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

It’s safe to say that in recent years Vietnamese food has replaced Thai food as my favorite Asian cuisine. It’s really exciting to see more and more restaurants starting to cater to vegans and vegetarians as Vietnamese cooking grows in popularity. While Vinh Loi Tofu will always remain the reigning champ among all Vietnamese restaurants (no one else even comes close as far as vegan food is concerned), it’s nice to see other places offering animal-free options as well.

We recently visited the newly re-opened Vietnamese Soy Cafe in Silver Lake and enjoyed their limited but satisfying vegan offerings. Today let’s visit another vegan friendly Vietnamese eatery, this time across town in Highland Park- Good Girl Dinette.

Located right around the corner from the vegetarian Mexican restaurant Cinnamon, Good Girl Dinette serves up simple, clean and mostly organic ingredients sourced from local farmers markets, and transforms them into what they refer to as “American diner meets Vietnamese comfort food”. And it’s as good as it sounds! There is enough on the menu to keep both the carnivores and the herbivores happy.

We’ll start at the heart of any decent Vietnamese meal, with a hot bowl of Pho. Pho is a traditional soup usually made with all manner of horror inducing cuts of meat, beefy broth and exotic spices. Luckily for those of us who want the delicious taste of a well-seasoned Pho soup without all the beef juice, Good Girl Dinette makes an all-vegetarian version just for us.

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I always end up getting my usual favorites when I got to Vin Loi Tofu, so on this visit I opted to try something new. I was very intrigued by the ‘Chao Bao Ngu’ which is a soupy porridge with soy abalone, faux shrimp, shitake mushroom and Chinese donut. Truth be told, it was the unknown thrill of what the Chinese donut might be all about which made up my mind to order this. Sounds like something naughty and forbidden, doesn’t it?

The huge bowl of soup arrived and you can imagine how exciting it was to delve in with a spoon to figure out what all was swimming around in there! The porridge/soup is thick and has an interesting texture similar to really watery oatmeal hot cereal. It’s filled with chopped bits of the fake abalone, shrimp and (real) mushrooms. For those who aren’t too hip to the taste of seafood, don’t worry. I don’t like things that taste fishy either and this soup isn’t that, the flavor is very mild. There’s also a healthy topping of fresh cilantro and crispy onions (they don’t have that gross raw onion flavor, instead they just give a nice crispy, chewy texture to the already very texturized soup). The flavor, consistency and just about everything else about this soup is unlike anything I’ve ever tasted before… which is generally a good thing. It was delicious and the owner (hi Kevin!) told me that it’s the best thing to eat when you’re feeling sick or under the weather… he claims it will take care of whatever ails you.

The soup came served with a large serving of bean sprouts, lime and the most delicious fried bits of dough which apparently are the Chinese donuts. I’m pretty sure that the sprouts and dough were meant to be put into the soup, but the donuts were too good for that and I just ate them straight off the plate with my fingers. The lime juice spritzed into the soup was the perfect finishing touch, consider that lime juice makes just about anything taste that much better. The verdict is: the porridge soup rocked and has now been officially added to my list of Vinh Loi favorites. If you go, definitely give it a try… take a friend and share it because there’s more than enough to feed you both. Since you’ll be sharing, it’ll free you up to order something else and not feel like such a piggy about it. If you’re there with me though, don’t even think about bogarting my donuts.