O.C.'s Best Vegetarian Dining
Fresh and tasty no-meat dining options, for those who don't care where the beef is.
By JESSICA PERALTA
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
What kind of vegetarian are you?
Are you the vegan-Mongolian beef-eating kind? The kind who enjoys a good solid potato burrito? A part-timer?
For your dining enjoyment, we have compiled a beefy list - no pun intended - of places where vegans, vegetarians and vegetarians with their non-vegetarian friends can feel at home.
Some of the restaurants we have explored are strictly vegetarian or vegan, but some are not. Some just have noteworthy vegetarian options.
BEST BETS:
RUTABEGORZ
158 W. Main, Tustin. 714-731-9807.
211 North Pomona, Fullerton. 714-738-9339.
264 North Glassell, Orange. 714-633-3260.
This small restaurant chain isn't meat-free, but it's popular for its large selection of vegetarian dishes, including enormous salads. The first Rutabegorz opened in 1970 in Fullerton as a self-described "hippie joint." Dishes include Hummus with Pita Wedges ($4.75), Black Bean Nachos ($6.95), Veggie "Twocos" ($7.50) and Black Bean Tostada ($8.25). Try the heavenly Havana 3 AM smoothie ($4.50).
I'm officially ending a three-day Rutabegorz bender today.
In case you don't know, Ruta's is a local institution that's been around since the early 1970s when a group of hippies opened a coffee shop in downtown Fullerton, then successfully saved the building from demolition.
Since then, those hippies also have opened restaurants in Tustin and Orange and have expanded their offerings to include home cooked American favorites, vegetarian specialties and my favorites: gigantic salads that come in bowls bigger than my head.
It's with one of these salads ? the chicken avocado ? where my bender began Wednesday afternoon over lunch with an old friend in Orange.
My favorite thing about this salad ($10.45) is the half of an avocado sitting atop a heap of fresh vegetables and lettuce. I like to stir the salad around a little so that the avocado mixes with bits of shredded mozzarella and American cheese, then sticks onto pieces of lettuce, walnuts and tender chicken. The cauliflower and cucumber chunks are big and perfect for dipping separately in a side of homemade balsamic vinaigrette dressing.
My friend's favorite salad here is the Mexican Caesar ($9.75). It comes with Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, feta cheese, tortilla strips and pepitas (squash seeds). He slathers his in the homemade Caesar dressing.
I never put dressing on my salads at Ruta's because I like to save the left overs and can't stand soggy lettuce. And I can never finish more than half the bowl.
So I got a box for my leftovers and ate the second half of this chicken avocado for lunch on Thursday afternoon. (A tip: Eat all the avocado on day one because it will brown in the refrigerator).
Usually this is where my Ruta's salad cycle ends.
Except this time, my friend ordered a wrap instead of a salad. I had major food envy. So this afternoon when lunch time came around, I decided to go back and get a wrap of my own.
I chose the Turkey Avocado ($8.45): Fresh turkey, lettuce, tomatoes, avocados and crumbly blue cheese stuffed inside a whole wheat tortilla. This also comes with Medeterranean dressing, which tasted like Italian with an extra bite. I passed on the dressing ? the flavor of the blue cheese was strong enough.
This also came with a little pasta salad (with black olives!). Pretty good.
Ruta's has a huge menu, so I'm not trying to give an overview of it here. I like this place, though, because it's got a quaint atmosphere, serves fresh food and because it seems like everyone's got a story about it. If you've got one, share it here .
Paul Berkman walked a mile to his Fullerton restaurant each day in 1972.
A hippie and a health nut, Berkman's daily stroll seemed in keeping with his eccentric lifestyle. Little did his staff know it was a necessity.
The health department had cracked down on Berkman's Bohemian cafe in downtown Fullerton, ordering him to replace his dilapidated cappuccino machine or face closure. To buy a new one, he hawked his Volkswagen van for $2,600.
The investment seemed a ridiculous gamble back in a time before Starbucks made drinking java a daily habit. But for Berkman, it was part of a commitment to create an unusual haven for folks to mingle over a healthy meal.
It's a promise he's kept for 35 years.
About once a week, Berkman, 55, makes a daily run to each of his three bustling Rutabegorz restaurants to get a bit of face time with his managers. But mostly, he wants time to shuffle around the eateries he's built from scratch.
