With Café Om about to close I packed up my computer, whispered Namaste in Buddha’s direction and headed out. An early evening rain dissolved the night scene into blotches of wobbled pastels marked by dancing taillights. We jumped in the car and headed down Melrose now a wet and black oily snake, toward Gracias Madre a restaurant that had been open but a few weeks.

Gracias Madre: such an appropriate name, a thank you to the  Queen of Angels, Mother Earth as well as the mothers and grandmothers.

This was our day to eat vegan: we didn’t plan it, it just happened. Lunchtime and hungry for Japanese food we decided to try Shojin a restaurant that had been recommended by a macrobiotic friend. Even though we had been duly warned that the chef  does not use refined sugar, brown sugar, agave, dairy, chemicals or artificial flavors, we hopped on the Arroyo Seco Parkway in Highland Park where we were staying and headed downtown toward Little Tokyo.

I pray to the Madre when I travel the Arroyo Parkway. Opened in 1940 it is the oldest freeway in LA. With no on or off ramps just stop signs at lines that lead immediately on to the roadway, it’s the antique of the LA  system  with few changes since the day it opened. Each time I get on it I think of the early days when Model T’s, Packard’s, and Nash’s slowly plotted their way toward Pasadena. I remember traveling the Parkway as a child in Dad’s old Nash on New Year’s Day. He piled us in and drove up the Arroyo before dawn in order to get a curbside seat for the Rose Parade.

In the summer of 2011 during a trip to Japan James and I visited Kamakura the home of the famous Daibutsu – the great Buddha. In this small town of great temples we had the pleasure of eating temple food.  Some temples have restaurants. Some have a kitchen and chef well trained in preparing temple food, but no restaurant. In the latter the sacred meal is served in the sacred rooms. Our guide from Back Street Travels had made a reservation at the last.

On arriving we were seated in one of the meditation rooms at a low table with comfortable cushions for sitting. After a short time for meditation we were served. A panorama of Buddhist deities as well as lingering vibrations from sacred rituals surrounded us as we ate. Each ingredient had been treated with utmost respect.  Even the presentation, texture and flavor of the meat analogues generally something I avoid, truly surprised me. This was a meal that would take residence in my memory and imagination.

I hoped temple food would be the basis of Shojin’s menu. I was not dissappointed. While no temple, Shojin is quiet, the walls dark, the lights low, and the servers gracious as in the Japanese tradition. The stuffed shitakes took me back to Kamakura. My resident vegan could not have been happier. Guaranteed to satisfy foodies of all persuasions I cannot understand why Michelin hasn’t discovered Shojin.

As an aside, LA has become a growing mecca for vegan and vegetarian restaurants. PETA, People for the Ethic Treatment of Animals lists it in its top ten list for vegetarian friendly cities in the US. Ten years ago, when I had a craving for vegan I went to Real Food Daily on La Cienega. Real Food is still a good bet, but Indian, Mexican, Columbian, Ethiopian, many Asian are now available.

The idea and practice of veganism has been the topic of  recent conversations with my foodie friends. More than once I have heard it referred to as extreme, impossible to be a foodie if vegan! While I am not the total vegan I used to be, I fail to appreciate or understand the dismissive attitude toward veganism. Perhaps the issue has to do more with the word foodie, than vegan.  In The Achewood Cookbook Chris Onstad’s response to foodie offers food for thought

“There are so many words that already describe people who like food….Foodie: It’s like the infantile diminutive—you put a y on the end of everything to make it childlike. We don’t need it. It’s embarrassing. I’m a foodie. OMG.”

Raw, vegan, vegetarian, fruitarian, pescatarian, meat driven, culinarian (broadening the term from one who makes food to one who consumes on a given level), macrobiotic or in the heavenly realms of existing on air, (airean?) present quite a range of choices. Would that each of us would listen to the wisdom of the body,  determine what it needs,  make the appropriate choice and graciously accept those of other foodies.

