From laist.com
Ezra Salkin
It always sucks when your favourite L.A. restaurant closes. Multiply that feeling tenfold if you happen to be vegan and already live as an outlier. While Los Angeles has long been seen as a hub for plant eaters, lately, not everyone has felt that way.
Donna Jean, an Italian-inspired vegan restaurant in Sherman Oaks, which shuttered at the end of 2025, was just one L.A. restaurant to close in recent years. Chef Roy Elam opened Donna Jean, which became a beloved community staple, in 2022, naming it in honour of his mother who died of breast cancer but switched to a vegan diet in her final months, in lieu of another round of chemo. The restaurant became known for preparing all its pizzas, pastas and sauces from scratch while using top-notch ingredients.
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“It really felt like a small-time kind of community restaurant in a lot of ways,” said Josh McClain, a former manager, going as far as calling it a “lifeline” for certain customers with niche allergies.
In spite of its dedicated fanbase, at the end of the day the restaurant just never was able to expand beyond them, said Elam, who still operates the original Donna Jean restaurant in San Diego.
“We could have a $10,000 day and that would be our whole entire week, and every other day would be, like, $0.”
It’s a problem spread across the local landscape. Other notable vegan restaurants in the Valley to have closed over the last five years include Krimsey’s, Mamicon’s Vegan Mexican Restaurant, Sugar Taco and the Van Nuys location of Grain Cafe.
It got us thinking .... What do plant-based diners do when their favourite restaurants go away? Stay home and cook? Eat vegan dishes at omnivore restaurants? Give up the lifestyle altogether? We spoke to a handful of vegan Los Angeles diners to get a better grasp.
Veganism out of fashion?
McClain, a former manager at Donna Jean, became vegan during the last five years of Covid, initially due to supply-chain fears related to the availability of meat. He does believe there’s substance behind conversations about veganism going out of fashion. Post Donna Jean, rather than eating out, he and his girlfriend have been staying home, disconnecting — as much as possible — “from the structures of agriculture,” he said.
The couple have started the practice of homesteading, making their own tofu, sourdough, soy and oat milk, continually dialling in and refining their processes, as being vegan “can get pretty expensive,” he said.
“Typically, most people that are vegan, they have the time to be able to do so," he added. "They have the money to be able to do so. They have the time to figure out dishes, test, and experiment."
He acknowledged that it’s only in recent history that vegans have been able to go out and enjoy restaurants like everyone else. To do it at home, he admits: “It’s a privileged position.”
Natural correction
Eric Eichelberger, a local filmmaker who’s been vegetarian across different cities since 1994, has the hindsight of remembering what it was like before the boom of the 2010s. What’s happening now is a natural correction, he said, and nothing to be overly concerned about.
“There was a fad of opening vegan restaurants. And so there became, just like anything, too many to really support the people who were vegan, vegetarian, whatever,” he said. “It’s now back to a reasonable amount.”
That doesn’t mean Eichelberger hasn’t lost some of his go-tos. Real Food Daily comes to mind, but he stands by a simple truism: “If you have a great price point and you have great food, you're going to survive.”
He also added that places that have maintained a hippy, punk or political approach have done better, with some spots having been around for decades.
For example, he points to Studio City’s Leonors Organic (which opened in 1985), and Oh Happy Day Vegan Café and Grocery (in 1977), which sadly burnt down during the Altadena fires, though the owner is reportedly looking for a new location.
“It’s all these sort of vegan, Bacari-like kind of places that are closed now,” he said, referring to the hip — and pricey — Silver Lake omnivore restaurant. Veggie Grill is always a dependable option, he said. (One of their locations closed in the Valley, as well.)
Vegan heaven
As someone who likes to eat her way around town, “Every time I see one [restaurant] close, I see a new one open,” she said. “[To this day] I don’t know how somebody could go eat at every vegan restaurant here.”
Still, every closure, like her local favourite Hijo De Su Madre, is “heartbreaking,” she added.
But what if all the restaurants did close? “It's just not an option to change either,” she said. “We will do whatever we have to do [to stay vegan]. If we have to eat beans and corn bread at home, then that's what we're going to do.”
Supper clubs baby!
Jef Travis, a hospitality professional, has been vegan since 1991, taking on the lifestyle initially as a form of rebellion against his father who insisted on taking him hunting as a kid. As prices continue to rise, Travis predicts some vegan restaurants will continue to exist, but they’ll be expensive, and will exist mainly for special occasions.
As produce prices continue to surge, sometimes faster than meat, due to a mix of agricultural labour shortage and escalating oil and fertilizer prices, he said things won’t get any easier for restaurants.
“Hopefully those costs will begin to plateau,” he said, as we see more streamlined mechanized processes be implemented, and as we cross the threshold into the much-vaunted AI-driven fourth agricultural revolution.
In the meantime, Travis urged other vegans to try and stay ahead.
“Don’t neglect the frozen food section” at your grocery store, where you can stock up on produce that’s flash frozen at the peak of ripeness. That, as well as finding gathering places, “Supper clubs, supper clubs, supper clubs, baby! Let's supper-away and do it together. Let’s go to the grocery store!”
Leaving the lifestyle
If the restaurants continue to close, Eden Gordley, an actor who started her journey toward veganism six years ago to help with sinus issues, said she might be discouraged enough to leave the lifestyle herself.
“I would say that it's not easy to cook for yourself all the time," she said. "It's really hard. Anybody who is able to do that is, like, extremely privileged.”
“I'd be discouraged to eat out {as well},” she added, noting that vegan dishes at omnivore restaurants aren’t really reliable options. This goes for national restaurants and fast food chains, too, not just mom and pops, who often use L.A. and similar big blue cities as test markets for specialized trends. Some dishes disappear overnight, she said, and others that find their way onto menus often aren’t given much thought or intention. “They just aren’t good.”
So, what’s next for vegan restaurants in L.A.? Donna Jean’s Elam said: “This is the one thing I noticed about L.A., is that when you're new, they care. When they can't have you anymore, they care. But the middle part — that’s the hard part.”
https://laist.com/news/food/where-do-vegans-turn-after-restaurant-closures
