I love going out almost as much as I love eating in. It isn’t uncommon for me to spend a good chunk of money supporting my favorite local eateries or going to try somewhere new on the map or at least new to me. My lovely fashion blogger friend Stephanie was/is my partner in crime for local valley fun snacks and drinks to Santa Monica vegan cuisine at Real Food Daily.

I’ve been hearing lots of great things about Real Food Daily for a long time. Real Food daily has two locations one in Santa Monica California as well as another in West Hollywood California. They specialize in vegan cuisine and the whole restaurant is vegan friendly no meat products or animal anything is in this place and I have a great respect for that.

Of course when you head out to a distinguished area such as Santa Monica you’re in for a time finding a parking space but I know it comes with the area so finally after trolling around a couple of blocks three times I found a structure not too far for the restaurant for us to park. At the price of 7 bucks a car we started off the evening in the hole.

Walking up to the restaurant you’ll see a wide verity of people, hippies, scene-sters, athletic health freaks, as well as the more stylish side of Santa Monica and the like passing through the glass doors or ordering a latte or take out from the bakery portion of the restaurant. The host stand sits outside and once we walked through the doors the large white ceiling fixtures, yellow walls, the shinny espresso machine, and large vegan pastry case are the 1st focal points I noticed. We were sat in a small section upstairs in a back corner, I would say not the best seat in the house but without a reservation it would do. A bunch of tightly packed seats of wood and simple tables with utensils with paper napkins placed on the tables.

Real food Daily sells wine and beer so that’s always a nice added perk. Their wine list and beer list feature organic wines and organic breweries. I had really lovely dark ale called triple exultation by eel river brewing company located in Fortuna, ca. The ale had a deep rich sweetness with a nice dark aftertaste. I enjoyed it very much. Stephanie had pale ale from butte creek brewery located in Northern California.

As we enjoyed conversation and interesting girly gossip about new things we didn’t know about each other, we finally finished perusing the plethora of vegan options that Real Food Daily has to offer.

menu

Combining local organic ingredients and some of the best vegan options I’ve seen in a long time, it took me a while to really see what I wanted. But I decided on sharing a sundried tomato hummus and pita and for my entree i would have the BBQ Bello Salad.

The hummus to our surprise was under seasoned and underwhelming and honestly not very memorable, but not bad but not good. I would say the seasoning was lacking but maybe that’s the way of this place who knows. I thought the ratio of pita to hummus was a little strange as well. I knew that my beer was wonderful so I kept my expectations at a minimum for my salad as to not be disappointed either way.

Finally after we finished up a bit, I’d say the waitress was doing double the work she should be been and if I was a needy customer we would of felt avoided because we saw our waitress herself about 3 times during the meal. She was attentive and sweet but you could see that she was over stretched at the moment.

My salad arrived and the smell was just wonderful. It had a peppery sweetness to the whole dish and I couldn’t wait to try it but of course pictures first. The mango and avocado was divine it had all the textures that i look for in a good salad. The peppery ranch dressing is something that made the whole salad come together. The smooth creamy avocado with the sweet pungency of mangoes and red onions and the roasted BBQ flavor of portobello mushroom mixed with soft silky tofu was spot on. If this wasn’t a special for that month I’d say to order it straight away. I think I’ll definitely be making this salad myself sometime in my kitchen I’ll put a link to this post when i do. It’s definitely something memorable,different, and quite delicious.

Stephanie had a Caeser wrap that was filled with Blackened tempeh, avocado, capers, romaine hearts, caesar dressing, spinach tortilla she also added veggie bacon which she added was some of the best veggie bacon shes had since being vegetarian for almost a year now. Over all I’d say she was very happy with her wrap which was on side of a small mixed salad.

Sometimes expectations of things cloud the purity of the idea of a chef as well as some chefs just get side tracked, here just like anywhere we can find things that may turn us off but here there is the simple locality of wonderful vegan food and a restaurant that cares enough for it’s community to use local and organic ingredients and those things are what make Real Food Daily stand out.

Cheers
Unrivaledkitch
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