Los Angeles is a haven for vegans, vegetarians and veggie-lovers, offering at least one vegan-friendly restaurant in most neighborhoods. From Mexican cuisine to classic pub dishes, each eatery offers its own spin on veggie-centric fare. With the following vegan-friendly LA restaurants, eating healthy, plant-based food is easy and delicious in the New Year and year-round.
Feeding into the surrounding beach atmosphere, Café Gratitude serves organic, vegan cuisine with hippie flare that can be seen with dish names like the “Open-Hearted” gluten-free pancakes and “Crunchy” raw granola with coconut yogurt. In addition to “Adventurous” eats, the expansive beverage menu includes wines, beer, espresso drinks, elixirs, spritzers and fresh-pressed juices.
At Crossroads Kitchen, a romantic atmosphere and vegan cuisine converge, resulting in a great date spot for plant lovers. Their Mediterranean-inspired menu boasts innovative sandwiches and soup for lunch and an assortment of flatbreads and shareable small plates for dinner. Popular items include artichoke oysters made with artichoke puree and crispy oyster mushrooms, a wood-fired meaty lasagna and gluten-free chocolate cheesecake for dessert.
Long gone are the days of chalky carbs and odd textures of stereotypically vegan cuisine. The menu at Gracias Madre is filled with fresh produce from owners Matthew and Terces Engelhart’s farm in Vacaville, Calif. Inspired by a trip to Mexico, the Engelharts incorporate organic, plant-based ingredients into traditional recipes. Popular dishes include coconut bacon torta, Brussels sprouts with cilantro almond pesto and butternut squash flautas with cashew nacho cheese.
For those who can’t decide between a pizza, quesadilla or sushi, The Grain Café offers an international smorgasbord of vegan dishes. This quaint spot in an unassuming strip mall offers house-made veggie sausage hot dogs, a deluxe burger made with beans, grains and vegetable and a variety of organic salads loved by both meat-eaters and vegans. Also not to be missed are the café’s crepes and spelt cakes.
Compared to Chef Phillip Franklin Lee’s first restaurant, Scratch Bar, which didn’t provide much for the vegetarian palate, his second venture, The Gadarene Swine, picks up what the other eatery left off: the vegetables. The Gadarene Swine’s menu is exclusively vegan, featuring fruits and vegetables in a variety of applications. From crispy kale lollipops to roasted mushrooms with burnt sweet potato, the inventive dishes at this rustic restaurant can be enjoyed as part of a tasting menu or a la carte.
While not an exclusively vegan restaurant, Mohawk Bend offers many vegan and vegetarian options on their large menu featuring organic, locally sourced ingredients. The buffalo-style cauliflower is well-loved by all as is the Vegan Bahn Mi pizza with marinated tofu, pickled veggies and Sriracha aioli. Opened by Tony Yanow, the guy behind Golden Road Brewing, Mohawk Bend’s extensive beer list spotlights SoCal’s craft breweries.
The organic spirit of Sprouted Garden Café extends from its vegan fare to the patio’s wooden furniture, greenery and water feature. While the menu is heavy on Indian cuisine, it also includes Japanese garden rolls, salads, Mexican dishes and veggie burgers. There are lots of options for omnivores, as well, who can enjoy chicken samosas and tandoori fish salad in addition to other non-vegan versions of menu items.
A favorite among health-conscious Silver Lake locals, Flore Vegan offers traditional cuisine with a vegan twist. The most popular dishes are the roasted beet and kale salad, chicken and waffles, seitan quesadilla with cashew cheese and lemon berry cake.
All dishes at Elf Café are vegetarian and over half of those are vegan. Vegetarian diners can enjoy the baked feta topped with olives, roasted tomatoes and fried herbs and, as their entrée, the Socca crepe filled with green za’atar pesto and marinated goat cheese. While many of the dishes can omit the cheese for vegans, Elf Café’s other vegan options include tahini avocado puree and mushroom kofta with black rice and pomegranate hummus.
Japanese cuisine, with authentic dishes made with little-known aquatic creatures like sea urchin and eel, was not designed with the vegetarian palate in mind. Shojin restaurant preserves the unique application and adventure of Japanese food, but uses completely vegan ingredients. Their gyoza is gluten-free and stuffed with vegetables; the spicy “tuna” on their Dynamite Roll is made with minced tofu; and their tempura offerings feature mushroom and cauliflower in place of shrimp.
There are not many Ethiopian restaurants in Los Angeles, let alone ones that are vegan. Azla Vegan satisfies cravings for both vegetables and African cuisine with its limited menu of salads and six different varieties of vegan wat, a traditional stew of chicken or lamb. The wat at Azla is prepared with red lentils, potatoes, peas and other vegetables, instead.
Located in a downtown LA warehouse, the Springs is a utopia for health nuts. The multi-use space features a yoga studio, juice bar and raw vegan restaurant in the bustling Arts District. Visitors can spend a morning practicing Kundalini yoga, grab a lunch of green tea leaf salad with pumpkin seeds and chili-lime vinaigrette and top it off with a Firefly juice, a sweet and spicy blend of apple, turmeric and ginger.
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