Reggie and I have been on our vegan journey for the past four years. We have explored raw vegan, vegan and vegetarian diets, and have settled into to a vegan/raw vegan combo that serves our lifestyle well. We love good food and are happy with the influx of vegan restaurants around the southland. Tonight we decided to try Chef Tal Ronnen’s Crossroads restaurant, a plant based fine dining eatery located on Melrose, surrounded by trendy designer boutiques, a perfect location for a girls lunch. Tal Ronnen author of The Conscious Cook has a large celebrity following including Oprah among others. Crossroads opened this past March, the space is beautiful, and sophisticated, not your 70’s style “hippie” joint.
Our server Chloe was wonderful, she quickly told us about the menu and made excellent suggestions for us since this was our first visit. Before our vegan days we were fishetarians, we had cut out chicken about 15 years ago, so I must say there are a lot of seafood favorites that we missed, so I was happy to order the vegan crab cakes and the artichoke oysters. I love the seacakes at Real Food Daily, but I must say these “crab cakes” were delicious as well and the presentation was just like “real crabcakes”, now the artichoke oysters were fan-ta-bu-lous, I can’t even imagine how they came up with that recipe–so good.
Reggie being a bread person ordered the fall squash puree flatbread, which was sort of like a light pizza topped with mustard greens. Chloe also recommended a scaloppini parmesan which reminded me of eggplant parmesan which was also good. We also ordered the beet salad which was fresh and delightful. We ordered a total of 5 small plates and we were satisfied, not stuffed. We finished with a pumpkin tiramisu which was a gluten free pumpkin cake finished with a pumpkin creamy topping-yummy.
Fresh Artisian cocktails as well as a nice wine list are also availible. I will be going back very soon.
Crossroads Kitchen 8284 Melrose avenue Los Angeles for reservations 323 782 9245
Xoxo,
Gigi