If you are a naughty Vegan who has been found guilty of being terrible and are sentenced to the Hell Pit that is Las Vegas, look on the other blindingly bright side; at least delicious Vegan food is plentiful.

The best all-Vegan restaurant is Pura Vida, and not just because it’s off-strip. It’s off-strip in a way that is so strip-less it’s not even dressed.

This is a breakfast, lunch and brunch place (closed Thursdays) helmed by Chef Mayra who is so good I can’t imagine why she’s condemned there.

Ate & Rate:

The Latin’Tude Burrito

Southwest fusion burrito filled with black beans, refried beans, soy-riso, tofu scrambles, vegan cheese, avocado, veggies, onions, garlic, cilantro, tomatoes, roasted organic potatoes with poblano peppers.

This thing was huge and beautiful and delicious. I mean, just look at it– need I type anything? I mean, it had a friggin’ lavender sprig sticking out of it! That is classy. For an Angeleno who has a high bar when it comes to Mexican food, this made me wish Pura Vida was more local to my mouth.

Cuban Puff Pastries

This was a brunch special and I was warned would take 20 extra minutes to prepare. 20 minutes in Las Vegas time could mean 8th degree burns over 1730% of your body, and we were anxious to hit the road, but these were calling my name. Luckily we had a nice seat inside and a Tropical Smoothie to while away the time. These were so good. I demolished them. The puff pastry was so light and crisp and delicious. The filling was meaty and spicy and delicious. The cheeesy sauce on top was delicious and delicious and delicious.

They also have sweet things like chocolate pancakes, waffles and cakes that look incredible, but I saved those for next time I’m bad.

It’s good to be a Super Vegan in L.A., and it’s about to get better. There’s like a bajillion places to get your Vegan Pizza Day on. And now, or within a matter of minutes from now, not one, not six, but FIVE new Vegan restaurants are opening. They all sound pretty amazing, too. Here’s the rundown:

Maddy’s
This is the second shop, previously known as The Shoppe, from Madeleine Bistro brain–>stomach whizzes, the Andersons. Some of you might remember them from their fundraising efforts for an all Vegan ice cream shoppe slash sandwich spot on Pico and Westwood Boulevard (i.e. near the Westside Pavillion) that was to open in November. Well, howsabout June, or July maybe? Still waiting on word of the official opening but I think I might want to live in there, so landlord, consider yourself noticed.

Shift
Now, you might be judging this place based on the fact that their only web presence thus far is on The Facebook, but before ye cast thine Vegan stones, go look at the pictures of the food this Vegan bar is going to serve. Then wipe the drool off your keyboard and count down the days until it opens. LA’s first all Vegan restaurant, bar and music venue! I hope shoes are not optional.

Cafe Gratitude Venice
They close one, they open two! Due to the star-studded success of the first LA branch, Cafe Gratitude is opening a second in Venice, land of all 2nd branches of things. It was supposed to open today, but didn’t. Maybe Wednesday? Or whenever the tarot/astrologist/numerologist/Psychic Friends Network/Miss Cleo tells them is an auspicious day.

Green Peas
This place is a local favorite for anyone who is in or around Culver City, and has been sorely missed during their, what feels like, 18 year renovation. Jose, the nicest owner in the world, said that they were tentatively going to re-open today, but he also told me they were going to re-open in early June, so I dunno… but don’t give up just yet.
UPDATE! Green Peas to re-open June 28th!

The Village
Now, this is an educated guess, but I believe that the long-hyped, well-anticipated Vegan restaurant from the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Portia de Rossi, Chrissie Hynde and Steve Bing with a menu written by none other than Tal Ronnen is called The Village and might open on June 30th. Now any google search will lead you, Super Vegan, to think I’m crazy, as there is no trace whatsoever of this news elsewhere. But! Staywithme: there have been reports for some time that this resty will be housed in the former Bokado space in Studio City. Being the SuperVegan Sleuther that I am, I called the phone number listed for Bokado, and was treated to a voicemail explaining that I had reached the place formerly known as Bokado, and as of June 30th, will be The Village. So, you do the maths. I might be wrong, but let’s hope I’m right, for our guts sake!

UPDATE:
Dangit, looks like my detective cap and I were mistaken.
According to EaterLA, Bokado WILL reopen as The Village, but not with Ellen or any other Vegan star power. And while there will be a few Vegan menu items, it will not be the Tal Ronnen Haven of our dreams.

