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Tara’s Himalayan

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I can see eating at Tara’s regularly because it has a lot of great things going for it including:

  • It’s halfway between home and work, which means it’s close to both.
  • The food is delicious in a simple and home-made way.
  • Their lunch specials are a great deal considering how much food you get.
  • The staff is friendly and helpful.
  • They’re vegan friendly.
  • The dipping sauce for the momos is tasty and addictive.

Tara's Himalayan
We started off with the aloo achar, which was kind of like potato salad with a curry or chutney sauce. I still can’t figure out what it is supposed to be, but it was flavorful and tasty nonetheless. It had just enough spice to perk up my appetite without being so spicy that I couldn’t taste anything after it.
Tara's Himalayan
Next came the steamed vegetable momos which are basically dumplings. The waitress was nice enough to let us know they didn’t contain egg or dairy for the vegan of our party after checking with the kitchen. I thought the filling was a little too mushy, but the the flavor was good. I really liked the tomato dipping sauce that came with it: tangy and salty but very unlike ketchup.
Tara's Himalayan
As the main meal, I had the chicken masala with a side of garlic naan. The sauce was great and went well with the naan. The chicken was surprisingly tender and savory. It was even better heated up as leftovers the next day.
Tara's Himalayan
The BF had the okra curry which they made without any dairy or ghi for him. I wouldn’t have said this was curry if I hadn’t known because it doesn’t taste like curry at all, but it’s still good. Some pieces of okra was tough and stringy and there were some stem pieces left in, which was disappointing. I thought it was better the last time I ordered it, but I didn’t have them make mine vegan that time.
Tara's Himalayan
Their garlic naan was light and puffy, but I didn’t really taste the garlic until I had some leftovers reheated the next day.

The food is decent, the prices are good, and they serve manga lassi (which I love). I can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t return.



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Tara’s Himalayan
10855 Venice Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 836-9696

Spring Is Here!

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Dinner -- Persian Style
Dinner tonight was fresh fava beans with Persian rice and tahdig. It was not bad considering this is the first time I’ve made either of those things. My tahdig skills are still lacking because we didn’t get enough of a rice crust at the bottom, but what we did get was delicious. Adding the leftover fresh herbs (rosemary and tarragon) and some chopped garlic really made the brown rice flavorful.

Shelling the fresh fava beans were a pain, but they were delicious. I should get some more from the middle eastern store up the street while they’re still in season and pretty cheap.

Eating the rice cooked with herbs and fresh beans made it really feel like spring despite it getting a bit chilly tonight.

Vin Loi Tofu

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Vin Loi Tofu sells a lot more than just plain old tofu. The small humble-looking restaurant has some of the best veggie pho I’ve ever had and that’s saying a lot coming from someone who grew up on the pho in the SGV.
Vin Loi Tofu
On the counter were some of these strange looking dumplings wrapped in plastic. When I asked Kevin, the owner, what they were, he was enthusiastic about them and suggested we try them after he warmed some up in the microwave. They seem to be mock-meat dumplings wrapped with tapioca-starch wrappers. The wrappers made them extremely sticky and they tended to stick to each other, but they were pretty good. It even came with vegetarian ngoc mam (fish sauce) which was a pretty good imitation of the real stuff.
Vin Loi Tofu
The BF ordered their House Special Noodles, which comes with round rice noodles and an assortment of fake meat. He ordered it spicy, but the broth didn’t seem that spicy to me. The main complaint I have about a lot of vegetarian pho-style soups is that they’re too sweet. Vin Loi Tofu’s is sweet, but there’s also enough other spices in the broth to keep me happy.
Vin Loi Tofu
I ordered the House Special Seafood soup and asked for it to be spicy. Some how, my spicy soup was a lot spicier than the boyfriend’s spicy soup, but I wasn’t complaining. Despite it being over 95 degrees outside, drinking hot spicy soup felt good. My noodles were the typical flat rice noodles that you get with Pho and the mock meats in my broth included shrimp, fish cakes, and some other unidentifiable soy meat.

The noodle soups at Vin Loi Tofu will never be as good as the pho at places like Golden Deli or Pho 79, but the soups definitely have the best vegan broth I’ve tasted out of all the other vegan/vegetarian pho places around. And their soymilk and tofu aren’t too shabby either. It’s just a shame that they’re all the way in Reseda and not closer to where I live.

The only caveat is that their mock meats may not be entirely vegan. According to the BF, there may be whey in some of the meats and while the owner doesn’t make all of them, he doesn’t seem to give a concrete answer about their ingredients.

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Vin Loi Tofu
18625 Sherman Way
Reseda, CA 91335
(818) 996-9779