I have so much to write about but let’s start with my awesome birthday lunch with my Mom and my Man.
I woke up thinking about The Ivy’s grilled veggie salad, maybe because my family had a bad habit of celebrating all birthdays there until our we grew too large to fit in any room they had to offer.
Here she is, with shrimp, in all her glory:
when I go to Urth, and my boyfriend, who is not vegan, gets this:
and I get this, the only vegan cake, I know, deep down inside, his is better.
Tomorrow I will be baking vegan ginger spice cookies all day in my mommy’s kitchen for all you peeps. My kitchen is intimidated by hers, and also smaller. So…..I’m doing it there.
I don’t usually bake, but this is a very important cause. Please come support the Eat My Blog bake sale…
All proceeds go to the Los Angeles Food Bank. Learn more about it here if you are interested. Which technically you should be.
By the way, this is no ordinary bake sale. Check out the menu.
See you Saturday! Unless you’re a bad person who believes in starvation. Then I’ll just see you another time.
Vegan turnovers from Mäni’s on Fairfax….Kinda into these right now….
Except they need to be grazed on throughout the day unless you want to feel like a lead belly.
Go for mixed berry or tropical. Apple you’ll get sick of faster than a heartbroken houseguest.
I don’t like crowds very much, and I don’t like competition when I go on a mission for dessert.
So when babycakes NYC came to LA at the beginning of the year, I patiently waited until my inner anxiety meter told me the coast was clear and the time was right. Turns out the time was right last Saturday.
Oh…and you know why I was so excited, about this, right? Because…
In case you need a gluten-free diet thanks to, say, a wheat allergy or celiac disease, it’s easy to tell what you can and can’t eat:
I was eyeing this bad boy but he escaped my wrath this time. I’ll get you next time, Gadget.
K. You hate me cause I keep showing you not-that-good shots of the case and not the amazing blueberry donut and strawberry jam with vanilla biscuit I inhaled daintily ate.
I bet if that donut was a person it would be all, “whoa, back up. why are you taking a picture so close to my face?!” And then I’d be like, “no, trust me, you look really good.”
In the world of vegan food, and particularly desserts, there are things that taste delicious to vegans, but non-vegans will still say “it’s good, but it tastes vegan” (you know who you are).
Then there’s shit like these motherfucking biscuits that taste so undeniably good and unrecognizably vegan. No qualifiers. No “good, but…” Just perfect. And able to hang with all the big (non-vegan) boys.
And that’s why it’s a problem for me that babycakes delivers.
Although before I knew that, I just planned on stockpiling after every visit…
What else should I try here?
Everything?
Are you sure? Well, you know best.
somebody bring me mango sticky rice from Bulan Thai.
Let’s play a game where we name the top three restaurants I visit most. If your lineup looks like this:
1.) M Cafe
2.) M Cafe
3.) M Cafe
or some variation thereof, you win. Your prize is not redeemable in the state where you live.
Last Friday I had the pleasure of joining some of my favorite food homies (Sook and Sarah) and Vanessa from Wagstaff at M Cafe Culver City to talk, eat, and allow me the chance to prove I’ve already eaten everything on the menu.
What’s the big occasion?
We convened to discuss the Beverly Hills location launch of Little M.
Think about it–what’s your one gripe with M Cafe? It’s definitely not the food. It can’t be. But isn’t it just a smidge expensive sometimes?
Well M Cafe in Beverly Hills is debuting a new menu, not so different from the other two locations in terms of food options, but certainly more affordable and great for picking up food on the go.
We started off with some seasonal side salads, including lentils with radicchio, maple roasted veggies, and celery root remoulade.
We also had a variety of sushi (I stuck with the shitake avocado roll) –including spicy tuna, spicy shrimp, and fresh salmon.
Sushi and I had a showdown and I won:
Kinda scary, huh.
Some of the main courses we had:
The Gado Gado Salad–at Melrose it costs $11.45. In BH it’s $10.00
The Big Macro Burger–Melrose: $11.45. BH-$9.75 Both with one choice of side salad.
The Seitan Katsu Bowl, the Teriyaki Bowl with Black Cod and the Bi-Bim Bop (There is some variation of these bowls on the BH menu that runs a few bucks cheaper, especially if you get it sans fish):
The Panino Tuscano:
They have some different sandwich options in Beverly Hills–in general they run under $10 in price, whereas they are closer to $12 at the other locations.
BH also has some a la carte options (amen!) like BBQ Tempeh or Seared Tuna Tataki.
Sook is a hoarder and half way through the meal we discovered she was hanging on to more silverware than was really necessary:
Her bad behavior was rewarded like so:
and particularly like so:
Chocolate cake was a big, moist hit. Sarah hates the word “moist,” which is why I awkwardly injected it into that last sentence–because making your friends uncomfortable is funny.
You know what else is funny?
That after boxing the next morning with my friend Joy I ended up right back at the Melrose location for brekkie. There’s no shame in my game.
Scrambled tofu with tempeh bacon and sweet potato hash with grilled country bread:
Post-boxing knuckle sandwich:
Best blueberry pancakes with organic maple syrup and soy butter with tempeh bacon:
Both of those breakfast dishes are under $10 and were a good way to start the day.
If you are not familiar with macrobiotic cuisine, get with the program, specifically M Cafe’s program. It’s about energy and balance in your food and it makes you feel good when you eat it. Why else would I eat there every day? Besides the fact that it’s basically my office now.
A week ago, Sarah brought Sook and me with her to watch Chef Tal Ronnen do a vegan cooking demo at Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena.
He not only wrote an amazing vegan cookbook with a picture for every recipe, The Conscious Cook, but he also prepared all meals for Oprah’s vegan cleanse, did the food for Ellen DeGeneres’ vegan wedding and believes in vegan food as filling, satisfying and rich as a plate of meat and potatoes.
Would you ever think these dishes didn’t have chicken or cream?
Inspired by the demo, we went to Pure Luck for a vegan lunch. Also Sarah and Sook are nice friends and always make sure I can eat more than bibb lettuce wherever we go.
To drink we each had some sort of fizzy pomegranate soju thing. Wait, was it pomegranate? It looks like ginger. I don’t know.
Sarah, in my opinion made the wisest choice, and ordered the Quinoa Paloma salad, which is probably the main reason I would come back here.
I made the worst choice out of confusion and hunger and got the Cesar Salad with Tofu. It was ok.
Sook came in at a strong second by ordering the Fresh Noodle Salad with tofu, bean sprouts, cilantro, basil, and lime. She skipped the peanuts cause that’s not her style, yo.
Out of curiosity we split a side of order of jackfruit. Jackfruit is sometimes used as a vegetarian substitute for chicken and here’s why:
looks like shredded meat, right?
Afterward I peer pressured Sook into getting ice cream from Scoops since it was right across the street and, fuck it, if you’re gonna drink in the middle of the day you might as well have dessert, too.
By this point, I have no idea what we ordered. Let’s guess, shall we?
I think she had coconut oreo (vegan) and chocolate hazelnut (not vegan and possibly not hazelnut). I think I had pistachio rosewater (vegan and delicious in that old worldly harem sort of way) and almond cognac (vegan and possibly not cognac).
Clearly I need to either take notes, post sooner, or be a better liar.
Also, while it’s very exciting to finally have a camera, can I please, for the love of God, learn how to take a decent picture?? Shadow: heed this warning: you are not welcome here.
P.S. we noticed something about the cooking students at Le Cordon Bleu. Since when do you have to look like this to be a chef in training?
