Native Foods

Before I delve too deeply into this post about a recent restaurant try with a friend from my program, I want to show you this photo first:

This salad looks pretty delicious, right? It's the Southwest Chipotle Chop salad from Native Foods in Westwood. The salad is essentially romaine, native chicken (I'll get to this in a second), corn, black beans, roasted red peppers, and a variety of tasty dressings.  Would you ever guess this is a 100% vegan salad?

This restaurant makes "meat" out of their vegan products; the Native Chicken is a mix of soy, wheat, and, I think, pea proteins.  I'm not one to shy away from vegan foods or trying new things for that matter, so I was more than happy to try Native Foods when my friend asked to go.  I've had vegan "meats" before, so I will say this before continuing: if I'm expecting a vegan "meat," no problem--if someone tells me I'm having a chicken salad but fails to tell me that it's vegan, I'll know something's wrong. That being said, I was extremely impressed with the salad and the Native Chicken. I think it was the texture that made you think that it was actually chicken. It doesn't have a chicken taste (or so far as I could tell- there was a lot of BBQ sauce), but while I knew I wasn't actually eating chicken, my brain could have been fooled. In general, the salad was super delicious, and there were many things on the menu that I was interested in, but wanted to try something that was more "safe" in case I wasn't a fan of the vegan "meats." I wouldn't mind going back there again, especially if I'm in the mood for something quite healthy with lots of veggies (that afternoon for lunch I had pizza, pasta, and lots of dessert...typical college food, ha!)

My friend joked that this place was "So, LA." because of the huge emphasis on healthy foods, which, to some extent, I think is true, but it was tasty!

P.S. That's a blueberry hibiscus tea and my friend had french lavender lemonade. So fancy!