The folks over at SunPower Natural Cafe, the lovely raw restaurant in Studio City, wanted me to pass along this info about their Valentines Day specials. Here’s the lowdown:

Enjoy a 6 Course romantic Valentine’s Dinner at SunPower Cafe in our newly remodeled dining room!

Sunday February 14th 5-9pm
With Live Entertainment!

Both Raw and Cooked versions available for each course:
Appetizers: Raw Cabbage Tacos with Nacho Cheese / Vegan Tofu Cabbage Wraps
Soup: Raw Tomato Basil / Vegan Butternut Squash
Salad: Mango Spinach Salad with Candied Pecans and cranberries with Raspberry Dressing
Entree: Heart Shaped Pizza
Entree: Raw or Vegan Lasagna
Dessert: Chocolate Cup with Rum Cherry Custard / Additional raw layered dessert to be announced!

Whether as a couple or with friends, feel special with a unique dinner at SunPower Cafe! Price: $45 per person (paid by Feb. 13th), $55 per person (day of event). Seating 5pm to 9pm.
Reservations Essential: 818-308-7420 or ronald@sunpowernatural.com

Sounds delicious. SunPower manages to make raw food taste decadent. I’ve been back there since my last post about them so this is probably a good time to show you some of the good stuff we got to try.

To start, Bruschetta. “Zesty tomatoes and garlic on crunchy toast.” When my plate arrived it was so much more action packed than that simple description.

This brushetta was lovely to look at as well as to eat, covered in their special house pesto style sauce and served with a small salad, this simple toast appetizer was elevated to being more like an entree in it’s own right. As a fan of bruschetta in all it’s forms, I highly approve.

This big plate of wow is the Raw Pesto Pizza “Crunchy sunflower seed crust with creamy pesto sauce, cashew cheese, green onions, olives and marinated mushrooms.”

While raw pizzas are usually nothing like what most of us would consider to be a “real” pizza, they’re often tasty facsimiles coming in pretty close in the flavor department, and this one at SunPower is a good example. Both their pesto and cashew cheese sauces are delicious and I love what they’ve done with their marinated mushrooms. The raw sunflower seed crust is good and holds up nicely without crumbling apart when you pick it up, though I find it a bit too sweet, almost dessert like. I don’t know if it’s actually sweetened or if the sweetness is just a natural component of the sunflower seed situation, but I think I’d prefer a more savory flavored crust. This is mostly a minor complaint because everything else on top of it awesome.

This one I don’t have an exact description for, it was a “Soul Food” plate they had on special a while ago. Over on the right, that rounded pile if I remember correctly was a black bean, black-eyed peas & brown rice combo, which came with the gigantic vegan loaf made of various grains, seeds & rice and a large salad. I enjoyed all of it except for the salad because I wasn’t expecting it to come with onions, and there were way too many of them for me to fight my way through. The rest was all excellent, and my apologies for not being able to tell you exactly what it was, my memory is fickle. Regardless, the pictures speak for themselves, this was huge plate of exceptionally tasty food.

If you haven’t tried SunPower yet check them out for a new raw adventure. They’ve just expanded into the space next door and their new dining room with “beautiful solid wood mahogany tables and a magnificent community table” will be ready by the big event. Sounds like those going in for the Valentines Day special are in for a treat.

Sunpower Natural
3711 W. Cahuenga Blvd.
Studio City, CA 91604
(818) 308-7420
www.sunpowernatural.com

Did you get to hang out in oldschool pizza parlors when you were a kid? How great was Shakey’s with their big wooden booths and delicious pizza you could keep going back for more of, pie after pie? My parents threw me a birthday party there when I was in first grade, I have fond memories. My friends and I switched to loitering at our local Pizza Hut after school when I was in junior high. I haven’t been to a place like that in years considering they’re a cheese & sausage fest, but finally we vegans get to experience that kind of pizza hang out fun again, nestled deep in the west valley at the Woodland Hills Pizza Cookery.

