If you are traveling in California in the LA area and like to enjoy a variety of healthy restaurants, then Abbot Kinney is the place for you in Venice Beach. After first exploring our options and learning that a local garden shop and chicken farm provides the veggies to many of the restaurants as well as the eggs – we made our first stop at Kreation Organic Juicery. Each table comes with your own touch screen tablet menus, which are perfect a the tech obsessed generation. On the menu you have your classic cold pressed juices as well as syringes of power tonics and herbal remedies including CBD oil (without the psychoactive parts). The restaurants is perfect for hard core vegans as well as meat eaters. All the meat is free range from local farms, and all in all the flavors are fantastic. We ate there 3 times before deciding we had to try other restaurants too. Inside the restaurant, behind the sit down service, is a shop and go style area with ready made food, drinks and desserts. We went 3 times and never had to wait in line but the place atmosphere was always lively.
On our first night, we tried out Salt Air, which is a seafood-centric restaurants with some delicious sides. We had the poached shrimp with citrus zest and homemade cocktail sauce. The Black cod with the cauliflower rice was an amazing combinations of texture and flavors (even though the pictures below do not do the restaurant justice).
Cafe Gratitude was our last stop before leaving Venice, and and is just around the corner on Rose Avenue, which also has a great selection of shops, and studios. Café Gratitude is a collection of 100% organic plant-based restaurants specializing in gourmet cuisines. They practice business through a term they call “Sacred Commerce”, where they provide inspired service, honest and transparent communication, and express gratitude for the richness of our lives. You really do feel this walking through the doors to be greeted by kind people who genuinely seem to like what they do and enjoy serving you delicious foods!
You could easily spend more time in this area discovering more restaurants, cafes and shops. Abbott Kinney is also a great place to do some clothes and trinket shopping (although someone expensive) – the styles are fun and very bohemian. We will definitely be back to this area in the future!