Vegan-at-a-Restaurant Review: La Loma (on Capitol Hill, Mass. Ave.)

Whenever I take on a food challenge, I try not to let it affect my life as far as going out with friends, or forcing me to be demanding about where we eat.  Operation: Vegan... presented quite the challenge.

I live by a stretch of restaurants on Massachusetts Avenue - La Loma, Bistro Cacao, and Cafe Berlin.  La Loma is a place some of us like to meet up because they keep their margaritas flowing, and food is fine.

My vegan restaurant experience proved to be kind of annoying.  Not enough restaurants have vegan menus, and many of them have a hard time processing my questions (which then also makes me feel like a d-bag).  By the time friends and I were enjoying a margarita-ful night out at La Loma, we'd reached the period when I would ask to smell NinjaManFriend's food whenever he would get things like steak and cheese and eggs, sauteed into glory.

Here's the thing people don't talk about when it comes to handmade tortillas - a lot of them contain lard.  Lard comes from animals.  But I think I tried to ask and just decided they were okay.

So I began the meal sticking mostly to the chips and salsa and this order of guacamole.  I was planning, originally, to just put guacamole in tortillas, and call it a dinner.

I think usually La Loma's guacamole is about a 6 on a scale of 1-10... but for some reason that evening, it was about a 3.  It had a weird flavor to it I could not identify.

I cannot remember, but I believe there was a question as to whether the vegetables for the vegetable fajitas were cooked in butter.  I have this feeling they were not okay and I got guacamole, tortillas, and a side of black beans (as opposed to other frijoles which are usually cooked with pork at restaurants, they were safe).  Or maybe I did get the vegetable fajitas...

The moral of the story is that I probably broke a lot of vegan rules, without meaning to, in order to eat dinner at La Loma.  My questions relating to butter and checking if there was animal fat in the beans... were confusing.  So I simply ignored it for the sake of being able to eat with my endless margaritas.

Pros:

• Strong Margaritas - everybody's happy.
• Everyone else's food smelled great - everybody else is happy.

Cons:

• Weird guacamole - Ninja-sadness
• Probably wasn't totally vegan, though I tried - NinjaGuilt
• Was still hungry afterwards - Taste my sadness

Out of 5 vegan stars, La Loma scored only:

Sorry, La Loma.  I still love you for your meat and cheese and fat-rich foods... and obviously for your margaritas.  But when I was vegan, my feelings towards you were bittersweet.