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

[Update 9/08] Veganopolis has closed up shop and moved to Chicago.
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There’s no way I was going to Portland to miss out on eating at a restaurant with a name like Veganopolis.

I’d heard mixed reviews about the place, some extremely positive, some not so nice. Still, the name was too cool to pass up and I liked how they described themselves on their website:

“Veganopolis Cafeteria is a 100% vegan dining and retail establishment. We serve casual gourmet and offer vegan lunch buffets M-F, 11am-3pm. Saturdays we offer an extensive Vegan Breakfast Buffet from 9am-5pm. We also offer fresh grilled sandwiches, Fresh Salads, a Kid’s menu, Counter service and a relaxed child-friendly environment. Espresso drinks, Vegan desserts including Shakes, Floats and Sundaes. We are a casein free zone and we refrain from serving honey. Baked goods made fresh here are wheat free and all organic.

Sounds good to me! I’d planned to spend part of the day at Powells, the ginormous bookstore downtown, so I stopped for lunch at Veganopolis first as it’s just a few blocks away. I decided to forgo the buffet and order something off the menu… the main reason being one of my all time favorite names in the language of culinary delights: Reuben.

It’s true, I’m a vegan Reuben sandwich addict and I have to try them whenever I’m am lucky enough to come across one in the wild… it’s like spotting a rare bird or one of those special flowers that only blooms for a day. The quest for vegan Reubens is particularly rewarding because no matter where you go, the restaurant will have it’s own unique interpretation of just what constitutes a proper one. Above is Veganopolis’ tasty version: Braised corned vegan ham, soy mozarella, house thousand island and sauerkraut piled on rustic rye.

It’s was pretty good. Not as great as the Follow Your Heart Reuben but it was still good in it’s own right. The veggie ham was tasty and very meat-like. I don’t know that I would have guessed that it was supposed to be corned ham had I not read that on the menu, but it was a perfectly suitable vegetarian stand-in for it’s real life fleshy counterpart. The thousand island dressing was a little too sweet for my taste, but the sauerkraut helped balance it out. The bread was fresh and the whole sandwich was grilled nice and crispy. The fries were roasted potatoes, the flavor was good but not having been fried the texture was a wee bit soft, though nothing a squirt of organic ketchup couldn’t handle.

They’ve got a lot of other tantalizing sandwiches on the menu as well as a salads, vegan shakes and all kinds of other goodies, including their ever changing buffet. Veganopolis made for a very satisfying lunch spot and while it didn’t blow my mind, I don’t always need lunch to rock my world. Sometimes all I’m after is a good sandwich to fortify me for a full day of book shopping. I got my good sandwich, and I ended up with a bunch of great books too… I was a happy camper.

Stayed tuned for ‘Foodeater Does Vegan Portland’, Pt. 9…
The final installment!

I’ve now had two very tasty visits to Flore so it’s about time I tell you about them. Flore is an “organic vegan eatery” featuring a small vegan deli counter as well as a sit down restaurant. It’s all the rage apparently, considering each time I’ve been there it’s been packed to the gills with hipsters. It sits right in the heart of Silverlake’s hipsterville district and has a sort of San Francisco feel to it. Flore is so hip it hurts. Each time I’ve been there it was bustlingly busy but the vibe is pretty laid back. You might need to wait a little bit for a table, but it flies by quick while you people watch (and dog watch).

Y’all know by now that I’m a whore for faux-Reuben sandwiches, so of course that’s what I ordered on my first visit. Flore’s version is made with tempeh, sauerkraut, rye bread and I don’t remember what the yummy creamy stuff was made of, but I can tell you it rocked. Came served with potato salad. This picture doesn’t do it justice, you’ll just need trust me on this one… it’s good.

And would you say no to vegan blueberry cheesecake? I think not. Neither did I. It was delicious and I especially liked the wholesome yet yummy tasting crust.

For my second visit I had the Tu-No Melt. Fresh six-grain bread, tempeh salad and cashew “cheese”. It was great, though I’ll add that it tastes nothing like a real tuna melt, nor does the Reuben taste anything like a Reuben. Not that I really care what they are called, I just want to eat it them.

Here’s the money shot for you tempeh pervs out there. You know who you are.

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.

This was my first visit to “Native Foods” an organic vegetarian – vegan restaurant. The food here was amazing! This was at their location in Costa Mesa.

Seen here is the “Thai Sticks” sauteed and grilled tempeh satay with peanut sauce.

This was the tempeh Reuben sandwich. Perfectly seasoned, delicious saurkraut, yummy sauce, loads of veggies, served on an organic wheat and sprouted brown rice ciabatta roll with a very tasty slaw side salad. This was so good I almost ordered another one.

My friend ordered the “Iron Yam” salad. Steamed yam on salad greens dressed with balsamic vinaigrette, topped with steamed veggies, tofu & caramelized onions. He said it was fantastic. Who could resist a giant phallic tower of tofu for lunch?

This was their vegan carrot cake with “dream cheese” frosting, whatever that means. It was simply to die for. I’m willing to bet a non-vegan wouldn’t know the difference if they weren’t told… it was moist, fluffy, sweet and delicious, rivaling any regular recipe for carrot cake that I’ve ever had.