Pizza Cookery is an archetypal wood paneling era pizza parlor… giant tables matching the walls meant to seat groups and families, comfy seating, children running around being obnoxious, saw dust on the floor, overflowing pitchers of beer, and a new addition to the love affair we’re having here… entirely separate Vegan and Gluten Free menus. It’s actually quite astonishing when you walk into this place and it’s all red-blooded, meat eating America like, and then you get handed your very own vegan menu, just for you. This place is lively and packed on the weekends (though we were seated within less than 5 minutes of waiting), and it’s one of the most well integrated restaurants I’ve been to so far that caters so well to both carnivore and vegan satisfaction. Nothing fancy, just a good old fashioned good time while kicking back with tasty food.

First the pizza- the pizza rules. They use Follow Your Heart cheese, and they use it well. My fellow foodeaters Alix & Shawn and I ordered a large 16 incher with mushrooms and vegan pepperoni. They also have a vegan smoked chicken as well as all the usual pizza toppings like bell peppers, black olives, tomatoes, and also fresh basil, garlic, cilantro, pineapple, jalapeño, eggplant, sun dried tomato, artichoke hearts… basically anything good you might what on it. The pizza was huge and smothered in melty-hot vegan cheese, tangy tomato sauce and a truly delicious crust. [If you are one of those people who don't eat their pizza crust, know that I consider you a weirdo.] They also slice it up all funky to maximize the amount of slices you can share, you end up with oddly shaped yet fun to eat mostly rectangular slices, I got one that was an oblong triangle shape. You can also order smaller pizzas or even mini individual sized versions.

For the gluten free set, they’ve got you covered with a staff that’s trained in separate food handling ready to make you gluten free pizzas, pastas and salads.

None of us ordered a salad but we did see some of them being paraded around on their way to their respective eaters, and they were ENORMOUS. These were ridiculously large and gorgeous looking salads, though most of them were piled high with sliced meat. Pizza Cookery doesn’t slack on us with the salads either as any of them can be made vegan and decked out with vegan cheese. These salads weren’t kidding around.

Ok, so pizza is one thing, but there’s more awesomeness where that came from. Pizza Cookery also makes it’s very own Vegan Philly Cheesesteak. YES!

“Smoked vegan chicken, green peppers, onions, mushrooms and vegan cheese on a whole wheat or sesame french roll, with french fries”. See that cute little American flag? That means it’s all vegan. America, fuck yeah!

When our waitress first set this down in front of me I was pretty convinced that she had made a mistake and brought me real chicken. This stuff looks so much like the real deal that even after pulling it apart with my fingers I couldn’t tell if it was real or not. Neither could my fellow diners.

I called the waitress over and asked her what was up, she told me it was the vegan chicken for sure but she would send the manager over to talk to me. Manager lady was real sweet and sat down right next to me and busted out with her official ingredients notebook, armed and ready to answer any of our annoying vegan questions, as it should be. She readily showed me the info on the chicken, which it turns out is none other than yet again, vegan Follow Your Heart. She was really cool and you could tell this place is genuinely concerned with the well being of their alternate diet inclined customers. They’ve obviously gone to a lot of trouble to design their menu and pick out their ingredients, as she said, after a lot of taste testing and experimenting.

So back to the philly, now that I knew it was safe to eat, eat it I did… and wow, it’s so good. The smoked chicken is fantastic, I’d never tried FYH’s vegan chicken before and it not only looks real but it also has an incredibly well done texture and flavor. The smokiness had a lovely spice to it, like a hint of nutmeg or cinnamon. It’s perfectly grilled along with the peppers, mushrooms and onions (which I picked out, natch). The cheese was nicely melted and the bread soft and toasty and OH MAN IT WAS SO GOOD!!! This is totally the sort of thing I’ve been craving and bam, here it is. The fries were perfectly crispy and reminded me of McDonald’s fries, so of course they’re good too. This would be right about the time for you to tell your New Years resolution diets to hit the road jack and go get some of this action on your plate… it’s so worth it.

Prefer to get fat on beer? The draft beer has got you covered. Or does your ass prefer to get bigger via dessert? Then order yourself a couple SunFlour Bakery vegan cookies and wash them down with a Zevia “all natural, sugar free” soda. Black Cherry for me please.

