15 Black-Owned Plant-Based Eats to Try In LA

These are just some of the many great-tasting black-owned restaurants and eateries that you need to try the next time you are in LA!

Author: Jasmine Lowe

Vkind Communication Specialist

Here are some of the best Black-owned plant-based restaurants and eateries in Los Angeles, California, that I found over the years. This is part of a running list I have to bring my family to when they visit. I’m sharing these for you and your friends and family to try if they are in Los Angeles.

Azla Vegan/Ethiopian

Azla Vegan/Ethiopian is an amazing vegan Ethiopian eatery that I love. They no longer function as a restaurant, but they have some amazing food available for catering and events. The family started Azla at the Mercado la Paloma nine years ago and opened another location two years ago in Leimert Park.

When all six of Azla’s children transitioned to a vegetarian lifestyle over a decade ago, she began modifying traditional recipes to accommodate their growing health consciousness without sacrificing flavor and heartiness. Their motto is “It is an honor to feed you.” Today, you can still experience her passion for sharing her love for food and gatherings beyond her immediate family to the larger community.

Berbere

Berbere is another great-tasting restaurant that you need to try. Berbere is a Black-owned vegan Ethiopian fusion restaurant located in Santa Monica. The ET Twist Tacos are stuffed with potatoes, lentils, mushrooms, cilantro, awaze, Ethiopian salad dressing, micro greens, and their signature Tangfaye sauce. 

Their menu features some traditional Ethiopian dishes, like their Tofu Tibs, as well as some twists on Ethiopian staples/flavors, like their Black Seed Blueberry Teff Pancake and ET Twist Tacos. They also serve desserts, salads, juices, and smoothies. Owner, Chef T, seeks to inspire the Los Angeles community to live healthier lives. They don’t believe you should have to sacrifice a great-tasting meal in the pursuit of nutrition, so their menu is designed to maximize both.

Cafe Ruisseau

Cafe Ruisseau is a Black-Owned & Family-Owned coffee shop that loves serving its communities through excellent drinks, laughs, and good vibes! They have two shops located in Santa Monica and Playa Vista. They are passionate about coffee, people, culture, and community.

If you don’t feel like coffee is just fuel for productivity and believe that, when done properly, your cup is “the fulfillment of a farmer’s hard work and special care, the marriage of our roaster’s science and artistry and [a] barista’s detail and personality,” then this café is for you.

Centric Eats

Centric Eats is a 100% plant-based food service that offers an abundance of multicultural cuisines from around the world. The eatery offers everything from holistic meal prepping to its staple of vegan soul food. Centric Eats is home to the “vegan wing stop” and the “I can’t believe it’s not chicken” made from oyster mushrooms. Their mission is to raise awareness in every community and share their knowledge and love for plant-based whole foods through fun, delicious, unique exotic cuisines.

Centric Eats offers catering services that are great for groups and private events. You should definitely give their vegan wings a taste. The mac and cheese and the greens are also absolutely delicious and worth a try.

Compton Vegan

Compton Vegan owner Lemel Durrah started his company to bring affordable, healthy plant-based comfort food—like jackfruit ribs and vegan chicken tacos—to Compton and other inner cities in need. Compton Vegan is a food truck for the people that offers affordable & healthy alternatives to everyday foods.

Compton Vegan offers something other than the fast food restaurants accumulating across the vast food desert. The eatery takes on those heart disease-causing convenience foods that raise the risks of cancer. Restaurant owner Durrah dreams of one day making Compton Vegan as common as McDonald’s. His mission is all about “changing the world one plate at a time.”

Happy Ice

Happy Ice was founded by Lemeir Mitchell. Their motto is “Our mission is to be a driving force of happiness in every community we serve. Striving daily to be a company of purpose by always operating from the heart.”

Happy Ice is an ultra-premium Water Ice product made from a secret recipe from Philadelphia with an artistic LA twist. It has the smooth, rich, creamy texture of ice cream and the light, fruity flavors of sorbet and is refreshing like shaved ice. Happy Ice is made without egg or dairy products of any kind, making it plant-based. You’ll always receive a combination of a delicious and vibrant explosion of colors that are vegan-friendly & contains no nut products.

Hot and Cool Cafe

Hot and Cool Cafe is a local Black-owned and family-operated coffee shop in the heart of Leimert Park Village that opened in 2018. Owners Tony Jolly and Tina Amin intentionally chose Leimert Park as the location for their vegan cafe in what has historically been a food desert for convenient, healthy food choices in South Central.

The coffee shop has delicious pastries and amazing coffee. In addition to amazing coffee and plant-based food, they have also made it their mission to give back and serve the community. In 2020, Hot + Cool Cafe partnered with local nonprofit MISLA- Made In South LA, which trains historically underserved youth for high-level careers in tech and digital marketing while they simultaneously work on real-world projects. The Cafe hired its design and creative agency, MARTY (Making A Reality That’s Yours), to engineer its new website and marketing campaigns.

Jackfruit Cafe

Jackfruit Cafe Vegan Soul Food puts a soulful twist on jackfruit using spices from around the world to create 100% plant-based soul food. The café was started by actress, chef, and entrepreneur Angela Means. Angela transformed her popular food truck into a thriving restaurant in Santa Monica, California. 

