Saturday, February 07, 2009

Casa de Tree (Palms/Culver City)

casa de tree (1)

Finally! You can have you vegan and enjoy it too.

I'm one of those types who detest vegan joints that make a livelihood out of plopping wakame onto an uninspiring bed of lettuce and sprouts. Unbeknownst to their customers, wakame -- a seaweed high in calcium and healthy fatty acids -- is dumbfoundingly affordable; certainly not worth a $10 charge if all they do is give you a corn fork for it.

That's why I applaud Case de Tree for opening a quaint Westside branch for their Japanese-inspired vegan dishes. They offer a handful of sandwiches, pastries (An pan and curry bread!) and soy drinks, but their pay-by-the-pound buffet is really the main event. Tofu and tempeh are substitutes in meat dishes like panfried gyoza and 'chili'. Gingerly salted and peppered, they stave off that carnal urge to run to the nearest In-N-Out. Temporarily at least. =P

The pasta salad conjured up the good 'ol days living in Japan. Though I'm sure they substituted Kewpie mayo for something else. And the daikon fries were excellent. Definitely one of those, "What the heck? I can easily make this at home!" dishes, but then again do you really want to deal with the oily mess?

By nature, Japanese food is prepared without dairy products, or at least with ingredients which can easily be substituted for vegan products without subtracting from taste. I really hope more health-conscious people find this place so that they'll know that vegan really can be an enjoyable experience.

Casa de Tree
3741 Motor Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
http://www.casadetree.com/

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In Other News

There's other ways to eat wakame.
Digg this

3 comments:

EatTravelEat said...

It certainly does looks like enjoyable vegan food! When I was first looking at the plate I thought there would be meat, but there actually isn't! Very cool.

The_Brain said...

Yes the plate surely looks yummy

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I love this kind of vegan recipes, it's a good way to stay healthy the whole year!