There’s much to love about Pizza Cookery. All three of us appreciated that they haven’t given in to the Daiya monopolization of their vegan pizza. Many of the places that at one point used to serve Follow Your Heart cheese have switched to Daiya. Teese was a player for about a minute but that vegan cheese seems to have been swept under the rug along with FYH now that Daiya has hit the scene. And understandably so, Daiya is all kinds of amazing. Both Shawn and I are fans of the stuff, but we also enjoy Follow Your Heart cheese too. Miss Alix on the other hand is on a different team along with the many other people out there who don’t like Daiya at all… and folks like her are often left disgruntled with Daiya as the only option for fake cheesy goodness nowadays. She need not worry her pretty head any longer as now her Daiya-free prayers have been answered in the form of fantastic pizza in a groovy spot only a slightly annoying distance away from home. One more victory for the underdog, the San Fernando Valley brings it! Why don’t you click here to read Alix’s take on things?

This is the original Pizza Cookery on Topanga Canyon Blvd. at Erwin St. and should not be confused with the unaffiliated place with the same name on Ventura Blvd. That other Pizza Cookery does not have this vegan menu and is therefore to be shunned. I kid. But yeah, don’t go there looking for this vegan bounty, go here:

Pizza Cookery
6209 Topanga Canyon Blvd.
Woodland Hills, CA 91367
(818) 887-4770
www.pizzacookery.com

I like Chinese food but it usually takes a back seat if I’m given my choice between it or far more exciting Asian cuisines such as Thai or Vietnamese. That said, I’ve reignited my love for it after revisiting a restaurant I’ve neglected for far too long, Garden Wok in Reseda. Part of the reason I’d been away for so long is that Garden Wok is located just a couple miles away from my favorite restaurant in the entire universe, Vinh Loi Tofu… so whenever I’m in the neighborhood Vinh Loi usually wins me over. Not this time however, and I’m glad I strayed for once as the food at Garden Wok is superb.

My last visit to Garden Wok was way back in 2007, and I really enjoyed it then too. Their menu is extensive, offering Cantonese-American style cooking, 99% of which is vegan, while a few of their faux meats do contain whey (and everything is clearly marked on the menu so there’s no confusion). If you don’t like meat analogs this isn’t really the place for you… while they do have noodle dishes, soups and the like, their specialties revolve around the amazing things they do with fake chicken, beef, pork and fish. This stuff is delicious, homemade, and nothing like the same old stuff that all the Thai places are serving (which all tastes the same and may or may not be vegan). You don’t have to worry about mystery non-vegan ingredients imported from Taiwan finding their way into your food here, Garden Wok makes it all from scratch using stuff like taro root, yam, wheat gluten, mushrooms and seaweed. What they do with those ingredients is something extraordinary.

But first a non-meaty appetizer. Have a gander at the vegan Cream Cheese Wontons: “Non-dairy cream cheese blended with spinach, water chestnuts and white pepper wrapped in crispy wonton skins. Served with sweat plum sauce”. These were incredible! You might remember I got to try similar cream cheese wontons before at Vegan House… those were great and I raved about them accordingly, but these wontons at Garden Wok pretty much blow those off the map. There was a lot more going on inside than just cream cheese, you could really taste the spinach and crispy water chestnuts. The taste was delicious, the texture just shy of totally melted and creamy- a truly perfect fried starter, these were devoured in no time at all.

This here is the Orange Veggie Chicken: “Zesty orange slices, soy and chili paste wok’d with red chili peppers, served with steamed spinach”. So good, it had a full citrus flavor that was both spicy from the chili and sweet from the tasty batter and awesome sauce. The “meat” itself is really good, I can’t say that it tastes exactly like real chicken, but who cares, real chicken is gross and this stuff isn’t. The texture has a nice meaty bite and if I didn’t already know this place was vegetarian I would have probably asked to make sure I wasn’t served real meat, it’s that realistic, only better. Even the steamed spinach was excellent, a nice balance to the sweet & spicy chicken which helped me pretend that because I was getting some green vegetables in, that eating all this fried food wasn’t quite so naughty. Please don’t ruin the fantasy by telling me otherwise.

