Just added to the design portfolio—our work for the twice-yearly fund-raising events held by the California League of Conservation Voters. CLCV is the non-partisan political action arm of California’s environmental movement, working to protect the environmental quality of the state by increasing public awareness of the environmental performance of all elected officials, get environmentally responsible candidates elected, and then holding them accountable to the environmental agenda once elected.

The work we did for their most recent event (above) references the Lilya Brik poster art by Russian artist, Alexander Rodchenko, bringing into play additional California- and environmentally centric illustrations.

You can see more materials from this past year’s events and previous events in our print portfolio.

Following up on some requests from friends to post the recipe for the cake Katie recently posted photos of on her Instagram feed.

She made it from scratch using these amazingly fresh lemons from our neighbors’ tree for this past weekend’s Hollywood Orchard Farmer’s Circle using a recipe from a great Australian food blog, Just Eat Love. It turned out really lovely and, from what I’m told, wasn’t terribly difficult to make.

Give it a go if you get a hankering for some quality baking time.

In honor of the best summer movie of all time—Dazed and Confused—and the stellar year that the honorable Mr. Matthew McConaughey has been having, Katie made this excellent poster, which now and forever hangs on our wall.

Hats off to you, sir, and keep on L-I-V-I-N!

One we thing we love about LA is our particular neighborhood—Beachwood Canyon. It was a part of town we knew absolutely nothing about seven months ago, but it has this unique, small-town charm to it that we never would have expected from Los Angeles. There are local theatre performances in an old silent movie theatre, bingo nights, square-dance jamborees, and we’re told our particular street is “legendary” for its street-closing Halloween parties.

At the hub of much of the community activity is the Beachwood Cafe—a beautifully designed, sun-filled cafe about halfway to the Hollywood sign up Beachwood Drive. We took a little time out to talk with owner, Patti Peck, about the cafe and to find out more about our new neighborhood and what makes it so special.

raven + crow: So, how did Beachwood Cafe start? I hear there used to be a more scaled back coffee shop there before you all opened.

Patti Peck: Right, the same family operated it for 37 years and I remember coming up here in the 80s and being aware of what a time bubble it was (and still is). I loved the feeling of the place, so when the landlords asked chefs and restaurateurs to put in their proposals, I jumped at the opportunity. And here we are.

Who did your interior design? We LOVE the wallpaper and overall aesthetic.

Thank you so much for saying that. We got a lot of grief about the changes we made to the place at first, but Barbara Bestor—who is the goddess diva of architecture and design in Los Angeles—was very mindful of echoing the old place (instead of the slash and burn approach) with a fresh face.

And the logo/branding? Again, we’re fans—such a nice blue.

Yep, again that’s Barbara I have to thank for our logo. Someone on her team has a letterpress printing and design company called Krankpress, and she’s a genius named Elinor Nissley.

Well it’s awesome. It all works so well with the cheery mood of the space. How would you describe the cafe to someone who hadn’t been before? I feel like you’ve got takes on pretty traditional cafe fare and home cooking, but then you’ve got some nice dishes like your bowls + your banh mi with some Western influences.

I would describe it as a healthy California coffee shop. We make everything from scratch including our pickles and jams and we source all of our proteins and produce very carefully so we can make the cleanest and tastiest food possible. We do have some ‘all over the map’ dishes on our menu and that’s because the menu has evolved through consensus—these are the things that stuck.

While we’re on it, is it possible to do the chicken banh mi with tofu instead of chicken? …we love banh mi….

Oh gosh yes—why didn’t we think of that? I’m going to put it on the next menu, which is coming soon. Thanks for that.

Oh awesome. We will promptly eat that. Even to an outsider or someone first visiting the cafe, I think it’s fairly obvious that you really try to emphasize local and house-made foods and ingredients. Was that something that was important to you going into this?

I grew up on a farm and I am always trying to get back to that place where you are close to the land and make everything on your table, including the table itself. Also, the first people I met in Beachwood Canyon were the residents who were just starting the Hollywood Orchard, which is a virtual community orchard. Lucky for me, they are really great and do fun stuff in the community, which I get to be a part of. Also, I get to be a recipient for local fruit that gets canned or jellied.

Yeah yeah yeah! We had no idea we were moving to Ground Zero for the Hollywood Orchard when we moved to Beachwood. We were just planting some new trees with the team a couple weeks ago.

Yeah, I don’t know who thought of starting the orchard, but I’m so glad they did. We made grilled loquats last year that went on a pork chop and Minh made some coffee cake with them; she also pickled some.

Right—we heard that Chef Minh, who helped open the restaurant, has moved on after these initial few years. I know that was planned from the start, but how do you see that changing the Cafe in the near- or long-term?

Minh brought so many good flavors to the menu and we’ve kept a good percentage of them as our back bone, but it changes depending on who’s designing the menu and how the backbone fits the body.

Nicely put. We’re both long-time vegans, so we were especially excited to see so many vegan options on your menus. Do you feel like there’s more of a need for restaurants to cater to a meat-free crowd than there has been in the past?