Crossroads, a formal dining spot on Melrose another recent vegan addition to LA has been getting a lot of positive press. Chef Ronnen who prepared the wedding dinner for Ellen and Portia and worked for Oprah, had acquired fame before he opened the restaurant.  A good critique as well as an educational essay for non-vegans can be found at

Crossroads: A New Leaf – Digest – Los Angeles magazine www.lamag.com

By the time we arrived at Gracias Madre the rain had stopped. With its ranch-like interior and colorful pillows Gracias Madre a recent transplant from Nor Cal is casual, a great place to relax over a meal.  We chose to sit at the bar per usual as we like getting to know the people who run the establishment. Sitting at the bar is one way to do just that. We started our meal with the seasonal aguas frescas that is made daily from freshly squeezed fruit. In this case mango and pineapple. A tad too light, a bit too thin it tasted watered down, not enough fruit flavor, just ok.

I ordered sopes con pina: two masa cakes with guacamole, pineapple, habanero salsa, pickled cabbage, cashew cream and cilantro. The dish was generally tasty, but the cakes a little  hard. I’ve never had a masa cake that required a steak knife for cutting. Pickled cabbage added a nice texture to complement the silky avocado. I stuffed the toppings into the handmade, thick, fresh corn tortillas served on the side. The crema made from cashew milk seemed indistinguishable from “real” crème – a real plus for a vegan restaurant.

For his Principales James ordered El Plato: a bit of everything from the entrée menu: butternut squash, cashew nacho cheese, chorizo mushrooms, cilantro pesto, escabeche rice, pico de gallo, beans and tortilla. Each item would have been just fine on its own, but mixed together they were too heavy and some of the tastes failed to complement one another.

On the whole my experience was good Mexican comfort food all the way–clean and healthy comfort food. Only open for a short time, at this point I could not call it a destination. None-the-less, I would happily drop in to Gracias Madre were I in the area–if only for the chips and salsa.

So I am in Los Angeles  sitting in Café Om, one of the great writing cafes in LA. The sign on the deep orange-salmon wall just off my right shoulder reads, “You’re at OM. No cellphone. Only OMMM.” Music plays in the background, a slow, sensuous contemporary ballad sung by a chanteuse who voice reminds me of the sounds that came out of the French bistros back in the forties. She sings of her love carefully stretching out syllables until they roll into a series of overtones reminiscent of the Tuva singers from Southern Mongolia. Café Om is painted appropriately in the colors of a temple in India or the robes of a sadhu. A few locals are enjoying conversation over an espresso or cup of rooibos. I find it interesting that they sit on the same red stools that pepper the street cafes I saw in Hanoi, but in this case, tall bar stools, not foot stools. A few people are writing one young woman does embroidery.

A Buddha’s contemplative head holds quiet space next to a magazine rack.

This is my kind of place.

I like Intelligentsia or Stumptown or if in San Francisco, Blue Bottle or Four Barrel where the coffees are rich and berried with long tones, the baristas accommodating, but this is an old fashion, hard core venue that resonates with the kind of vibes that speak to a writer’s heart. LA claims several such cafes. I would be remiss not to mention that Intelligentsia in Silver Lake matches the writer vibes as well.

Ten years ago while working on a screenplay with an actress friend, we would frequent Urth Cafe on Melrose the place for food, coffee and star gazing. It continues to be such to this day.  Or, we would go to V-Café down the street. Writers galore working on plays, short stories, first novels wrote in wire, spiral-bound, unlined notebooks; today, it’s all computers. Thank goodness for Wi-Fi.

Café Om is but a few blocks from St. Victor’s Church on Holloway Drive. Victor’s holds a special place in my memory bank. In ‘67 I taught a fourth-fifth combination at St. Victor’s School in a classroom on the third floor . A hi-rise Play Boy Club near Sunset Strip neighbored the school. Every time I looked through the windows I was reminded of bunnies.

Through all my years of teaching elementary and junior high, that fourth-fifth combination turned out to be one of the most intelligent classes I encountered.  Many of my pupils were movie stars or children of movie stars. Irene Dunn visited me once a week to confer on her grandchild. I held court with Zorro, yes the original Guy Williams over his daughter’s progress. The son of Mayor Sam Yorty’s dentist occupied a desk. I will not forget the brilliant son of one of the stars of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. With my double teaching load there were times when I had little time to prepare science class. When that happened I would call on I will call him Brent. He would provide spontaneous, off the cuff talks minutely illustrated on the overhead projector on topics such as the asexual reproduction of plants.