This next dish really rocked my world. These are the Crispy Fried Chinese Mushrooms and I want to marry them. They didn’t skimp by using boring white mushrooms, I’m pretty sure these were shitake mushrooms as the taste was full-bodied, deep, woodsy and earthy. They were coated in some kind of delectable sauce and covered in sesame seeds then fried to perfection. You’ll notice that I use variations of the words “fried” and “perfection” in unison quite often- sometimes such repetition is necessary, and this is one of those occasions. These were nothing less than fantastic- if you’re a mushroom lover you absolutely must try them. If you’re not a fan of the humble shroom, I’d actually suggest skipping this dish as the mushroom flavor is quite strong… but in the best possible way. I love that the taste of the shitake doesn’t get lost in the cooking process, even though they are indeed fried (hey oil, I love you), it’s done with a light touch and they aren’t at all greasy. The texture is something so unique you just have to experience it for yourself.

Garden Wok doesn’t have a website that I was able to find (hey GW, hire me, I’ll build you a site that kicks ass!) but what you can expect when you go there is an awe inspiring selection of Chinese dishes you’ve come to know and love, as well as many unique items you may have never heard of before. It’s located in a mini-mall with plenty of parking in the heart of Reseda, not far from the 101 freeway. Their address actually says they’re located in Tarzana, and while that might be the official city listed for this location which makes it sound a little nicer, anyone familiar with the area knows it’s about as Reseda as Reseda gets. If Reseda* means nothing to you, I suggest listening to some Tom Petty and watching the Karate Kid just to get yourself properly prepared for this next leg of your journey. Bon Appetit!

Garden Wok
6117 Reseda Blvd
Tarzana, CA 91335
(818) 881-8886

* Little known fact: The epicenter of the 1994 Northridge earthquake wasn’t actually in Northridge at all, it was in neighboring Reseda (and directly under my house).

Good news, the excellent, mostly raw food restaurant Cru in Silver Lake is now open daily for lunch! Daytime service is from 11am-4pm, with dinner starting up from 5:30pm-10pm.

Previously their only daytime hours were on the weekend, now it’s everyday with a special brunch on Sundays from 11am-2:30pm. I haven’t been to the Sunday brunch yet so I don’t know what goodies are on that menu, but I can tell you that I so enjoyed their new daily lunch that I went back two days in a row. Cru was already one of my favorite restaurants, now it’s become even more so.

The daytime menu features a selection from their regular menu, which inlcudes quite a few new dishes since my last visit. There’s a nice selection of appetizers, wraps, and even stuff like their take on a raw pizza, a tostada made with raw vegan chorizo, rice bowls, über healthy salads and more.

Bruschetta is pretty much at the top of the appetizer food chain. I love love love it. The Bruschetta Rustica at Cru isn’t the traditional version as usually served on thick crusty bread, but they’ve got the essence down pat, and this reinvented raw(er) version is delightful.

It comes on sunflower flat bread with chopped tomato & basil and cashew cheese. I believe the saucy drizzle along the plate is a pesto infused oil. Everything about this bruschetta tasted so fresh and clean, the cashew cheese was delicious and the tomatoes perfectly ripe and full of flavor (in January!).

You know what’s even cooler about Cru being open for lunch? It’s that they’re also serving breakfast and brunch inspired dishes, all with a unique and tasty twist. The dishes I’ve had so far all sound so simple on the menu but then when my meals arrived, I was dazzled by the presentation and tastiness of it all. Behold:

This is the Crepe Florentine: Sauteed mushrooms and spinach in a vegan, gluten free crepe, served with a side salad. I think the menu actually undersells it, that sounds pretty boring. But wow, look at that, not boring at all! And it tastes fantastic too.

This was my first time having a vegan crepe, and being that it was also gluten free, I had no idea what I was in for. I didn’t expect something so delicate and so just like a real crepe. It was great, as was the delicious lightly cooked mushroom & spinach filling. Even the side salad was notable, just a simple green salad lightly dressed with maybe a bit of oil and lemon, but they also sprinkled on a really nice large grained salt that coated the leaves, and I loved it. Not at all too salty, just the right amount to season the greens and bring all the flavors together. Such a great meal, so filling and satisfying, and when I was finished I didn’t feel like I was going to burst, I felt pumped and full of energy.