An Andy Warhol-like character with floppy hair and tinted eyewear, Berkman is as meticulous as a health inspector. During a morning trip to Fullerton, he spots something afoul before he even parks: It's mid-January, and the icicle Christmas lights are still hanging out front.
"Oh, he hasn't taken those lights down," he grumbles.
Berkman jumps out of his 1997 Honda Civic and scurries about the sidewalk collecting flattened Styrofoam cups, cigarette butts and other stray trash.
Dressed in baggy jeans, black leather slip-ons and an untucked blue Quiksilver shirt, Berkman exudes the style of his restaurants: Simple and comfortable.
"I don't want to see junk on the street," he says. "You want it to look nice."
The vision was always just that: a neat place to hangout.
It was 1970. Americans were deeply divided over issues from the Vietnam War to the sexual revolution. A bunch of long-haired hippies from Cal State Fullerton decided this little college town was lacking a place to debate current events.
So, the students, including the philosophy major Berkman, cobbled together $4,000 to start a Bohemian cafe inside a 1920s-era Spanish colonial home in downtown Fullerton.
They called it Rutabegorz, a funky take on the turnip-like rutabaga.
They started small, serving desserts, a few healthy sandwiches and cappuccino to customers who sat on old church folding chairs at tables made of telephone spool lines. It was commonplace for diners to spontaneously strum on a guitar or play on a piano nestled in the corner. Local English professors were known to hold poetry readings there, while the late-night crowd crammed the 25-person-capacity eatery to sip coffee after taking in a movie at the Fox.
"We were embraced because people were looking for new culture," Berkman recalls.
Berkman acted as cook, dishwasher and server. He spent hours in the kitchen perfecting dishes such as creamy smooth cockie leeky soup and the restaurant's now famous carrot cake - recipes inspired by his mom, who never used cans for cooking.
So immersed in the business, he never left and often spent the night on a couch. One day he awoke to a nightmare.
He and the other founders faced eviction in 1973 when then-Pacific Telephone Co. cut a deal to buy the property and raze Rutabegorz. A community outcry erupted as diners sought to save their beloved "Ruta's," its affectionate nickname.
"There were hundreds of people on our side," Berkman says.
The phone company eventually backed off, as did some of the original founders. Berkman emerged from the yearlong ordeal as the sole owner of Rutabegorz, giving him full authority to take on his next challenge: expansion.
Some businessowners run an operation because they're trying to make a living.
Others, like Berkman, do it because it is the only way they know how to live.
Rutabegorz is his baby. His life. Still, he never intended to raise a family of restaurants until he was asked to open a second one in Tustin in 1978.
"You could roll a bowling ball down the street, and you wouldn't hit anything," he says of Tustin's not-so-bustling downtown.
But Berkman had a soft spot for charming, historic towns and couldn't resist the challenge. In keeping with his "do-it-yourself" attitude, he secured a $100,000 loan to open the restaurant using his Fullerton home and his savings as collateral.
"People thought I was nuts," says Berkman, who, on the side, was still taking courses to get his bachelor's degree in business at Cal Poly Pomona.
For the first year, he hustled about town, using his gift of gab to talk up the restaurant among area merchants and residents. He handed them Ruta's classic booklet menu, which spews pages of salads, wraps and soups. Many told him a "veggie-style" restaurant turned them off, but he insisted Ruta's was about comfortable fresh food, not scary tofu.
The pitch seemed to work. He eventually got people in the door. And, like the Fullerton restaurant, the Tustin Rutabegorz soon became a daily habit for locals.
Berkman would go through the same steps again in 2001 when he opened a Rutabegorz in a turn-of-the-century bungalow in Old Towne Orange. (A third Rutabegorz in Irvine closed in 1999 because of lease problems.)
A man with few extravagances, Berkman says the three eateries have been successful enough to afford him a healthy nest egg and a few rental homes. Still, he views his success in other, non-monetary ways.
While other restaurants have come and gone in 35 years, Rutabegorz has managed to survive. It's become a homey haven for central Orange County diners who return to sit in the same seat where they had their first date or where they celebrated an academic degree. They come to see the same smiling faces of managers, busboys and servers - many of whom have been with Berkman for more than 20 years.
"It's the closest thing the county has to a 'Cheers,'" said Monica Estrada, a frequent Ruta's customer since 1991.
Back in Fullerton, Berkman ends his whirlwind visit by inspecting the suggestion box. He flips open the top and grabs two dollar-size pieces of paper. One is from a customer begging him to open another restaurant in Anaheim. Three is enough, he says.