I first had their jackfruit tacos when the café was a food truck, and I wish I could have them every single day of my life. They are by far one of the best tacos I’ve ever had. I plan on going back to try the house special, Jackfruit Soul Bowl.

Lettuce Feast

Lettuce Feast is a Black-owned food truck serving vegan fried “chicken” strips and sandwiches. This eatery was established in 2016 as LA’s first Vegan Fried Chikn spot by Eva & Willie. Lettuce Feast originated from a plant-based cooking blog. Eva used her professional cooking experience as a private chef for some of the best athletes in the country to create Lettuce Feast as an LA pop-up. 

They offer flavors ranging from OG, or “original,” to Hot Honey all the way up to Reaper, which is actually pretty hot. The “chicken” strips even come on a slice of white bread, just like you find at the cookout. You get animal-free food with all of the flavor and none of the guilt.

Plate of Hue

Plate of Hue was founded in 2017 by Stephan “Chefan” Houston. He followed his mother’s footsteps into a plant-based diet after she received a cancer diagnosis. They both decided to go vegan for her health. After just a few months, his mother’s health began to improve immensely, and now she’s now cancer-free!

Houston spent his time veganizing family recipes and classic staples while highlighting the flavors and textures he had grown up with in his restaurant. His personal favorite is the Gardyn Gumbo, which he says took a long time to perfect, but now is a crowd favorite. You can also try everything from the jackfruit and garbanzo tuna sandwiches, coconut cream and garlic mac ‘n’ cheese, curry alfredo, or the spicy cajun pasta.

Rahel Ethiopian Vegan Cuisine

Rahel Ethiopian Vegan Cuisine is a Black-owned restaurant located in Little Ethiopia on Fairfax. If you have never tried Ethiopian food, then you should definitely try this restaurant. The service and the food are excellent.

Ethiopian food is already vegan-friendly, to begin with, which is why it has quickly become one of my favorite cuisines in the last few years. Many Ethiopians abstain from eating certain meats and mostly eat vegetarian and vegan foods due to religious traditions. Pork, or the meat that comes from pigs, is considered unclean in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

The traditional dishes usually do not need too many substitutions with staple vegan Ethiopian foods, including injera, berbere, onions, shallots, legumes, chickpeas, cabbage, potatoes, string beans, tomatoes, and beets. If you ever find yourself in an Ethiopian restaurant, you can try the staple vegan Ethiopian dishes such as shiro, misir, kik, gomen, buticha, fasolia, azifa, and alicha.

Stuff I Eat 

Stuff I Eat is a Black-owned vegan restaurant located in Inglewood. Peeled Host Chef Babette is an extremely fit and youthful 72-year-old who has been a vegan and raw food chef for over a quarter of a century. She opened the restaurant in the Summer of 2008 to share her love of cooking, health, and wellness with the community.

Stuff I Eat received a tremendous boost recently after a video profile produced by the not-for-profit organization Mercy For Animals garnered 7.3 million views on social media. The restaurant also received a ton of interest following a cameo appearance in the HBO comedy “Insecure.”

Some of Chef Babette’s television appearances also include The Doctors, Inside Edition, The Chew, The Steve Harvey Show, Channel 7 Eye On L.A., and Home & Family. She is also Co-Host of the streaming show Sunday Bites & Tidbits, which shares information about being plant-based and living a healthy lifestyle.

Swift Cafe

Swift Cafe was created with the help of a nutritionist to provide healthy options in a community where health issues are a growing concern. S.W.I.F.T. stands for Sustainable, Wholesome, Inspired Food, To-Go. Swift was created to provide clean and wholesome meals that nourish the body. They strive to show people that you can get in shape and eat tasty food that is good for you too! Swift Café offers a warm and inviting space for the community to gather and relax.

You can grab some delicious and healthy whole plant-based foods at the café or have the food delivered to your home. Swift is about offering an easier way to live a healthier lifestyle by providing easy access and better-tasting healthy food for those on the go.

Voodoo Vegan

Voodoo Vegan is a Creole and Cajun food truck in Los Angeles owned by Chef Whitt. The New Orleans-inspired fare shares plant-based versions of baked Who Dat?! Mac, Cajun Braised Collard Green, Paw Paw’s 9th Ward Gumbo, Creamy Creole Potato Salad, and Creole Oyster (Mushroom) and dressing. They also make their signature vegan and gluten-free Voodoo Sauce (or remoulade) that’s great for seafood, burgers, and fried food. or you can pick up their in-house Hot Hunny, made with a blend of smokey and spicy peppers and agave that’s great as a dressing and on fried foods.

They update and share their location regularly on their Instagram, @voodooveganfood. However, the Voodoo Vegan food truck can be spotted at pop-up events throughout Southern California and the Inland Empire, serving up Southern-style New Orleans Creole and soul food. 

Wholly Mother Vegan

Wholly Mother Vegan offers plant-based vegan cuisine with an island flair. They are a food truck in Los Angeles that serves the tastiest vegan burgers and tacos. Every burger comes with delicious fries, and you have the option to substitute your patty for a beyond burger or portobello mushroom burger patty. They even have vegan bacon that you can add.

These are just some of the many great-tasting restaurants and eateries that you need to try the next time you are in LA! You can also visit Vkind.com and download the app for more Black-Owned eats to try in Los Angeles.