Here’s another of the breakfast themed items which really would be good at any time of day, the Sweet Potato Pancakes with sauteed apples and a side of greens. The greens are actually a fairly decent sized green salad placed on top of the whole show. It was the same as the previous salad, this time with fabulous olives thrown into the mix.

The pancakes themselves were more like a cross between a falafel patty consistency and a potato latke. They were more savory than sweet, a bit soft in the middle and nicely crisped on the outside. The green sauce was that awesome basil oil and I don’t know what the orange stuff is, but it was lovely.

The cinnamon dusted apples came served on the side… the serving was actually more generous than shown, I’d started eating some of them before remembering to take a picture. The sweetness of the apples was a nice balance to go with the rest, each bite a whimsical interplay of salty, sweet, crispy, leafy and yummy- yummy being the main ingredient.

To say that I’m impressed by what Cru is doing during daylight hours would be an understatement. I’ve been feeling under the weather and recuperating from a stupid cold and was craving {needing} good, pure food that would not only cure my hunger but also help my immune system do it’s job healing my body. This is the kind of food that you eat and it instantly makes you feel healthier and more alive.

To that end I also got a chance to try some of their juices and smoothies. Concentrated nutrition I can enjoy through a sippy straw? Hell yeah, bring it on! The deep green juice up at the very top of the page is the Green Smoothie with kale, apple, banana, coconut juice and agave. Wonderful! Those of you who are intimidated by green drinks… get over it! This smoothie is so delicious, I promise you it does not taste like salad. It was so good I practically sucked the whole giant glass down in one shot and gave myself brainfreeze. Talk about an energy boost!

On my second visit I got to enjoy the Cacao Maca Smoothie with cacao, sunflower seed milk, banana, maca and agave. Heavenly! It tastes just like an awesome chocolate milkshake, but the kind of awesome milkshake that has no actual milk and is extra good for you.

Now that Cru is open pretty much any time you’re likely to be hungry, you’ve got that many more opportunities to experience fine meals such as these. I can’t wait to try out their Sunday brunch for either the Banana Walnut Buckwheat Pancakes or the Manna Bread French Toast ala Mode with caramel apples.

Daytime just got a lot more delicious.

Cru
1521 Griffith Park Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(323) 667-1551
www.crusilverlake.com

I’ve been sick all week and haven’t left the house, not even for food. Come the end of the week I had very little left at home to eat… what I really needed was some nice hot soup or some healthy greens or veggie dishes to warm me up and boost my immunity. But I didn’t have any of that sort of stuff left, all I had left was white flour and peanut butter. On the one hand it sounded like a recipe for disaster, on the other hand it sounded like delicious peanut butter cookies just waiting to happen!

I found the simplest peanut butter cookie recipe in the world inside the Sinfully Vegan Cookbook. This book, subtitled “Over 140 Decadent Desserts to Satisfy Every Vegan’s Sweet Tooth” has been sitting on my shelf for over a year and I’d never made anything from it before. The recipe seemed so easy though and only uses a few ingredients (peanut butter, flour, oil, vanilla, maple syrup) so it sounded like the perfect cure for what ailed me (my sweet tooth, that is).

The recipe gives easy instructions for regular peanut butter cookies as well as a variation with jelly… I made both!

The results… DELICIOUS! I ended up making them with fig jam because that’s what I had, and they were so ridiculously good! I was surprised by how tasty they were considering the simple ingredients and how fast they were to make. Since the recipe uses maple syrup as the only sweetener I thought they might end up tasting too much like pancakes or something, but they didn’t, they tasted like the most perfect peanut butter cookies made even more perfect by awesome (and expensive I might add) figgy goodness. I absolutely LOVE these cookies and have no doubt they will be coming out of my oven on a regular basis.

You can find the recipe and more enticing (and fancier) stuff in the Sinfully Vegan Cookbook available at Amazon.com. A lot of the recipes in there are far more advanced than this one, which is why it’s taken me more than a year to crack the book open and use it, but considering how well these turned out, I am encouraged to give more of them a shot.