The other note is more personal. It reads, "Hi, Paul." It's from a couple who sign their name and in parentheses, scribble this proud fact.
"Since 1974."
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the popular restaurant, Rutabegorz, and we wish them well for the future. Owner Paul Berkman came to town in 1978 to establish a duplicate of his restaurant in Fullerton. He found one of Tustin's historic buildings? the Artz Building?in Old Town that offered the ambiance he was seeking.
The building was one of several constructed on the south side of Main Street, between El Camino Real (it was then D Street) and C Street. On the corner at El Camino Real was the Getty Store. Andrew Getty had been a partner of C.E. Utt until Utt left to try other endeavors. Getty hired a young man, Charles Artz, to clerk for him; Artz stayed on when Henry Romer bought the business.
Down the block, on the lower floor of the Columbus Tustin building, was Joseph Martin's store. He had occupied the building since 1903, but by 1909 he wanted to sell the business because of some health problems. His son, Claude, helped him in the store. Charles Artz wanted his own store and made a deal to buy Martin's business, but before the deal was completed, Martin was killed on his bicycle in a collision with a Big Red Car (streetcar) in Santa Ana. Claude Martin honored his father's deal. Artz hired Claude to clerk for him at $75 a month. Claude later bought in, becoming a quarter partner. Neighbor Sherman Stevens was a silent partner. Claude told the story of building the Artz store in his memoirs: "As I recall, it was 1914 that the Tustins built the new store building for Artz. There were two rooms in the front section, with a wide, arched doorway between. The west side was the grocery, and the east the dry goods and clothing. The pillars were concrete poured in wooden forms without any steel. The man poured the first one. The next day he took the forms off and the pillar fell down. He had no trouble with the others."
Charles Artz hung his sign on the new building,Charles O. Artz, General merchandise. He also built a house for his family in 1914. It still stands on the south side of Main Street, one house west of B Street. His daughter, Louise Artz Archbald wrote in her memoirs that she enjoyed visiting the store and recalled it as follows:
"The General Merchandise Store was good entertainment with all the barrels, tubs and bins. Everything was sold by the pound with each item weighed, sacked and tied with string. The groceries were on the C side of the building and the dry goods were in the other half. In a corner of the dry goods side, my father had his stool and desk for keeping his accounts of the charges and home deliveries. There were no adding machines, and it was fascinating to watch how quickly he could run down a column of figures.
The food stored in those barrels, tubs, and bins attracted bugs so the store had to be fumigated once or twice a year. The gas used was Cyanide. Unfortunately, one night while the store was being fumigated, a burglar broke in, but he did not get beyond the window. His body was found draped over the windowsill the next morning.
One of Claude Martin's jobs was to take orders for groceries and then deliver them. Most households charged the purchases, and then on Saturday the family would come into the store and settle the bill. Each child in the family would then receive a small bag of candy.
As you might imagine, the prices were somewhat different then. According to Claude, they never split nickels in pricing. Small cans of milk were five cents or six for a quarter. Canned corn, 3 for a quarter, better grades 10 cents straight. Pennies were used for buying stamps and postcards. Nearly everybody kept chickens, so they took eggs in trade at the same price for which they sold them, 15-20 cents a dozen. Butter was about 20 cents per pound."
Claude also recorded that they sold Levi Straus waist overalls, rivets and all, for 75 cents: a good chambray shirt was 50 cents, dress shirts 75 cents to $1.25. Their best work shoes sold for $4. Unfortunately if we were to go back to those prices, we would also have to go back to earning $75 a month.
Claude Martin left Tustin and the Artz General Merchandise Store in 1920. Charles Artz went out of business during the Great Depression. While the building was empty, it was used as a classroom while the Grammar School was being repaired after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. I do not know whether or not the pillars had steel in them at the time of that earthquake, but building owner Bob Lindquist, has assured us that the pillars have steel in them now.
In the years since then there have been other business establishments in this building, including Steve Andert's Custom Upholstery, Mac's Refinishing shop, an antique store, John Manley's Tustin Village TV, and since 1978, Rutabegorz restaurant.
The restaurant, with its generous portions healthful cuisine, and historic ambiance, has become a popular eating place in Old Town. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. Again, we offer our congratulations to Paul Berkman for his 25 successful years in Tustin.
1. RUTABEGORZ
2. RUTABEGORZ