2nd UPDATE:
It’s now SIX! Another Native Foods will open in Santa Monica on July 3rd! Hurrah!

I love the future and the future is now! The Great Vegan Cheese War of the 21st Century rages on! Teese vegan cheese is now available at Whole Foods in California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii! AND, if you give the fine people over at Chicago Soydairy your email address over here you can get a coupon for $1 off!

Is it in the tube or will it be a bag of shreds? Does it re-seal? Does it cost less then the $6.29 bag of Daiya? There’s also a handy list of participating stores. Now we have options, people! Which do you prefer? I’m gonna do a pizza test!

This is one of Supervegan’s posts for Vegan MoFo 2011.

I have never been a fan of people, places, or things that are dumb on purpose. That said, I have just returned from a weekend in Las Vegas. If you’ve never been, imagine a city on the surface of the sun where fountains are a legitimate form of entertainment and you’re half way there. But, amongst the oddities, perversities, and electricity is a shocking amount of vegan food. Pink’s has a vegan dog! Ronald’s has vegan donuts! And thanks to quite possibly the world’s richest vegan (and one of Keith Olberman’s “Worst Persons In The World”) Steve Wynn, you can blow all your gambling winnings on Gardein™ products because every restaurant in the Wynn and Encore hotels has at least one vegan option courtesy of Collaborating Chef Tal Ronnen (Vegan Chef To The Stars Who Gets No Restaurant Of His Own). Vegans infiltrating Vegas? Super!

After perusing all the drool inducing vegan menus online, I was really excited to try some vegan fine dining (though there is also some vegan fast food but be forewarned, it closes at 3pm). After a “oh my god I want to eat at them all!” crisis I tried to get a reservation at Bartolotta, an Italian seafood restaurant. Sadly, they couldn’t seat us in time to make our 9:30 fountertainment, so I went to Plan B: The Country Club, a new American steakhouse. Chick’n Chimichurri? Gimme! Saltily, they are closed for dinner on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays and apparently, that’s what day it was. Plan C was Botero, a modern steakhouse with a dress code, a $60 five-course vegan tasting menu and a lot of art by the restaurant’s Columbian namesake. Our waiter was a lovely New Yorker who let me create my own 5 course vegan tasting menu and even brought me some vegan margarine for the bread basket. Here’s what I had:

1st COURSE
Pistou Soup with fregola and summer squash
Watery, oily and lacking in flavor, this soup needed salt, pepper and CPR. I gave most of it to my date, who was not a prostitute, but ate like one. On the slot machine scale, I give this dish a bar, and two empty spots.

2nd COURSE
Grilled Broccoli Salad with marcona almonds, corn and polenta croutons
This was prettier than it tasted. The polenta croutons, while good tasting, were mushy and hot, not crispy like the word ‘crouton’ implies, while the broccoli was ice cold, making for a weird combination. There was no discernible dressing, which is better than being overdressed, but naked is embarrassing in public, too. I give this dish a 7, cherries, and a bar.

3rd COURSE
“Creamed” Spinach
The description of this spinach sounded so good it’s what convinced me to go rogue on the tasting course. Cooked in cast iron with a homemade cashew cream? Who doesn’t love cashew anything?But this was a major disappointment. It wasn’t as hot as forged metal suggests, wasn’t creamy even a little and tasted like it had just been boiled or steamed. I had two bites and folded. 1 bar, a lemon and an empty.

4th COURSE
Semolina Crusted Gardein™ Chick’n with corn pudding and chanterelles
Somewhere in-between the bread, courses 1-3 and 4 I managed to become painfully full, which is unfortunate because this was the best dish so far. Even then, it didn’t live up to my expectations. It was good, but not mind-blowingly awesome. I couldn’t taste the corn pudding, which just looked like a decorative sauce the Chick’n was resting on, the crust on the Chick’n kept separating, and the mushrooms were tough. Red seven, lemon, black seven.

5th COURSE
Blueberry Peach Crumble with Toasted Almond Ice “Cream”
This dish was my motivation for picking the tasting menu, as it was not on the regular menu. It sounded so delicious– homemade creamy ice cream on top of a hot fruity crumble? What they should have told me though, was that they were out of said ice cream. Instead, there was a dollop of fruit sorbet on top. Who wants a third tarty fruit on top of a dual fruit cobbler?! That said, the cobbler was bowl scraping good. Lemon, lemon, bonus.

