Positively Healthy at Cafe Gratitude; JG at Antojitos Carmen

1) Larchmont: SIV is seemingly still on vacation, so again this week LAT writer Jessica Gelt fills in. Today's venue of discussion falls to Cafe Gratitude, a "restaurant...so uniformly bright and cheery that it borders on pathological. Think Disneyland gone vegan, sans the heartland tourists wearing fanny packs." Cafe Gratitude serves a mix of organic raw and cooked vegan fare, edibles are "...clean and good. It feels healthful. You feel healthy...The best dishes will fill you up but not weigh you down..." Try the I Am Grounded red-skin potatoes topped with a "spicy cashew nacho cheese sauce that you'll want to dip everything in," and "[d]on't miss out on the I Am Warm-Hearted grilled organic polenta with tangy puttanesca sauce and cashew ricotta...Eat as much as you like, because you won't leave feeling ready to unhitch your belt and lie on the couch in front of your latest Netflix conquest." [LAT]

1) Boyle Heights: Try huarache de huitlacoche from Antojitos Carmen, says The Goldster. The dish is "a footlong 'sandal' of fried corn dough, too hot to touch but too compelling not to, layered with steaming middens of beans and aromatics and corn smut sauteed with onions, sprinkled with lettuce and crumbled cheese, striped like the Mexican flag — why not! — with red salsa and green salsa and a little Mexican cream, and maybe with the pale, hell-hot habanero salsa." Other than that, J. Gold comes for "the crisp, artfully fried discs of masa: the saucer-shaped sopes; the fat, split gorditas; the fried-pie quesadillas that make up the heart of the Mexico City antojitos kitchen, stuffed with the smoky beef stew called tinga, with squash blossoms, with soft slices of beef tongue, with grilled beef, with stewed pigskin. If you want cheese in your quesadilla, you have to specify quesadilla de queso, which sounds redundant, but pays off." [LAW]

The Elsewhere: The Find discovers Jun Won, Caroline on Crack tries Father's Office's new desserts, Eat: LA discusses Torihei, kevinEats ramen at Breadbar, Midtown Lunch hits Ruen Pair, and Refined Palate picks Bar Bouchon.