Christine Chiao

Roasted beet farro salad

There's always a bustle when you stop by Olive & Thyme in Toluca Lake during lunch on an average weekday. By lunch, we mean anytime between 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. This is a part of town where real entertainment business is discussed -- a little less have my people call your people and a little more we need P.O.V's on competitive releases in the third quarter -- amidst young mothers chatting over entrée salads.

Owners Melina Davies and her husband Christian Davies opened their cafe and deli on Riverside Drive in February 2011, with no outside investors and zero restaurant experience between the two of them. They put their savings, IRA, and even house on the line for Melina to transition away from the movie industry and into the food industry.

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Dylan + Jeni

Karen Hatfield with husband Quinn Hatfield

At their restaurants Hatfield's, on the southern edge of Hollywood, and The Sycamore Kitchen, in Fairfax, Karen Hatfield holds the title of pastry chef, while her husband Quinn is the chef. Their relationship has been personal for almost as long as it has been professional. And whereas the restaurants may feature Karen's sweets and pastries, her official title, unsurprisingly, also only offers a partial description.

"I always had a role somewhat in the savory as well. With The Sycamore Kitchen, that's taken a even greater turn," says Hatfield who was trained in professional cooking at the now-shuttered Los Angeles Culinary Institute. "As we started opening our own restaurants, I continued to be the pastry chef, but I also moved into the front of the house and started doing management.

"Now I oversee that restaurant a little bit more. Quinn oversees Hatfield's a little bit more. But we collaborate a lot."

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May is burger month, so it seems almost obligatory that Squid Ink get around to one of those "Best of" lists. But after eating 30 burgers in 30 days, declaring our favorite upscale burger and chowing down on five of our favorite burger stands, there didn't seem to be much ground left to cover. Thankfully, an office full of waistline-minded food writers suddenly worried about their summer figures provided the answer: veggie burgers. After all of this talk about butchers and beef and salt and fat and cheese and -- uh oh, we're getting hungry again -- it seemed only fair to give veggie burgers their due.

With a wide array of base ingredients that included everything from brown rice to yams to mushrooms to that wheat gluten putty known as seitan, it wasn't easy to compare and contrast the veggie burgers on offer around town. Some opted for real cheese, some for no cheese, others for vegan cheese. More than one location tried to make their veggie burgers as actual-burger-like as possible, while many proudly vegan restaurants shaved and pressed their way into a finished product that didn't look (or taste) anything like a juicy moo-burger. Still, there was a patty, a bun, some toppings and a slathering of condiments. Sounds like a burger to us. So after weeks of veg-heavy noshing, from upscale vegan eateries to the vegetarian options that almost seem like afterthoughts on some menus, these are the best veggie burgers we found.

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Frederick Guerrero/Maximiliano

Linguine with rapini and lemon

Andre Guerrero has covered enough mileage at restaurants across Los Angeles that your immediate association of the chef is it's own a litmus test for Angelenos. Millennials will recognize The Oinkster; Gen X-ers might recall Duet or Linq; and Baby Boomers will likely associate him with Café Le Monde and Stoney Point. He now spends most of his time at Maximiliano in Highland Park, where he oversees Italian food by way of America.

"I grew up in Glassell Park. I've moved around a lot. I've lived in Woodland Hills and Santa Monica. I've been all over. When I got married and had children, we ended up moving to Glassell Park. All of our family was there and I had a lot of friends in the area," says Guerrero. "It just felt like home. It felt like this is our neighborhood. When the space became available at Highland Park for Maximiliano, we jumped on it."

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Rob Inderrieden

Dosa at Mayura

There are as many kinds of dosas as there are moms in South India -- which is to say, a lot. This Indian breakfast and snack food is a thin, crispy crepe made from a lightly fermented batter of ground rice and lentils. The batter is ladled onto a hot griddle and then quickly spread to paper thinness by circling the ladle on the griddle in ever-expanding circles. A homemade dosas might be the width of a dinner plate; a restaurant or street-vendor dosa could be the length of your arm.

A dosa is eaten by hand -- tear off chunks with your thumb and first finger of your right hand while anchoring the dosa with the other three fingers. While plain dosas were used for comparison's sake here, there's no need to limit yourself: They come wrapped around spiced potatoes (masala dosa), spread out even larger and thinner (paper dosa), made out of a wheat batter (rava dosa) and in many more variations. Turn the page for our five favorites.

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Christine Chiao

Red chili oil wontons at Bean Sprouts Restaurant

Taiwanese cuisine has gained recognition for its street food, night-market eats and even beef noodle soup, but what might be overlooked is the accessibility of vegetarian fare throughout the island. A Jan. 13, 2011, article published in CommonWealth Magazine reported that flexible vegetarianism becoming a greater part of the average Taiwanese diet has led to a greater variety of options. As a result, options can range from upscale restaurants to convenience stores with "a wide array of meat-free selections."

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Sotto Restaurant

Chickpea panelle at Sotto

The sensibility of Zach Pollack and Steve Samson's Pico-Robertson restaurant Sotto is clearly laid out on their menu. Take the appetizer of chickpea panelle, a traditional Sicilian street food, which has been available at the Southern Italian restaurant since it was opened in 2011.

"They're basically chickpea fritters. They're really easy to make, but they're also really easy to screw up. It's one of those things that you have to have patience with. It might not come out as well as you would like the first time, but you'll get it if you keep trying," Samson says.

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Christine Chiao

Burmese Gin Thoke Melon Salad

A three-week trip to an ashram in the Indian town of Ahmednagar in 1981 shifted Susan Feniger's (Street, Top Chef Masters, etc.) aesthetic and approach as a chef. Before then, her professional purview was almost exclusively located within traditional French restaurants on the East coast to the West, including Ma Maison in Los Angeles with then-chef Wolfgang Puck.

"I was completely blown away by the flavors. It really changed the direction of my palate and what I was drawn to," says Feniger. "I loved the whole culture. It was my first introduction to bangles and I've worn a million bangles of all different styles ever since then. I'm still drawn to those colors too, like turmeric, cayenne and cumin."

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Anthony Albright via flickr

Last week, the news came out that nearly half of all meat in the US is contaminated with superbugs. Unsurprisingly, this information was met with a huge reaction, and much of the chatter was around whether the abundance of grossness in our country's meat supply was a reason to give up eating meat altogether.

"April 17, 2013: the day I became vegetarian," tweeted Brett in response to our story about the contamination. "Gross. Another great reason to be vegan." tweeted @DrivingFrank. We got a lot of other responses that were similar.

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Hope Lee

faux shrimp at Soho Thai

Lomita is known for two things -- a railroad museum and as the place where Olympian Jim Thorpe died -- and veganism isn't one of them. But thanks to Soho Thai Fusion Bar & Grill, that might change.

Soho's menu features a "Vegan Zone," which includes soy chicken, soy shrimp fish, soy crab, soy salmon and tofu steak. These items can be substituted into any of the eatery's "regular" meals, with a handy reassurance that you aren't getting animal flesh because the menu states that these dishes contain "No Meat, No Fish, No Poultry, No Eggs, No Milk, No MSG, No Fish Sauce, No Animal Products."

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