While it didn’t live up to my vegan hopes and veggie dreams, I did eat enough to make me have to waddle off into the brightly lit night, glad that I wore a stretchy dress and swearing I’d never eat ever again. That in itself is pretty awesome.

The next night I found myself back at the Wynn (or was it the Encore?) at Sinatra, a restaurant with, you guessed it, a full-on Frank theme. And, shocker, it was Italian. Still full, broke, and disappointed from the night before, I had a dirty martini and let it set aside all my pre-conceived notions. I ordered the most expensive thing on the Vegan Menu: Gardein™ Marsala (gardein™ chick’n breast, forest mushrooms, marsala sauce, potato gnocchi) and nothing else. I debated with myself over the “caesar salad” — I want to try it! I’m too full! It sounds so good! It costs more than my shoes! I just couldn’t do it. One of my table mates ordered the regular marsala, and I was excited to be able to compare. What do you think? I was impressed, they looked pretty similar, and then I took a bite … it was incredibly insanely delicious! The chick’n was tender and moist and thick like an actual cutlet– way more accurate than the flat frozen stuff you get at the supermarket. The sauce was full of flavor; rich and creamy but not too heavy. The gnocchi were small and soft and buttery and perfect. I cleaned my plate! Sinatra was a wonderful surprise and confirmed how mediocre Botero was, but both did it “my way”. I doubled down and got red seven, red seven, red seven!

Vegan donuts: delicious even after getting smushed on a transcontinental flight.

Ah, Las Vegas. City of sleaze, exploitation, and hedonism; somehow ethical eating doesn’t seem to factor into the equation. So I was surprised that I ate well this weekend in Vegas.

The city is full of ostentatious ads for steak and seafood, but if you look hard enough, you’ll find good vegan options. And–surreal and wonderful–Vegas is also home to Ronald’s Donuts, with two shelves full of delightful and fully vegan donuts.

If there’s one thing not to miss in Vegas, it’s Ronald’s. The average little donut shop exterior gives no hint to the vegan paradise within. I entered and declared “I’ve come for vegan donuts,” and the super friendly proprieters filled a huge box with an assortment for me to take back to New York. Apparently another group of vegans had come before me and nearly cleaned them out, but I still got a huge array of cinnamon buns, fruit tarts, and the classic glazed donuts that I haven’t eaten since I went vegan twelve years ago. Incredibly, it cost only $13 for a huge box of donuts and a bottle of water. (Located at 4600 W Spring Mountain Road; call ahead to make sure it’s open: 702-873-1032.)

Ethnic food is your best bet when it comes to vegan meals. At an Indian restaurant called Ghandi, you’ll find a nice variety of vegan-friendly North and South Indian options, and they’ll even tell you what’s vegan in the lunch buffet. It’s located at 4080 Paradise Road at East Flamingo Road, not far from the Strip. Call 702-734-0094.

I also had great Ethiopian food at Meskerem, just off the Strip at 252 Convention Center Drive. They’ve only got one vegetarian dish, but it’s hearty, filling, and delicious. Avoid the iced tea, though; it’s not even freshly brewed, but made from an ultra-sweet mix. Call 702-732-4250.

I had two decent-if-overpriced meals at Mandalay Bay, a swanky hotel on the South Strip. The Border Grill, which overlooks the pool, has a tasty grilled portabello mushroom, although make sure to talk to your server; half the accompaniments aren’t vegan, and they’ll still charge you $16 for the meal. On the plus side, they make a nice mojito.

I normally wouldn’t even glance at a place called Burger Bar, but I was bored and happened to notice they they offer a dish called the “Vegas Vegan.” It’s just a bunch of grilled vegetables in the shape of a hamburger (portabello mushrooms for the bun, eggplant for the burger, lots of toppings) but it was satisfying. And they have an exceptional beer selection. It’s located at Mandalay Place, which is a little shopping mall connecting Mandalay Bay and Luxor.

I also noticed that Japonais in the Mirage has a nice selection of (extremely expensive) vegetable sushi. I didn’t have time to try it, but it’s another option to check out if you’re in the area.

I’ve only concentrated on the options closest to the Strip. Am I missing anything? Let us know your Vegas Vegan experiences in the comments.