The Unvegan

Recent Posts

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10 Years of Unvegan
A Quick Bite at Burrito Express
Serendipity at Northern Waters Smokehaus

‘Los Angeles’

An Un-Special Lunch at Salomi

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An Indian quesadilla.

In my ceaseless attempt to find great unvegan food, the Valley has become my newest stomping ground. No, I didn’t just wake up one day and decide that there must be tons of hidden food gems in the Valley…my newish job made that decision for me. Right down the street from my office in North Hollywood is an Indian place called Salomi Indian Restaurant and one day at lunch we decided to check it out. The interior was a little bit fancy for lunch, but we were seated quickly. I took a look at the menu we were given and discovered that the prices were also a bit fancy for lunch. Just as I was feeling disheartened, one of my genius co-eaters asked if there was a special lunch menu. Our waitress said, “Yes” and we rejoiced.

Not My Kind of Gogi at Lee’s Philly (CLOSED)

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Fuse me!

Where the mac and cheese balls from World Fare were my appetizer at the Silver Lake Jubilee, I still needed to find myself a main course. After a long stroll around the trucks, I found myself at a truck that I had never seen before, called Lee’s Philly. Lee’s Philly is born of the same vein as many of the Kogi-style food trucks. Their specialty is gogi beef, but while they have fused it with tacos and burritos, they have also created a Philly cheese steak out of the stuff. Wording on their truck claims that they have “LA’s Best Gogi,” but I took it upon myself to be the true judge of that.

Having a Ball (or Three) at World Fare (CLOSED)

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Quite a claim, World Fare.

So like any good food blogger, I headed to the Silver Lake Jubilee over the weekend. For an event that wasn’t solely for food, it was amazing how all I really heard about the event was that there would be 34 food trucks. I didn’t even know LA had 34 food trucks (not counting the old fashioned kind). This sounded all good and well, but these sort of events seem to attract a butt-load of people and I was a little worried there would be a hassle for parking, getting in and then food. When I got there, though, I found no hassle at all. It was five bucks to get in and right off the bat I was bombarded with foodery. A long row of food trucks lined the center of the jubilee, burning up tons of diesel and serving up some interesting food.

Food Courting at Lawry’s Carvery (CLOSED)

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Not too Asian.

EDIT: The Century City location is gone, but Lawry’s continues to carve elsewhere.

After a year or so of flirting around with the Asian options at the Century City food court, I finally decided to take the plunge into some of their meatier food. This is not to say that I wasn’t eating meat all along, but few restaurants exude meatiness more than Lawry’s Carvery, the food court version of Lawry’s Prime Rib steakhouse. I took to browsing their menu and even though there was a ton of meat, a few of the good-looking dishes included vegetables.

A Bit of Pinches Tacos

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Taco or poorly wrapped burrito?

Just recently, West Hollywood’s Pinches Tacos branched out to Culver City and my buddy, Waldo, decided we had to try it out. I didn’t really know anything about the original place, but I figured it had to be good enough to build a second location. Since he was picking up, I checked out the menu online and found two tasty-looking tacos. The first was Pollo Mole and the second was Carne Asada. The menu was pretty vague about what came in each, so asked Waldo to order them without vegetables. He is a firm supporter of the unvegan way, so he was happy to get them ordered correctly.

Too Much Green at the Green Truck

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The “Money Truck” doesn’t sound as good.

While trying to be environmentally conscious, my office invited environmentally-friendly Green Truck over for some lunch. At first I was frightened by this, since the term “green” has taken on a pretty anti-meat connotation. It’s a damn shame, too, since green is the second-best color in the world. The best, of course, being orange. But I digress, back to some truckery. Despite the frightening name, the Green Truck did have some unvegan choices, including hot dogs and hamburgers. Even before heading out to the truck, I checked out the menu and decided I wanted one of their hot dogs. What’s more environmentally friendly than hot dogs? Well I guess since they are Niman Beef, they are quite advantageous for the environment.

Serendipity at Daddy’s Burritos

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A strong start.

On a pretty little Sunday afternoon in Culver City, my friends and I decided to try out a little place in Culver’s sketchville called J and J’s. After hearing tons of great meaty stories about this place, I knew it had to become an unvegan conquest. Alas, when we pulled up to the nondescript corner of West Adams and Spaulding, we found that the place didn’t do business on Sundays. A damn shame, but fortune wasn’t frowning upon us too much on that day. As we made our exit, we spotted an even more nondescript hole in the wall called Daddy’s Burritos. After a few moments of contemplation, we decided to try it out.

More Than Ice Cream at Al Gelato

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Leaf!

With a name like Al Gelato, you kind of expect to be walking into a gelato shop. This is not the case with Al Gelato in Beverly Hills. Sure, the place has gelato, but it is also a full-on Italian restaurant. Aside from realizing that it wasn’t just a gelato place, I also found that Al Gelato didn’t carry a lot of the pretension that Italian restaurants seem to have. There was no mood lighting, no fancy table cloths and no people with strange accents that weren’t quite Italian. Despite this, I found that the prices still fell into what you would expect in Beverly Hills, with very little under 10 bucks and pasta prices jumping up to 15 if you wanted any meat.

Clogging Arteries at Vicious Dogs

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Breakfast?!

So apparently my blog was listed as an attacker page on Google because some sneaky bastard figured out a way to hack me and install malware. That was no good, but luckily it has all been cleared up. The only thing my blog is intended to attack is arteries, and few places attack arteries quite like Vicious Dogs, a wonderful little hot dog joint in North Hollywood. Some places you can tell are going to be good just by taking a look at their facade. This facade was pretty amazing, sporting a 10 foot plastic hot dog, and although this hot dog was loaded with veggies, it was a very good sign. I walked on in and was surprised to find that Vicious Dogs also doubled as a cupcake shop. It was a strange mix of foods, but I had no time to deal with cupcakery, I was here to eat something vicious and dog-like.

A Little Italy at Maggiano’s

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Oh look, there’s a little bit of Italy.

To grab some dinner, and take advantage of one of our seemingly endless restaurant gift cards, the girlfriend and I headed to Maggiano’s Little Italy next to The Grove. When we arrived, there was a pretty long line, but their bar had a first come, first served policy that had the full menu and we quickly found ourselves a nice table there.

Although Maggiano’s is a national chain, I’d never been and dove right in to the menu head first. I found a few things that looked great and had a hard time narrowing down to an appetizer and main course. Fortunately, I found that one of the main courses I was staring down also repeated as an appetizer. Such genius. This was the four cheese ravioli, mmm four cheeses. These were in some pesto-alfredo sauce with mozzarella. After a little browning in the oven, this ravioli looked great and tasted just as good as it looked. The pesto sauce was nice and creamy and although the marinara sauce was unnecessary, it was nice to feel thought-of.

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