We celebrated Dave's birthday with dinner at Crossroads Kitchen in LA! Here's our review of this upscale vegan eatery.
Subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon
This is part two of our LA adventure! For more vegan Los Angeles food goodness, check out part one: Erewhon Market.
Jump to:
We ate dinner at Crossroads Kitchen!
For Dave's birthday dinner, many people recommended Crossroads Kitchen. So many people suggested it that it became a running joke that he had no choice but to go there.
So we went there.
And we ordered so. much. FOOD!
I do want to apologize for having exactly zero photos of our visit. The area where we sat was way too dark for photos, and I didn't want to get creative with lighting during Dave's birthday dinner.
We started off with ginger beers for everyone. Their non-alcoholic ginger beer is tart and citrusy. The flavor makes me think that they ferment it. It's complex and delightful! Definitely a special drink.
Crossroads is a small plates, all-vegan restaurant, and we ordered many, many small plates. Let's get into it!
Main Dishes/Small Plates
We started off with a few plates, then ordered a second round.
Round one included the zucchini blossoms, stuffed with vegan goat cheese, which came with marinara for dipping. This was one of the highlights for me! The goat cheese texture and flavor were incredible, and it was a nice contrast to the marinara.
We also got marinated olives in round one and an order of the vegan calamari. The olives were lovely, warm, and herbal with Marcona almonds and lupini beans in the mix.
The vegan calamari was flavorful, for sure, though Dave and Ally like this dish more than I did. I'd just had the vegan calamari at Au Lac the day before, and this one wasn't quite as good as theirs. Still delightful, just not as toothsome. The calamari came with spicy marinara for dipping, which was very good.
For round two, we ordered four more dishes: the Italian sausage, sautéed rapini, a wedge salad, and roasted potatoes.
The Italian sausage was another highlight of the meal. They really nailed the texture, and the flavor was slightly spicy. We were shocked to discover that it was gluten free. How did they manage that texture without gluten? Magic.
The sausage balanced out well with the bell peppers, basil, and mild tomato sauce that it came with it.
I do want to stop here and note that this was the third plate we got that came with a tomato sauce. Ally pointed out on the pod that they leaned heavily on marinara.
It worked well in some places, but in others, like the squash blossom, where they could have mixed things up a bit. Ally suggested a pepper jelly for the zucchini blossoms, which would have been a real treat.
The rapini was probably the most divisive dish at the table. It came in a creamy mustard sauce and topped with buttery pine nuts, and I absolutely loved it! Dave and Ally were not fans of this dish at all. They thought the sauce was too thin and that it just wasn't that special. Hard disagree!
Let's talk about that wedge salad, though! Dave and I are having a real wedge salad renaissance, and this one was stellar. It was a classic wedge with pickled onion, tomatoes, mushroom bacon, and vegan blue cheese. And oh my word was that blue cheese spot on! Absolute perfection.
The roasted potatoes were good, but they did kind of pale in comparison to the rest of the dishes. What was great about the potatoes was the vegan parmesan on top of them. So legit!
Crossroads Kitchen really nails it in the vegan cheese department.
Dessert
It was Dave's birthday, so why not order two desserts for the three of us?
The first thing we got was the peach cobbler with candied ginger ice cream. The cobbler itself was absolute perfection. Trust this southerner when I tell you that it was the real deal!
The ice cream, though, was kind of a let-down. It had a strong coconut flavor that kind of competed with the ginger flavor. It was a big swing, and I respect them for it, but it was a miss for us.
Our second dessert was the brownie sundae which came with brandied cherries and fudge. The cherries were super sweet and lovely. This ice cream also had a coconut flavor, but in this dessert it worked really well with everything else.
Where to listen
Thank you so much for listening (or reading!). We record these episodes for you, and we'd love to hear from you.
Got a favorite vegan treat that you think we should cover on the podcast? Send your suggestions to [email protected]!
You can find Talkin' Tofu on:
Subscribe to Talkin' Tofu anywhere you get your podcasts. You can also follow us on Twitter and on Instagram!
Where to listen
Thank you so much for listening (or reading!). We record these episodes for you, and we'd love to hear from you.
Got a favorite vegan treat that you think we should cover on the podcast? Send your suggestions to [email protected]!
You can find Talkin' Tofu on:
Subscribe to Talkin' Tofu anywhere you get your podcasts. You can also follow us on Twitter and on Instagram!
Got a question? Tried this recipe? Leave a reply!