 Real Food Daily
My jesus! A restaurant with 100% Vegan selections! Do not pass go! Do not collect $200! Do not wake daddy! Do not break the ice! Connect four! Hungry hungry hippos!
This is the last place you'd see a hippo, certainly. It's probably the healthiest restaurant I've ever been in, and was the first place I'd ever been where I could order with absolute confidence that my selection would be totally Vegan, and very, very good. Real Food Daily uses no animal products whatsoever, and cooks with the healthiest possible ingredients and oils for a menu that is as interesting as it is enjoyable. Having had much experience compromising on restaurant choices, I can't tell you how amazing it was to find a place where everything on the menu was as ideally suited to my "alternative lifestyle" as an overcrowded bathhouse on Fisting Night.
I enjoyed this place immensely, and it was an auspicious first restaurant to visit during my trip to LA. My companions were LA residents whose command of the area make them excellent hosts and whose consideration for my diet was wholeheartedly appreciated. It was nothing at all like my trip to Ciudad Juárez, where my hosts mercilessly forced chorizo sausages into my mouth, one after another until their juice burst forth and streamed down my neck and chest like … wait a minute, that wasn't chorizo at all, that was another bathhouse experience! The place itself is rather cramped (we ate on the lower level – perhaps the upper level is more spacious) and the atmosphere not all too memorable, but the selection and quality of the food was truly remarkable. The service was decent but not incredible. I had Salisbury seitan (this ending literal months of complaining to my other Veg. friends that there are no good Vegan steak alternatives) with mashed potatoes and Caesar salad. Companion A had seitan fajitas, while Companion B had some sort of salad, if memory serves. I believe they both had water, while I had a delicious chilled roseberry tea, which was recommended to me when I was informed that they had no lemonade. The meal was outstanding, and I'm still thinking about it eight meals later. My jesus … who'd have thought, a basic meat-and-potatoes meal with no real meat or dairy? Seitan is truly the best thing anyone's ever done. Make no mistake – I bow down only to Seitan. Yes indeed, I am a card carrying Seitanist. Oh yes, Seitan will triumph over God! Oh wait, I think I lost the pun factor on that one.
The menu was expansive, and parking seemed to be fairly easy. Points added for the attractive Asian I stared at for nearly the entire meal while feigning conversation with my dining companions. There was something about the place that made it a bit less than perfect – maybe I am just sensitive to cramped spaces after my harrowing POW experience … wait a minute, that was a bathhouse experience too! Damn, three bathhouse jokes in a health food restaurant review. I should get some kind of prize from the National Bathhouse Lobby.
Review by Marin K. Unappreciated, August 1999 |