A truffle mushroom pizza, baby beet and citrus salad, cheese plate, porcini and chestnut tortellini en brodo and stuffed zucchini blossoms at Crossroads Kitchen in Calabasas.In these challenging times, the need for reliable local reporting has never been greater. Put a value on the impact of our year-round coverage. Help us continue to highlight LA stories, hold the powerful accountable, and amplify community voices. Your support keeps our reporting free for all to use. Stand with us today.
When they first opened their doors in March 2013, Ronnen says “there was no fine dining plant-based food. So many vegan places just didn’t have a theme, they’d be a hodgepodge — it never made sense to me why you’d eat miso soup and nachos in the same meal,” he says.Ronnen says his goal was “to create plant-based food in a really elevated environment. Something new and fresh for L.A.”
“We never use the word 'vegan' on the menu. We’ve always played in the traditional culinary world. That’s always been my goal. I want to cook for non-vegans. I want to cook for people who could benefit from eating this way,” says Ronnen.Over the years I’ve dabbled in plant-based eating.
And that honestly happened that night, while I was eating the cheese plate. I took a bite of the camembert and I felt my glands swell. An instinctual swallow as my body remembered my dairy allergies. Kite Hill approaches cheesemaking in a traditional artisanal way. They first make a non-dairy milk and combine it with proprietary cultures and enzymes. These curds are then brined and aged in rooms calibrated specifically to the kind of cheese they are producing — brie, blue cheese.