Mani’s
Our meal at Mani’s in LA was by far the most disappointing. The service was very slow, the food sub par.
I ordered the tofu scramble which my waitress said, “was popular with the health types” when I asked about it. After a generous helping of salt it approached being edible. I’m sure the asparagus came from a bag in their freezer, and the fruit tasted like it came from a can. Next to my toast were several pats of butter, much to my dismay.
I know not everyone knows what “vegan” is, but if you’re going to offer specifically vegan things on your menu, labeled as such, it’s a nice touch to make sure the vegan plates don’t go out to the tables with butter on them. Thankfully they were in little foil wrappers so we could easily remove them from the plate, but it didn’t give us much confidence that butter, or other non-vegan things, weren’t used in the preparation of our meal.
Stewart’s meal wasn’t great either, the Vegan Wheat-Free Pancakes:
Perhaps the bakery section of Mani’s is good – they seemed to have a decent selection of vegan baked goods in their pastry case, but I wouldn’t recommend going there for a sit-down meal. The service was slow and the check was quite large, making the entire experience a bit of a let-down.
The bakery section really is the only reason to go to Mani’s. I’ve ordered my mom’s birthday cake from them for the last couple of years. She comes to visit from Northern CA, and I’m pretty much always too busy between getting ready for her visit, and/or working to make her something myself. I’ve been a vegitarian for over 10 years and the recent discovery of a pretty serious dairy allergy has finally helped push me into becoming a complete vegan. My mom is diabetic as well as higly allergic to glutin and mildly allergic to eggs. My step-father refuses to eat ANY veggies or fruit EVER. (Not kidding – he has terrible diberticulitus)… Anyway, Manni’s is one of the few places I have been able to find a tasty vegan, sugar-free, wheat-free birthday cake that everyone will eat.
Next time you’re in LA, you HAVE to try Real Food Daily or Native Foods (if you haven’t already). Those are two specifically vegan restaurants that serve incredible food. I cook vegan at home, and these are two of my favorite places to eat out. I think I prefer RFD to Native Foods, but they are both incredible. Now, they’re a bit pricey, but well-worth it.