West Hollywood and the greater Los Angeles area offer a diverse range of restaurants that cater to health-conscious diners. Whether you're committed to a specific diet plan or simply seeking nutritious and flavorful meals, the city provides numerous options that go beyond basic salads. This guide highlights some of the best healthy restaurants in West Hollywood and nearby areas, ensuring you can maintain your wellness goals without sacrificing taste or satisfaction.
Accessible and Affordable: Everytable
Everytable stands out with its mission to make healthy food accessible and affordable for everyone. This eatery offers a variety of ready-to-eat meals that are perfect for a quick and nutritious grab-and-go option. With multiple locations around Los Angeles, Everytable adjusts its pricing based on the neighborhood, ensuring that healthy eating is within reach for a wide range of customers. The menu is diverse, featuring options like vegan tofu larb with rice noodles and a flavorful curry chicken, created in collaboration with Trap Kitchen from Compton.
Plant-Based Indian Cuisine: Tulsi Indian Eatery
For those seeking plant-based options, Tulsi Indian Eatery provides a modern twist on traditional Indian cuisine. With several locations throughout Los Angeles, Tulsi's menu is entirely plant-based, utilizing vegan alternatives for classic dishes. Popular items include the "chick'n" tikka masala, spinach curry in ginger and mustard leaves, and vegetarian biryani. Complement your meal with a refreshing and probiotic-rich yogurt lassi for the perfect dining experience.
Salad Innovation: Alfalfa
Alfalfa, which started as a farmers market stand in Hoboken, New Jersey, brings its salad-focused concept to Los Angeles. The restaurant offers a variety of tasty salad choices, including the date-filled West Coast and the Peruvian Chicken salad. Customers also have the option to build their own custom bowls. To balance out the healthy options, Alfalfa also serves breakfast burritos and gluten-free donuts made fresh daily.
Exclusive and Nutritious: Mother Tongue
Located within the members-only Heimat fitness club in West Hollywood, Mother Tongue offers an exclusive dining experience with a focus on nutritious ingredients. Chef Michael Mina's menu features reinvented comfort foods from around the world, each dish labeled to indicate whether it is plant-based, keto-friendly, anti-inflammatory, or beneficial for cognitive functions. This restaurant ensures that healthy eating can be both luxurious and delicious.
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Vegetable-Forward Dining: Botanica
Botanica in Silver Lake emphasizes healthful and nourishing cooking with a menu that is heavily vegetable-focused. While not strictly vegetarian, Botanica offers dishes like Japanese sweet potatoes and farm-fresh eggs for brunch, and squash with chrysanthemum yuzu pesto or mushrooms and brown rice for dinner. The restaurant also serves natural wines and cocktails made with farmers market ingredients, enhancing the overall dining experience.
Community-Focused and Organic: Honey Hi
Honey Hi is committed to serving both its diners and the community by using mostly organic produce purchased from local farmers' markets. The restaurant avoids refined sugars and additives in its dishes, offering nutritious options such as sweet potato hash bowls and salads. For those looking to indulge in a healthy twist, Honey Hi also serves gluten-free brioche French toast.
Korean Comfort Food: Bonjuk
Bonjuk specializes in healthy and comforting Korean rice porridge, ideal for any day, especially during colder weather. The menu features almost a dozen porridge options, ranging from vegetable to mushroom and oyster, each listed with its nutritional benefits. Sweet porridge desserts, such as pine nut porridge, are also available to complete the meal.
Balanced Healthy Eating: True Food Kitchen
Founded by a doctor of integrative medicine, True Food Kitchen emphasizes balance and small changes towards better alternatives rather than extreme diets. The menu includes favorites like the grass-fed burger with a flaxseed bun, hearty salads, flavorful grain bowls, and pescatarian dishes packed with superfoods. With multiple locations, True Food Kitchen makes healthy eating approachable and enjoyable.
Mediterranean Diet: Sumac Cuisine
Sumac Cuisine in Hollywood highlights the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet. Opened by a Lebanese couple, Sumac prepares food in the same way they would at home. The menu includes familiar dishes like fattoush salad, hummus, and falafel, as well as lesser-known items like moudardara prepared with organic lentils and rice, and green beans stew. Sharing a variety of dishes with friends is highly recommended.
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Healthy Kimbap: Ganchic
Ganchic offers a healthy twist on kimbap, the popular Korean seaweed rice rolls. Founder Christina Ko aims to provide a lighter version of this on-the-go meal for busy Angelenos. Instead of traditional rice, Ganchic uses quinoa, and the fillings, which range from beef to tofu, along with vegan sauces, are made without refined sugar. This takeout and delivery-only spot is perfect for a quick and nutritious meal.
Plant-Based Mexican Cuisine: Gracias Madre
Gracias Madre, from the creators of Cafe Gratitude, offers plant-based Mexican cuisine in a beautiful West Hollywood setting. The menu includes ceviche made with hearts of palm, tamale with cashew mozzarella, and jackfruit carnitas tacos. The restaurant also provides complete allergen information for those with dietary concerns.
Inventive and Fresh: Destroyer
Destroyer, a daytime cafe from an avant-garde fine-dining chef, offers inventive dishes made with the freshest ingredients. While not vegetarian, Destroyer features many healthy, vegetable-forward options, such as caramelized chickpeas with stewed cherry potatoes and poached egg. The minimalistic eatery provides a unique and upscale dining experience.
