Oh Santa Monica! Your are an amazing city for gluten-free vegans!! Hubby and I went for a short trip last weekend and ate some of the best vegan chow we’ve had anywhere. First stop was lunch at Real Food Daily on 5th and Santa Monica.
After an early flight and a bus ride to our hotel, we were HUNGRY. I ordered the pizza and hubby ordered a burrito minus the tortilla. We also had smoothies and were just too full for dessert. We were impressed for our first visit.
Dinner was at M.A.K.E. While they do use honey, so technically not an all vegan spot, they can make just about anything without honey if you ask. Everything is raw and everything we ate that night was splendid. This food was so wonderful, we forgot to take pictures,.
We started with an appetizer: Tree Nut Cheeses, Market Fruit, Sweet & Spicy Mustard Seeds, Fennel Crisp. We’ve had some good vegan “cheeses” but these were the best we had ever tried. The Fennel Crisps were nice crackers with a great texture and flavor.
Next we ordered the Wild Arugula, Herb-Caper Cream, Sweet Potato Chip, Malted Vinegar Powder starter. This dish was designed to resemble the taste of “fish and chips” and was fun and very generous with the arugula.
We shared the Market Tomato Lasagna and Black Pepper Kelp Noodles. On a scale of 1 – 10 they were both an 11. And even though we weren’t hungry (which isn’t always the case with some raw places we’ve eaten) we had to try the Chocolate Walnut Cake with Licorice Pear, Fennel and Sassafras. Just terrific. We left the right amount of “full” and while it is pricey, we thought it was worth the money for such amazing food.
