Eating with John Chow – Real Food Daily

In 1986, Ann Gentry relocated to Los Angele, and became the personal chef to actor/director Danny DeVito. She created the idea of a home food delivery service that served truly healthful and creative meals. From 1988 to 1992 Real Food Daily thrived as a home delivery service.

Ann rode the green food movement by taking two different California trends — vegetarian foods and organic seasonal cooking — and came up with a cuisine that is as interesting and delicious as it is healthful. In June of 1993, Ann opened Real Food Daily as a sit-down restaurant in Santa Monica, which was where we had lunch. The West Hollywood location opened in 1998, and a third location opened in Pasadena in May of 2012. In addition to the three restaurants, busy travelers going in and out of LAX can also check out Real Food Daily inside the airport.

Ann must have been an Internet pioneer because the domain for his restaurant is RealFood.com. Either she registered it when Internet domain names were starting, or she paid a fortune for the name. Either way, it’s a kick-ass domain name.

The food at Real Food is pretty kick ass as well. We started with the vegetable miso soup, and worked our way to the supreme burrito and spicy BLT, while washing it down with a sweet green juice. Dessert came in the way of a couple of really sweat tasting cupcakes.

If Real Food Daily has a downside, it would be its pricing. The burrito cost $14 and the BLT cost $12. This is 20% to 30% more than the competition. While the food is good, I don’t think it’s any better than what you can get at Native Food, and it doesn’t come close to matching Seabirds Kitchen.

While the soup and sandwich is expensive, the drinks and cupcakes are outrageous. The sweet green juice cost $9, and I can’t name any place other than Real Food Daily that has the balls to charge $6 for one cupcake! However, they were damn great tasting cupcakes. Lunch for two came to $75. It’s a good thing I live the Dot Com Lifestyle.

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