January’s nearing an end – with all of the indulgent food over the holidays and into the New Year, you may be seeking some lighter fare. Luckily, the HappyCow app is here to help! Haven’t tried it before? Let’s have a mini-tutorial with one of the world’s most vegan-friendly cities: Los Angeles. Keep reading for a run-down of the top healthy vegan restaurants in LA.
Firstly, if you’re a regular HappyCow user and you don’t have the HappyCow app… what are you waiting for? (Visit this link to learn more about the download.)
Second, using the app is easy. Simply open it up, select “Vegan”, “Vegetarian”, or “Veg-Options”, and then click on “Filters”. From here, you can search for a business by name, scan your radius, or sort options by distance, rating, alphabetical, price, or most reviewed. There are even options such as who has outdoor seating, who needs reservations, wheelchair accessibility, who accepts credit cards, and who has WiFi.
Among selecting various cuisines and searching for store types (bakeries, hotels, food truck, etc.) you can scroll down to “Categories”. As you can see above, for this search we’ve selected gluten-free, organic, juice bar, macrobiotic, raw food, and salad bar. So, restaurants with any of these options will populate. With this in mind, let’s take a look at what comes up for the top 10 healthy vegan restaurants in LA!
Shojin DTLA
This Vegan Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo has a menu with a variety of vegetable sushi rolls. They also feature salads, ramen, seitan entrees, and other creations. An intimate setting on the 3rd floor of Little Tokyo Square shopping mall; you can conveniently find parking in the plaza lot. They do get busy on weekend evenings – so be sure to reserve ahead.
Glowing Juices
Here you’ll find an all organic health bar and market with – you guessed it – juices! Glowing Juices serves fresh as well cold-pressed juices in addition to smoothies, tonics, bowls and vegan food. Make sure you stock up on their baked goods and packaged items such as kale chips, cookies, and nut cheese.
The Good Karma Cafe
The Good Karma Cafe… sounds like a great place to stop in at the start of 2020. They offer an all-you-can-eat lunch with a variety of cuisines from Italian to Indian. You’re encouraged to bring your own reusable eating ware and to-go container. And something you don’t get very often at a restaurant: You can even venmo the restaurant your payment. Talk about convenient!
Open Source Organics
Settle on the patio at this Sunset Boulevard cafe. Open Source is a juice and smoothie bar that also has a truck serving the local area! You can find grab-n-go prepared food that includes raw food, salads, and chia pudding. Noted as the best juice bar in LA… it’s definitely worth a stop.
Make Out
Would it even be a vegan restaurant top ten list if we didn’t mention Matthew Kenney? Culver City’s raw-focused cafe, Make Out, serves kelp noodles, bowls, smoothies, juices, and other raw items. For high-end counter service, you’ll find some of the healthiest clean eats at Make Out. (Including a raw cookie.)
Real Food Daily
If you haven’t bopped over to WeHo for Real Food, you need to get on that, stat. A staple in the LA vegan community that serves contemporary plant-based cuisine where you can find the greens in every dish. Reviewers rave about the happy hour prices and the nachos – and there’s even an outdoor dining area if you want to bring your four-legged canine pals.
Sun Cafe
Sun Cafe (originally known as SunPower Natural Cafe) gets praised for a few main reasons: ambiance, variety, and taste. This popular vegan and raw food restaurant offers an extensive menu of fusion and comfort vegan cuisine. For the sweeter side of things, you can enjoy a selection of rich smoothies, cupcakes, and raw pies – Yep, raw. (Hold the guilt!)
H.O.P.E.
An acronym for Healthy Organic Positive Eating, you may very well be uncertain that you’re not eating indulgently. Tucked away in Studio City, H.O.P.E. offers a large menu of Thai food and some American items like veggie burgers and tacos. Everything is incredible, but my personal recommendation goes to the vegan chicken wings. They’re unlike anywhere else.
Raw Junkies
Friendly counter-service and great soups, Raw Junkies will have you coming back for more. Offering pasta bowls, rainbow rolls, cold-pressed juices, and smoothies. Bonus: Free parking/valet service. Cha-ching! I’ll spend that extra money on an extra soup to-go, please and thanks.
OrVeganic
This organic, vegan, and gluten-free cafe makes all food and drinks in-house, including: nut and seed butters, nut and seed milks (mealks, as they call them), oatmeal, and protein bars. Serves bowl-style savory meals such as the TexMex bowl, three bean chili, pasta alfredo, and a tofu scramble bowl. Perhaps the biggest perk? You can rest easy knowing there’s zero refined sugar or pasteurization involved.
There you have it: the top healthy vegan restaurants in LA. From juices to whole food bowls to savory, seemingly indulgent cover-ups of healthy meals… you can keep moving into 2020 with a bounce in your step and a wealth of health. Which spot will you stop by first?
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Featured image credit: Hermes Rivera / Unsplash
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, not of HappyCow nor of the featured restaurants.
