Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Greenhaus puts broccoli on pizza, and you should see what they do with tofu
Morena eatery makes mostly vegan, occasionally Indian, fusion fare
The veggie pizza at Greenhaus, made with broccoli, onions, peppers, tomatoes, and vegan cheese
Video:
FEAST!: Greenhaus puts broccoli on pizza, and you should see what they do with tofu
Broccoli on pizza has become one of those easy to reach punchlines tossed around by snickering California bashers, right up there with dumb blond jokes, and that we screw in lightbulbs by holding the bulb in place and waiting for the world to revolve around us.
Well, trolls may run the country now, but I'm not about to let their mockery suppress my inner truth: broccoli belongs on pizza!
In fact, allow me to troll those jokers right back. This week, I happily devoured a broccoli-topped pizza made with vegan mozzarella. Take that!
A small, mostly plant-based counter shop
With the arrival of a new year, I'd been casting about for a new vegan restaurant to cover, and found something close in the Morena District. Turns out, Greenhaus is only mostly vegan, and it's already been around a few years. The shop's only new to me because I missed noticing on its arrival during the thick of the pandemic.
Turns out, Gubi and Katrina Khimda opened it a month after they married, in the summer of 2020, and continue to work the small shop themselves, together. They each grew up in the business—he in Indian restaurants, she (a native American) at the Pacific Beach Hawaiian eatery, Leilani's Cafe—and their experiences are reflected in a menu loaded with fusion.
For example, my vegan pizza with broccoli ($14, including red onions, bell peppers, and cherry tomatoes) wasn't made with a standard, tomato-based sauce, rather with a coconut curry. And if that's not enough to make a pizza purist squirm, consider this: instead of traditional pizza dough crusts, these pies are baked crisp on the house naan flatbread.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you Greenhaus belongs on your pizza top ten list (unless you're vegan, in which case it definitely does, because the options in this town are slim). But I will say the drawbacks of vegan mozzarella become less noticeable when you're mulling an unexpected curry flavor. But mostly because this food tastes good, and you feel good after eating it.
Spiced chickpeas in a naan wrap
Those two points seem to be true across the board here. The only non-vegan ingredients on the menu (in keeping with the frequent Indian influence and added by customer request) are paneer cheese and tandoori chicken. And those are as easy to avoid as the optional ($3.75) gluten-free pizza crust (I can only be so Californian).
Entrees include naan wraps and corn or flour tortilla tacos, made with a choice of proteins, the most popular being seasoned, sauteed chickpeas. I enjoyed mine within a naan wrap, having to learn the hard way that I couldn't dip it in the provided tikka masala dipping sauce without making a chickpea mess. But that's okay, I'm a Southern Californian, well practiced in pouring salsa into my burrito, one bite at a time.
Ordering at Greenhaus is done via digital kiosk (to the left of the front door), though I found the friendly owners on hand to answer questions about the menu, including about the house-made teas and smoothies. The ginger extract in my sparkling ginger lemonade ($4.25) really felt nice on my post-new year stomach.
"Treena's Roll," a plant-based take on Hawaiian spam dish, musubi
Fellow customers tend to be friendly as well. I met a regular who swears by Greenhaus's fried chickpea veggie burger ($12, and he admits he never orders anything else). I was almost convinced, but was instead tempted by Treena's Roll, Katrina's yummy, musubu-inspired rice and seaweed roll that replaces sliced of spam with marinated, fried tofu.
Yes, tofu. Also offered as a pizza topping at Greenhaus. But let's save that battle for another day.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Greenhaus puts broccoli on pizza, and you should see what they do with tofu
Morena eatery makes mostly vegan, occasionally Indian, fusion fare
Greenhaus puts broccoli on pizza, and you should see what they do with tofu
Morena eatery makes mostly vegan, occasionally Indian, fusion fare
The veggie pizza at Greenhaus, made with broccoli, onions, peppers, tomatoes, and vegan cheese
Video:
FEAST!: Greenhaus puts broccoli on pizza, and you should see what they do with tofu
Broccoli on pizza has become one of those easy to reach punchlines tossed around by snickering California bashers, right up there with dumb blond jokes, and that we screw in lightbulbs by holding the bulb in place and waiting for the world to revolve around us.
Well, trolls may run the country now, but I'm not about to let their mockery suppress my inner truth: broccoli belongs on pizza!
In fact, allow me to troll those jokers right back. This week, I happily devoured a broccoli-topped pizza made with vegan mozzarella. Take that!
A small, mostly plant-based counter shop
With the arrival of a new year, I'd been casting about for a new vegan restaurant to cover, and found something close in the Morena District. Turns out, Greenhaus is only mostly vegan, and it's already been around a few years. The shop's only new to me because I missed noticing on its arrival during the thick of the pandemic.
Turns out, Gubi and Katrina Khimda opened it a month after they married, in the summer of 2020, and continue to work the small shop themselves, together. They each grew up in the business—he in Indian restaurants, she (a native American) at the Pacific Beach Hawaiian eatery, Leilani's Cafe—and their experiences are reflected in a menu loaded with fusion.
For example, my vegan pizza with broccoli ($14, including red onions, bell peppers, and cherry tomatoes) wasn't made with a standard, tomato-based sauce, rather with a coconut curry. And if that's not enough to make a pizza purist squirm, consider this: instead of traditional pizza dough crusts, these pies are baked crisp on the house naan flatbread.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you Greenhaus belongs on your pizza top ten list (unless you're vegan, in which case it definitely does, because the options in this town are slim). But I will say the drawbacks of vegan mozzarella become less noticeable when you're mulling an unexpected curry flavor. But mostly because this food tastes good, and you feel good after eating it.
Spiced chickpeas in a naan wrap
Those two points seem to be true across the board here. The only non-vegan ingredients on the menu (in keeping with the frequent Indian influence and added by customer request) are paneer cheese and tandoori chicken. And those are as easy to avoid as the optional ($3.75) gluten-free pizza crust (I can only be so Californian).
Entrees include naan wraps and corn or flour tortilla tacos, made with a choice of proteins, the most popular being seasoned, sauteed chickpeas. I enjoyed mine within a naan wrap, having to learn the hard way that I couldn't dip it in the provided tikka masala dipping sauce without making a chickpea mess. But that's okay, I'm a Southern Californian, well practiced in pouring salsa into my burrito, one bite at a time.
Ordering at Greenhaus is done via digital kiosk (to the left of the front door), though I found the friendly owners on hand to answer questions about the menu, including about the house-made teas and smoothies. The ginger extract in my sparkling ginger lemonade ($4.25) really felt nice on my post-new year stomach.
"Treena's Roll," a plant-based take on Hawaiian spam dish, musubi
Fellow customers tend to be friendly as well. I met a regular who swears by Greenhaus's fried chickpea veggie burger ($12, and he admits he never orders anything else). I was almost convinced, but was instead tempted by Treena's Roll, Katrina's yummy, musubu-inspired rice and seaweed roll that replaces sliced of spam with marinated, fried tofu.
Yes, tofu. Also offered as a pizza topping at Greenhaus. But let's save that battle for another day.