Vegan and Gluten-Free Japanese: Shojin
Shojin is a vegan and gluten-free Japanese restaurant that focuses on macrobiotic diets and uses organic, all-natural ingredients. The menu includes vegan sushi with "eel" made of tofu, "crab cake" made from mushrooms, and a variety of seasonal appetizers and large plates. The use of brown rice sushi makes it an excellent choice for those seeking gluten-free options.
Middle Eastern Flavors: Kismet
Kismet, a popular Middle Eastern restaurant in LA, is inspired by local, seasonal produce. The menu features inventive and beautifully presented dishes, including plant-forward options like sweet potato with toasted hazelnuts and Moroccan spiced carrots. The mezze meal for two can be customized to be vegetarian or vegan, offering a taste of everything.
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Vegan Vietnamese Cuisine: Âu Lạc
Âu Lạc, started in 1997 by Mai Nguyen, offers Vietnamese-influenced vegan food. Nguyen, who switched to a vegan diet after being diagnosed with cancer, advocates for a healthy plant-based diet as preventative medicine. The menu includes plant-based pho and lemongrass "fish," along with raw food items, cold-pressed juices, and elixirs.
Upscale Vegan Dining: Crossroads Kitchen
Crossroads Kitchen stands out among vegan restaurants in Los Angeles for its upscale, fine-dining vegan cuisine. The menu features inventive dishes like artichoke oysters made with oyster mushrooms, vegan cheese plates, and a seven-course tasting menu. This restaurant offers a sophisticated vegan dining experience that appeals even to meat eaters.
Unique Flatbread: Zhengyalov Hatz
Zhengyalov Hatz in Glendale specializes in one dish: the store's namesake flatbread. This vegan flatbread is made with 15 finely minced herbs, sunflower oil, and salt. Despite its simplicity, the flatbread is delicious, fresh, vibrant, and healthy.
Macrobiotic Cafe: M Cafe
M Cafe, LA’s original macrobiotic cafe, has been serving plant-focused, minimally processed, and mostly vegan items for over a decade. The menu also includes sustainable seafood options and numerous gluten-free choices. Diners can enjoy cold-pressed juices, grain bowls, and curry udon, as well as the popular grilled ahi tuna burger.
Vegan Ethiopian Cuisine: Rahel Ethiopian Vegan Cuisine
Rahel Ethiopian Vegan Cuisine offers a completely plant-based menu with big flavors in Little Ethiopia. The combo is an excellent way to experience Rahel, featuring nine items including lentil stew in red pepper sauce and chickpeas. Everything is served with injera, the Ethiopian sour flatbread made with teff flour, which is naturally gluten-free.
Fresh and Fast-Casual: Fresh Corn Grill
Located in West Hollywood, Fresh Corn Grill serves fast-casual gourmet food with a focus on healthy options. The restaurant believes that healthy food doesn’t have to be boring, offering a catering menu inspired by the signature Fresh Corn Grilled Salad, featuring grilled asparagus, golden corn, zesty zucchini, avocado, and tomatoes on a bed of mixed greens with a rich vinaigrette.
Additional Healthy-ish Options in Los Angeles
Beyond the highlighted restaurants, Los Angeles offers numerous other spots for healthy dining:
- Aunt Yvette’s: An Ethiopian vegan spot in Eagle Rock offering a variety of nutrient-rich dishes served on injera.
- Fountain Grains & Greens: A takeout-focused spot in East Hollywood with grain bowls and salads made with local produce and meats.
- Pita ‘Bu: A spot in Malibu where you can enjoy a healthy pescatarian meal with mezze and fish kabobs.
- Borit Gogae: A Koreatown spot offering a massive barley rice feast with fermented sides for a probiotic-rich meal.
- Coni’Seafood: A Mexican seafood restaurant with simple, flavorful dishes like aguachiles and marlin paté tostadas.
- Hugo’s: A Weho establishment serving unfussy dishes like pan-seared salmon and veggie patty casseroles since the '70s.
- Mizlala: An Israeli spot with locations across town, serving plates of chicken shawarma and vegetable sides like brussel sprouts and lemony broccoli.
- Kismet: Offers quarter, half, and whole birds with vegetable-forward sides such as charred squash and carrot slaw.
- Highly Likely: A spot in West Adams with non-fried items like shiitake-dashi porridge and little gem salad.
- Simply Wholesome: A grocery store in View Park-Windsor Hills with a restaurant in the back, offering vegetarian and meat dishes, plus a drinks menu with smoothies.
- Surawon: A Korean spot in Ktown known for its soondubu made with organic, non-GMO soybeans.
- Gjelina: A Venice restaurant with fire-kissed veggies and seasonal dishes like blistered zucchini and Japanese sweet potato.
- Gracias Madre: Located in the heart of West Hollywood, Gracias Madre is a popular lunch spot serving vegan Mexican-inspired cuisine in a beautiful garden setting.
Juice Shops and Healthy Boosts
For those seeking healthy boosts, Los Angeles offers several juice shops:
- Moon Juice: With multiple locations, Moon Juice offers juices, tonics, milks, shots, alchemizers, and cleanses to enhance inner and outer beauty and wellbeing.
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