodie but I do enjoy well prepared raw dishes when I’m in the right mood. I was in one of those moods when I remembered hearing about a raw, vegan place in West Hollywood and I was pretty sure I’d driven past it on Santa Monica Blvd. before, so I set out to find it. I remembered that it had something Goddess-y in it’s name.

I drove to where I remembered seeing it but instead of the raw place I was looking for, I had arrived at The Flowering Tree instead. Turns out the other place I’d been trying to find was called Taste of the Goddess, had been located farther up the street, and has been closed for quite some time.

Well here I was at a restaurant that looked decent and I was really hungry, so I checked out their menu. The Flowering Tree is not a raw restaurant or even a vegetarian restaurant but they have many vegetarian options, most of which already are or can be made vegan. Sounds good to me… let’s do this thing!

I went with the flame-grilled Lemon Herb Tempeh Burger which came with lettuce, tomato, dijon mustard and Veganaise. I also had them add the soy cheese for a bit extra. I think you can see why I called finding this place a tasty mistake because this was one damn fine vegan burger. It’s not really a burger patty, rather it’s a heaping pile of marinated tempeh chunks…and it was delicious. I don’t know if they make the tempeh there or if it’s a pre-packaged variety because the flavor was somewhat familiar to me, but either way, it’s good stuff. The burger was gigantic and the whole wheat bun was nicely toasted. It came with a choice of sides from which I picked the fruit, also a fresh and generous portion.
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One of the restaurants I was most looking forward to eating at while in Portland is The Farm Cafe. As their name describes, they get their ingredients fresh from local farms whenever possible and offer a rotating seasonal menu. It’s known for having great local microbrews and an extensive winelist along with plenty of ambiance, but not for having a lot of vegan food as there’s only one vegan meal offered as an entree.

It’s this one entree though that’s been driving vegan Portland eaters wild with glee, the Herb Crusted Tofu with Mushroom Marsala which also comes with some bad-ass garlic mashed potatoes. I’d heard it was excellent and I was all set to try. Once we got there though, I was thrown a curveball in the form of a nightly specials menu which listed something which sounded even more enticing…

Tempeh Masala: Tempeh marinated in East Indian spices, pan-fried crisp then served with braised summer vegetables, tandoori jasmine rice, stela cherry chutney (also served with dilled yogurt which isn’t vegan so they left it off for me).

This was so good, and not really at all what I expected it to be like. I was thinking it would have a more recognizable Indian food taste to it but I didn’t get that from it, but wow, what I did get was awesome. The texture was almost meatloaf like, though with a nice thick and crispy crust. Juicy and delicious with all kinds of exotic spices I wouldn’t be able to identify. The cherry chutney was both sweet and tart at the same time, a divine jam covering all the bases. I’d just had these stela cherries fresh at the farmers market earlier that day, how nice to see something like that moving from farmer to plate. The vegetables were tasty though relatively simple. The serving was huge, with two GIANT tempeh slabs and a healty mound of rice. I barely got through one portion of the tempeh and had a lot of leftovers to take home. My friend’s reaction to this dish was that it reminded her of Thanksgiving with cherries instead of cranberries.

Along with our main courses we’d also ordered the appetizer which OrganicGirl (who’s been here a number of times) was very excited about getting, and I can see why:

Rosemary-roasted Hazelnuts: Special house recipe involving brown sugar and tabasco. And that’s all they’re telling. These were amazing… just perfectly roasted and coated in this yummy sticky sweet hot goodness, all infused with an almost overwhelming taste and sent of rosemary. These were flavors I’d never think to put together, which is why I don’t run a great restaurant and they do.

p.s. Here’s the recipe for Farm Cafe Roasted Hazelnuts at Let’s Get Sconed!

I mentioned the ambiance, and as you may have noticed by the dark and blurry photos, it was rather dark in there. The restaurant is in a small converted house and it’s lit up inside by lots of candles and low lighting. The effect is magical and romantic and this would be a fantastic place to go on a date or with a small group of friends for special occasions. It’s very open with a small patio in the back where we initially waited to be seated. Apparently they get very busy but we didn’t have to wait long at all, though we did get there pretty late at around 10:30pm.

The Farm Cafe definitely lived up to and exceed my expectations, even though my expectations were to eat one thing and I left eating something else entirely. If I lived there this would for sure be on my list of places to eat when feeling fancy or flirty, or both.
www.thefarmcafe.net

Stayed tuned for ‘Foodeater Does Vegan Portland’, Pt. 5!

And so here we have it. I told you in my last post about the fantastic tempeh stuffed mushrooms we learned to make at the Spork Foods vegan protein cooking class (say that ten times, really fast). I loved this recipe so much and found it so easy to make that I immediately made my own version at home. Here’s the results…

The biggest change I made was using the super large portobello mushrooms whereas the recipe uses the small ones (really, there is a huge mushroom under all that stuffing, I swear). To compensate for size I also had to wing it on amounts when putting together the marinade as I needed a lot more to cover these beauties. The only other real changes I made were using garlic instead of shallots and I also added in a generous amount of fresh chopped ginger; a little voice inside my head told me to.

As I mentioned in the Spork Foods post, I won’t give away Jenny’s recipe, but in all fairness you can pretty much look at this and figure out how to make something similar. How about the Cliff’s Notes version? Make yourself up a nice balsamic based marinade for your mushrooms and let them chillax for a bit. Chop up some of your favorite veggies and cook them up for a few minutes along with some crumbled, seasoned tempeh… then stuff those lovely mushrooms, throw the whole kit-and-kaboodle in the oven and bake.

Oh. My. Yum.

The nice thing is that you can really adapt this and change it up in so many different ways, from the spices and seasonings used, to the types of veggies that go into the stuffing. So have at it!

Along with the regular menu at Real Food Daily, they also offer weekly specials as well as one monthly special. For my last visit I had November’s special, the “Vermont Harvest”.

Maple dijon tempeh and winter vegetable stew over wild rice and quinoa with pan seared delicata squash, sauteed apples and walnuts over wilted baby spinach. It was fantastic. I’m not even a big fan of wild rice but I loved every last bite of how it was prepared here. It was a delicious, filling, warm and hearty cold weather meal.

As mentioned, another visit to Follow Your Heart presented itself, so for once I opted to have something other than the vegetarian Reuben.

I had the “Organic Tempeh Tacos: Two organically grown, stone ground corn tortilla shells, filled with seasoned, grilled organic tempeh, jack and cheddar cheese (substituted with their excellent vegan cheese), tomatoes and fresh cilantro. Served with Spanish rice, black beans guacamole and lime wedges.” It was good, they managed to give the tempeh a texture that was very similar to ground taco meat. The sides were all tasty too, and this serving like everything else there, was huge.

I am pleased to report back with another successful attempt at roasting vegetables. I made this up with what I had on hand, improvising every step of the way. First I marinated the tempeh for about an hour in lime juice, Braggs, small amount of hoisin sauce, coriander, curry, nutritional yeast and sambal. Once that was ready to rock, I mixed it (along with the rest of the marinade, olive oil, more nutritional yeast and agave nectar) into a combo of chopped broccoli, fennel and apple. This went into a 425 degree oven for about 15 to 20 minutes, with a good mixing halfway thru.

I didn’t feel like cooking or eating any grains, so I served the veggies over some TVP. The result was a whole lot of yum.

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.