Kimchi Dumplings
Plant Food + Wine Venice

Plant Food + Wine Venice

1009 Abbot Kinney Blvd. Venice, CA 90291, 90291-3312, Venice Beach, United States

Meat • Cafés • Organic • Mediterranean


"Sometimes things just do not work out. We had high expectations as my wife chose this trendy place for her B-Day dinner. When we got there we were given the choice of eating outside in their nice rear patio or inside. It was chilly and windy so when they told us they had no working heaters in the back (but they could provide blankets) we dined inside. I know propane is expensive right? The first thing that caught my attention was that there was only one printed menu for the table. Otherwise we had to scan the QR code. I feel that is a way to avoid a normal cost of doing business by printing menus. Pretty cheesy right off the bat. My suspicions were confirmed by the super fine and buried print hidden at the bottom of the printed menu (not in the QR code version) that a 3% charge is added to your bill for the cost of doing business in California. Come on, that's so dishonest. The owners made a choice of opening a restaurant on Abbott Kinney, one of the the priciest streets in LA. Don't take that out on your customers. Now the food. We ordered the Flora Cheese Plate, Kelp Noodles and Truffle pasta. The pasta was billed as a larger plate. The cheese came first, A few small soft putty colored extruded lumps of some sort of material with a side of veggies and crumbly crackers. Didn't look anything like the posted photos. Taste was somewhere in the food spectrum but certainly not reminiscent of real cheese. Sure, we know it was veggie cheese but we've had it at other places and there it was much closer to the real thing with pleasing color and pallet. One of the globs seemed to have a piece of shaved summer truffle on the top but whatever that was sure didn't taste like a truffle, So basically it remains unidentified. The Kelp noodles came next. My wife kinda liked them. To me the dish tasted like an overly salted cole slaw. Next up was the Truffle pasta. One of the more expensive items on the menu at $32. Served glopped up at the very bottom of the bowl there wasn't enough to feed our six year old. Taste wise, no truffle taste and the pasta was under done and almost hard. It was sent back in return for Maitake Mushroom. At least this plate was pretty full of food. Unfortunately it was cold with vegetables and mushrooms sitting in a congealing sauce.. When we asked our server if that is the way it was supposed to be they looked away and mumbled apologies. We appreciated that they didn't charge us for the pasta and mushrooms. After that we went out for a pizza to get some dinner. Abbott's pizza is recommended. Not this place."