During my time at St Victor’s the hippie movement in San Francisco was in full swing. Several decided to migrate  from the city by the bay to the more temperate climate of SoCal. In West Hollywood along Sunset Blvd from Doheny Dr. to La Cienega Ave. stoned hippies plastered the sidewalks. After a long day in the classroom I frequently took a walk along the same part of the strip. With reverence and respect the tenants reached out to me, shook my hand, and asked for my prayers. In a nun’s habit I must have looked as odd to them, as they with their long locks and baggy muslin clothing to me, but we reached over that divide and had lively, loving conversations.

A few years back I was asked in view of my worldwide travels to name my favorite city. Back in the day I would have answered Barcelona, but as I had not been there for some time I hit the mental delete button. “Los Angeles,” I replied. Oops, did I really say that. The surprise on the face of the questioner was only surpassed by my own. “You’ve got to be kidding,” was all he could say.

I have been observing, intermittently living in and visiting LA for more than half a century. I have watched the prolific development of its freeways (at one point slightly after my post-teen years, I drove them at night just to let out steam), and the ever-growing population with an an ongoing expansion of hi-rises to house it. At one point I moved north and LA became a distant memory, but circumstances brought me back and continue to bring me back. Is LA truly my favorite city? Something deep in my consciousness spurred that answer and I decided to find out what it is.

First, I turned to astrology. Los Angeles as the entire state of California is a Virgo with its official birthdate listed as  September 4, 1871.  As a triple Virgo, I must resonate. But surely there is more than astrological symmetry that would cause me to claim that LA is my favorite city.

Martin Heidegger claimed that we are not just the subject of mental states and experiences, but daseins, being there and intimately bound up in the place in which we find ourselves. We are so even when we are unconscious of the signposts that pock our local space. But for me the truth of the matter is that I get caught up in whatever place I find myself and as a result claim several places as home.

Perhaps I just have a deep case of topophilia and should let it go at that.

I do not as some, think of LA as a giant megalopolis crisscrossed by its famous thoroughfares full of pumped up speeders insanely weaving in and out of rush hour traffic faster than they could pick up to-go burgers at In and Out.  Instead I see the city of angels as a series of interconnected communal villages that can be as different as Southern and Northern California. Populated with cultures from around the world a drive through offers eye-popping opportunities to gain a larger view of the universe. Gentrification is slowly making its way through LA’s fringes as well as the hoods, but remnants of the old sit alongside the new.

Highland Park is a case in point. In the eighties it was a Caucasian community. Then Latinos began to move in bringing taquerias and super mercados. Now shifting yet again it is a multicultural diverse community including neighborhoods that maintain their own identities.

This kind of changing of the guard has been pivotal to LA’s history since the mid nineteenth century when Governor Neve decided to found pueblos next to the presidios along El Camino Real in Alta California. It was his intention to provide support for the military in the presidios thereby taking power away from the Missions. Needless to say, the Mission fathers were not too happy with his move. In the long run the Native Americans also gained independence from the Missions and found jobs in the new pueblo that was known as The Town of the Queen of the Angels.

Bordering South Pasadena Highland Park flaunts a range of architectural styles, some going back as far as 1870. Mom and pop grocery stores, whole-in-the wall restaurants, (Jonathan Gold, the only food writer to win the Pulitzer Prize considers El Haurache Azteca on Figueroa to be one of the top 14 Mexican restaurants in LA.), new gourmet bistros, stylish clothing shops, art galleries, yoga studios and fitness centers line the streets. Figueroa and York, the main thoroughfares.

Edward the owner of Elsa’s Bakery, a forty year old Mexican Bakery and coffee house that has become my go-to when I am in the Park not only for writing, but for great pan dulce and café olla as well, commented to me that in the Park a ninety five year old woman who does not speak English may live next door to a movie producer. To Highland Park’s credit, redevelopment is respectful of what is already in existence.

The Turkish owner of Café Om has just warned us that the café will close in fifteen minutes. It’s time to go out into the rain and head to Gracias Madre for dinner.