Temecula has a decent amount of vegan friendly places to get through a weekend.
Gentle Grill is worth several visits. We love a good homemade seitan and theirs is top notch. The brisket sandwich is loaded with seitan and bbq sauce and their fries had just the right crisp and saltiness. They Gyro Bowl is another solid choice using the seitan. The cauliflower bites were done well and reminded me that while I prefer seitan wings, the buffalo cauliflower bites can be quite good.
Kompoocha serves up some damn fine kombucha and tasty vegan food. We almost missed coming here since it didn’t really come up in our vegan Google searches. Also, it’s a little tricky to find and feels like it isn’t in a place that would serve food, but we found it and the food was delicious. I highly recommend the seasonal (hopefully turning year round) Maple Mushroom Melt. The booches were great as well. The Orange Mango Ginger (OMG), Strawberry Rose, Lavender Lemonade and Blueberry Mojito were my favorites.
Zen Curry and Grill was awesome and they had all the vegan options marked.
Thai Kitchen Temecula offers vegan meats and tofu. When ordering the mock duck with the drunken noodles, they asked if we wanted no egg, so that was a good sign. The Massaman Curry with tofu was excellent.
Some other options we didn’t utilize included Toss’d (had tofu, possibly vegan chicken), Waba Grill (tofu), Blaze Pizza, and 8-bit Brewing (I believe they had a vegan cheesesteak on their menu).
San Diego
We did make it down to San Diego for an evening and stopped at Tacotarian. You know it is good when you look up how much it would cost to open up a location when you get home. It might be the perfect plant-based Mexican eatery. A combination of old school Mexican beans and rice slop with elevated taste and vegan meat offerings.
