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• Fine Garden VEGAN-APPROVED!

If you've read some of my other reviews of certain "vegan" restaurants in the greater Los Angeles region of California, you've seen that I take huge exception to those restaurants who claim to be vegan or even vegetarian are are either simply liars, ignorant, or don't care about some of the ingredients that their dishes contain, primarily egg, whey, animal stomach, and honey products in mock meats made in the far east. But at Fine Garden, they DO care about your Vegan lifestyle and you can pretty much eat in confidence there as long as you make it very clear that you are vegan. There is definitely a language barrier there, but there's one waitress who understands english very well. I was referred to this restaurant by a close vegan friend who is more of a raw-foodist than I am and she's a dedicated food-combiner. She told me that this restaurant does go out of its way to prepare food the way you want it. So on my first visit, I got lucky and got the good waitress. She took the time to explain to me that a large number of strict buddhists visit this restaurant regularly and they can "smell" if there's eggs or whey or honey products in their food, and so the restaurant has been very careful to sort out which of their mock meats have whey and which don't. She was very confident, knowledgeable, and concerned about what I expected as a vegan and what dishes are vegan-safe. RARELY have I been to a vegetarian restaurant that had such great concern for vegans and could say all the right words to make us feel good and safe about eating there! (Really, only Garden Wok and One World could I say the same thing about other than obvious vegan places such as Veggie Grill or Native Foods). Their food is soooo good! Not quite as good as Happy Family Restaurant (those liars poisoned me I don't know how many times with their hidden animal ingredients primarily whey which has animal rennet), but definitely up on that level of taste. Some of the dishes are kind of bizarre-tasting for the American palate so be prepared to take your chances with taste. I never send anything back just because I don't like the way it tastes. I just grin and bare it, that's the price of experimenting! The other waitresses do seem to understand what "vegan" means since they speak very little English but don't expect to have a conversation with them. ASK repeatedly if each dish is vegan to the other waitresses and they'll give you a pretty confident yes or no. I LOVE THIS RESTAURANT!