I went to LA with my mom for a long weekend. While our main reason for driving down there was to attend a Clinton Foundation benefit concert at the Hollywood Bowl (Bono and Edge! Lady Gaga! Stevie Wonder! The Clintons themselves! A whole bunch of other people!), we were also on a mission to eat a lot of delicious food. While Sacramento has enough vegan-friendly restaurants to keep me from getting bored, LA is on a whole other level. You can drive past two other vegan restaurants on your way to your destination vegan restaurant. There's just never enough time, and I never have enough stomachs, to eat even a fraction of the vegan food LA has to offer. But, I always give it a pretty good effort when I'm down there.
Since we were in Hollywood already, we decided to try Doomie's Home Cookin' for the first time. The restaurant is situated in a strip mall with some other restaurants and other business, and it looks pretty unassuming from the outside. The place has a decidedly hipster vibe, but not in an annoying way. The staff was friendly and made us feel welcome.
Doomie's is a vegetarian restaurant with an almost entirely vegan menu. Their only non-vegan offering is dairy cheese, but since (homemade!) vegan cheese is also an option on all of their dishes, it's really a free-for-all for vegans.
The first thing you'll inevitably notice when you walk in is the bakery case with a whole lot of killer looking baked goods inside. I think I stared into it in awe for a good solid couple of minutes before I finally took a seat and looked at the menu. We ended up taking some baked goods to go, but first we did order actual food.
Doomie does classic American comfort foods, veganized, and he does them right. There is a huge emphasis on fake meat, so you have to be prepared for that going in. Think greasy, salty diner food, and embrace that concept.
The Classic Burger, $7.95
My mom went with the basic burger with vegan cheese, which came with either fries or fruit. Thousand island dressing on the side. As you can see, the cheese was pretty saucy, and honestly pretty flavorless. It made for kind of a gloppy mess when the burger was assembled. The patty was quite good, though. It reminded me a little of a Boca burger, but much better. The texture was chewy and meaty, which I guess are desirable qualities in a burger. I thought it was tasty enough, but I'm just not much of a burger person. My mom thought the veggies were a little skimpy, but she enjoyed it overall.
As often happens to me at vegan restaurants, I got overwhelmed by the menu, and had a really hard time deciding what to order. I'm so used to having very limited options, so when I can choose anything I want, I get incredibly indecisive. In the end, I went with the Chicken Parmigiana, which came with garlic bread and a choice of soup or salad. I chose the tortilla soup - the soup of the day. It ended up being your average vegetable soup with pieces of fried tortillas in it. It was good, but nothing revolutionary.
The main course, however, was an event. Atop a bed of pasta with marinara sauce was a deep fried, breaded chicken cutlet. On top of that, vegan cheese sauce (similar to the stuff on the burger, but white instead of yellow). I haven't eaten real chicken (or any meat, for that matter) in close to 15 years, so my memory of the taste and texture has undoubtedly been distorted by time. But, this chicken patty was exactly how I remember chicken tasting. The texture was spot-on. The whole experience was really weird. I almost had to look around and make sure I was, in fact, eating in a vegetarian restaurant, or I wouldn't have believed that patty was fake. I cleaned my plate and enjoyed the hell out of it, but I felt super strange about how much I liked it! I don't know how they make their fake meat, but they're really onto something there. I've never eaten a substitute that came nearly as close to the real thing.
Fudge brownie, $4
Carrot cupcake, $2
Neither of us could manage dessert after finishing our huge meals, but we had to take a couple of things from the bakery case for the road (breakfast the next morning, actually). The dessert section of the menu also looked pretty amazing (fried oreos!), so I'll make sure to save room next time.
The brownie, while not very photogenic, was incredible. Without a doubt, this was the best vegan brownie I've ever had. Probably the best brownie I've ever had, period. Also, it was almost the size of my head. Rich, fudgy, gooey, covered in ganache: this brownie had it all. The price may seem high, but it was totally worth it.
The carrot cupcake, my mom's choice, was also delicious. We both liked that it wasn't overly sweet, and the frosting was light and fluffy.
I regret that I couldn't try the amazing looking red velvet cake or croissants, but I'll get to them someday. I will absolutely be going back to Doomie's on my next visit to Hollywood. While it's not the sort of food I would want to eat regularly, it was a really fun treat.
Doomie's Home Cookin'
1253 N Vine St, Suite 9
Hollywood, CA 90038
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