Two new plant-based restaurants to try now
Great restaurants that happen to be plant-based are my favorite kind of restaurants. They’re places where vegetables and grains are celebrated. The food is thoughtful and craveable. And the menus revolve around more than shoving processed fake meat into recognizable dishes.
I used to joke that I couldn’t date anyone who adhered to a strict diet. I tried dating a vegan once but found it too difficult. If the following restaurants had been around five years ago, maybe it could have worked out. That’s obviously a stretch, but I like to think it might have been possible.
But if you just don’t like cilantro, cumin or kimchi, there’s no future for us.
Whether you’re already a plant-forward person or contemplating a change in diet, here are 30 restaurants to check out.
Jollof arancini from Ubuntu
Shenarri Freeman says her travels serve as inspiration for the menu at Ubuntu, her new plant-based West African restaurant in Fairfax. The chef is also behind the plant-based soul food restaurant Cadence in New York City.
The excellent arancini she sampled at an Italian restaurant became the catalyst for the jollof arancini at Ubuntu. How, she wondered, could she incorporate more of her West African roots and the flavors she loves into this traditional Italian dish?
“I thought about inserting a different rice, like maybe a jambalaya or rice and peas or maybe jollof,” she said. “I travel a lot, and I see things and wonder how they can relate to my palate a bit more. I was thinking about Italian dishes, traditional Nigerian dishes and West African dishes and how they could merge.”
She settled on jollof rice as the filling, pulling references from the drier versions, the saucier ones with more tomato and the super spicy variations she’s tried over the years.
“I was inspired by jollof from Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal, and it’s a little blend of all three,” she said.
Bill Addison reviews Mid-City’s Aduke African Cuisine, a welcoming restaurant that specializes in Nigerian stews and rice dishes.
What makes Freeman’s jollof rice unique, she says, is a hefty helping of curry powder.
Freeman flavors her rice with onion, tomato and habanero peppers cooked down with a long list of dry seasonings. She adds coconut milk and lets the basmati rice sit and thicken in the fridge before rolling out balls the size of jawbreakers. She coats the rice balls in flour, then chickpea water and bread crumbs, and deep fries them.
The multispiced rice is an intensely flavorful mosaic of fiery chile, sweet paprika, ginger, basil and thyme. It’s creamy under the hard exterior, and seems to melt once you get past the fried coating. It’s the kind of rice I could eat several bowls of without blinking.
Each ball is served with a dollop of mint chermoula, a peppy green sauce made with lots of fresh herbs and sweetened with maple crystals.
“Traditionally, depending on which country you’re in, rice is usually the main dish on the plate, whereas in other cuisines, it can be a side,” Freeman said. “Rice here is the main attraction.”
Even after our other courses arrived — stellar grilled cabbage with berbere butter, lion’s mane pie and trumpet mushrooms — my dining companion and I kept returning to the arancini. We decided that the next time we visit, we’ll have two orders.
Bang bang broccoli and Caesar cups from Planta Cocina
The sunny server recommended the bang bang broccoli while I took in the view of the marina from my patio table. I was steps from the water. The sun was out. She could have recommended wet cardboard, and I would have nodded and ordered it.
The broccoli is one of the signature dishes at Planta Cocina, the first Los Angeles outpost of the Planta restaurant group, which has locations in Canada, New York, Washington, D.C., Florida and Chicago. They’re about to open another in Brentwood.
The bang bang broccoli arrived crowded in a small bowl, completely covered in a pale brown sauce. There was so much sauce that I worried the vegetable would be mushy and any crunch from the fryer would be drowned.
The broccoli, it turns out, was the kind of crisp that makes you want to scrape a knife over it. It was a golden shell you could crack, light but substantial, completely encasing the tender broccoli inside. The fried florets are bite-sized and ethereally crunchy. I could imagine eating a bowl of them with my fingers as a satisfying movie snack.
David Lee, the co-founder and executive chef of the Planta restaurants, said the broccoli batter is a heavily guarded secret, but he did reveal that it’s made without flour and is gluten-free.
“We wanted to have something that you wouldn’t make at home and that you’d want to come to this restaurant to have time and time again,” Lee said. “And we wanted something a little sweet, and something a little spicy … a little sour. That’s where the peanut sauce comes in, and the bang bang sauce.”
Both sauces come together to form a single glaze. The bang bang registers as a thick chutney, tangy with pickled ginger and plenty of chile. The peanut sauce is smooth and creamy. The sauces never penetrate the exterior of the broccoli, regardless of how much you pile on.
The Caesar cups, served as tiny heads of lettuce heavily dressed in a green goddess-inspired dressing, were also a favorite. The pistachio, garlic and nutritional yeast in the dressing deliver an umami punch without any anchovy. And I appreciated the small curls of candied Meyer lemon peel atop each cup.
Planta Cocina may seem like a parody of a Southern California vegan restaurant: a place designed with wellness-obsessed Angelenos in mind, with a sun-filled dining room full of blond wood and a spacious patio that overlooks the water. You can order a latte with beet powder or a glass of cold-pressed juice.
My friend who recommended the restaurant listed all the reasons I might find it a loathsome cliché before insisting I try it. But I’ll be back for that broccoli, the salad cups and all the sunshine.
Where to go for plant-based food now
Ubuntu, 7469 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 433-4141, ubuntula.com
Planta Cocina, 4625 Admiralty Way, Suite 104, Marina del Rey, (310) 362-7730, plantarestaurants.com
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