Veggie Grill fails to disappoint

I was one of many delighted vegans or vegan-friendly folks who got the awesome opportunity to receive a free meal from Veggie Grill‘s new location at Sunset and Crescent Heights.  I was already a huge fan of the good ole Veg Grill having eaten there many times when visiting friends in Irvine.  The free meal allowed me to try more of their tasty offerings.

My friend and I started off with the Chill Out Wings appetizer.  If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you know I am not the hugest mock meat fan, and I never would have ordered this had my dining partner insisted on it.  But they were pretty damn good!  The spicy breading was extremely tasty.  The wings are served with a tangy barbecue sauce that is basically a milder version of Pure Luck‘s special sauce.  The wings and the sauce are definitely a winning combo.

My friend ordered the Santa Fe Crispy Chickin sandwich which I took more than a few bites of.  The breading is the same as on the wings and with a side of Sweetheart Fries, what’s not to like?  (Although I still prefer Pure Luck’s baked sweet potato fries.)

I always order a salad when I’m at Veggie Grill.  They are the opposite of the boring and bland salads I find myself being served far too often when eating out.  When I realized I hadn’t had a Caeser salad since I went vegan, I quickly opted for the Chickin’ Caeser Salad (sub the blackened tempeh for the “chickin” please.)

I absolutely fell in love with this salad.  The caeser dressing was really creamy and tangy, just like the traditional stuff.  The blackened tempeh was my favorite part.  The grilled taste was awesome with the dressing.  I did my usual restaurant routine where I ate half the dish then boxed the rest, only to eat the rest immediatly upon returning home.  This salad was so damn good that I dreamed about it for a whole week until I caved in and drove all the way across town just to get it again.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the meal was when our server brought us the dessert sampler.  The chocolate chip cookie achieved that perfect state between crispy and chewy.  It was one of the best vegan cookies I’ve had.  The carrot cake was also really good–I couldn’t get over how amazing the frosting was and, lucky for me, there is a super thick layer of it to indulge in.  I make frosting recipes often from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and I am never really 100% satisfied with how they come out.  They are either too runny or too sweet or both.  But Veggie Grill’s frosting was perfect.  I’d love to see their recipe.

The best dessert of the 3, was the chocolate pudding.  The texture was creamy and the cocoa taste was delightfully strong.  I loved the pudding so much that I had to order it when I made my cross-town schlep back to Veggie Grill.  At $2 for a big serving, how coud I resist?

I have been a Veggie Grill fan for a while and this marathon meal did not disappoint.  I hope they continue to add more L.A. locations because I’m gonna be spending a lot of money on gas driving across town to satisfy my constant cravings.

Veggie Grill

8000 Sunset Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA  90046

323.822.7575

These October Days Really Rock my Socks Off!

Sunday was the perfect day for pumpkin picking: it was sunny but a little cooler than usual and it’s early in the season which means the pumpkin selection is at its best. So Kirby Von Scrumptious and I, along with a couple other jokers, trucked down to Orange County to Tanaka Farms. When we got to Irvine, however, we were famished, so before we could play in the hay bales and get lost in the corn maze, off we were to one of the best vegan joints in SoCal: Veggie Grill.

Veggie Grill’s concise menu is entirely vegan so there is no need to ask about which dishes contain what products, although I asked anyway because their dressings looked to0 thick and creamy to not be made with eggs. I have been dying to try the Baja Fiesta salad since drooling over a photo of it on another vegan blog (can’t remember where exactly). Delightful is the exact word I would use to describe this mix of romaine, papaya, avocado, quinoa, roasted corn salsa, cucumber, cilantro, and tortilla strips. The ginger-papaya vinaigrette was perfectly light and tangy.

We got an order of Sweetheart fries for the table. They were delish but it’s pretty difficult to make sweet potato fries that aren’t. My sweet-potato-fry-heart will always belong to Pure Luck where they are actually baked, not fried, and are thick and super chewy and come with the world’s best special sauce. But Veggie Grill’s own special sauce–a tangy, vegan ranch-style dressing–was also very tasty and were great on the fries. I washed everything down with a combo of iced teas (black with sweetened peach for me, please!).

Everyone else also really enjoyed their meals. My meat-eating friend Derek even questioned whether the “chicken” was real or not–and everyone knows an omnivore being tricked by fake meat happens about as often as Sarah Palin kisses a polar bear.

I might not drive all the way down to Orange County just for Veggie Grill, but it is so good that I just might consider driving to the west side to the El Segundo location–which says a lot because y’all know how much I don’t like going west of Vermont!

P.S. Look how cute we are in that picture at top. I ❤ my fellow pumpkin-picking amigos!