Yes, and I hope that keeps expanding until it gets popular with our country’s interior. I think so many people think of eating vegan as a punishment—I know I did once—but I feel like it is more sophisticated and comfortable for people to cook vegan now than it used to be. I mean, you still have the vegan food that is trying to mock chicken or bbq beef, and is all processed, but I like the vegan food that is delicious because of the same things that make all food delicious, ie., the sweet and sour or salty and the crunch vs mush ratio. Just honest ingredients in a clever combination; that’s what i like.

Hah. I’m going to start a band called Crunch vs Mush. Love it. Now, I know you all have daily specials—Taco Tuesday; Whatever Wednesday; Curry Thursday; Fish n Chips Friday—but we haven’t check any of those out yet. Are any of those…veganizable? …I know, that’s totally not a word. Oh, and what’s ‘Whatever Wednesday’—culinary catch-all?

Yes, we can do tofu tacos and the curry on Thursday is…oops, no it’s not vegan because it has fish sauce in the curry paste…darn it. Also, Wednesday became Meaty Meat Pie Wednesday, so not vegan there.

Ooh, if you’re keen on trying other curry pastes, the brand we use is mostly vegan except for a few of their kinds (Maesri is the brand—I think they do bulk sales). Just a thought, but definitely let us know if you give them a try. We can be official taste-testers. So tell us more about what drew you to open a cafe in Beachwood specifically? What do you like about it?

It’s a small town in the middle of the big bad city. I love the kids and the families and how Astrid’s parents told her if she ever gets lost, to just go to the cafe and we would take care of her. So it’s the community that draws me here and our cafe is an anchor in the community. It’s a place for people to connect.

Ah. I don’t know who Astrid is, but that’s super-cute. Do you get a ton of people coming in asking for directions to the Hollywood sign?

Yes and we tell them directions are free with purchase. 

Nice. Any specific goals or future plans for the cafe?

We just started doing delivery and that’s going well. I am in the process of expanding our baked goods with some savory and sweet stuff, as well as vegan and gluten-free options. Then I want to tackle a prepared food division for families to stop and get dinner to take home.

Oh, that’s cool.

Oh and let me plug this cooking show that will air in April that I’m a contestant on—it’s called Chopped and I had so much fun doing it. When it airs, we’re going to do the menu from the show that night and watch the show in the cafe—can you come? It’ll be fun!

We’ll totally come!

Becahwood Cafe is located at 2695 N. Beachwood Drive and open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner Tuesday – Saturday; breakfast + lunch Sundays. You can view their menu online and take a look to see if they deliver to your area. We recommend the vegan burger and Sophia’s Bowl.

Below, the cafe menu; Sophia’s Bowl; the vegan burger; Katie enjoying a fresh basil lemonade; a Red Eye; Hollywood Orchard merch; house-made pickles; and window butterflies.

We have this potentially mythical concept, I think, that one day we’ll finally be ‘settled’ in our new lives here in California and that, somehow, things will suddenly become normal. That may well be true—though, if it is, I’m sure it’ll be one of those realities you only recognize well after it’s become a fact—but, regardless, I’m beginning to realize two things:
1. Normalcy isn’t arriving any time soon; and
2. Our normal lives here, in LA, are going to be very different than our normal lives in Brooklyn.

That last bit should be obvious, and it is if it’s thought or talked out, I think—it’s why we made these big life changes, after all, for something different + new. But it’s still something we consciously have to remind ourselves of because I think our natural tendency is to wait for the normalcy we left behind that was our former lives.

All of that serves to say—in a wildly over-dramatic, long-winded manner, I might add—that I have to keep stopping myself from saying ‘Now that we’re starting to get settled in, (insert things we’ve been meaning to do).’

So, without having found a good alternative as of yet…. Now that we’re starting to get settled in, we’ve finally managed to add the work we did on MooShoes‘ new Web site to our portfolio.

As you may or may not know, MooShoes is a NYC-based shoe + accessories store that specializes in cruelty-free (i.e. – leather-free) products. What’s more, after 12+ years of being in business, MooShoes has become an institution of sorts, with their Orchard Street store serving as a de facto hub of the cultural + social side of the animal rights realm and their online presence growing year by year.

We’re happy to count sisters and store-owners, Erica + Sara Kubersky, as friends of ours after so many years of work, so we were more than happy to dig in deep when they asked us to work with the company they’d chosen to overhaul their point-of-sale system and site back-end, NYC-based Microbizit.

After rounds of initial front-end designs and proposed site structures, we created a number of page templates that covered the extent of the fully built-out site and then trouble-shot the design as Microbizit worked to put our design into action. After the initial site went into development, we built out brand + category pages with custom headers and continued to edit copy + imagery leading up to the site launch.

The final product updated the MooShoes site to bring it up-to-speed with modern, mainstream online stores while growing the brand we developed for them back in 2005 + 2006.

Take a look at the site in full when you get a chance—who couldn’t use another pair of shoes?

For more information on why we choose not to support the leather industry, check out PETA’s write-up, including a message from Stella McCartney, a handy infographic (also pictured to the right), and a cruelty-free clothing guide.

Australian band Glass Towers very recently caught our ear in the studio and, with their very first shows stateside coming up later this week in LA, we thought it proper to take some time to talk with frontman, Ben Hannam, about his song-writing inspirations, Jack Kerouac, and his stage presence, which is not drug-induced.

“Basically I was around sixteen at the time and I had been writing some songs in my bedroom and I got a bit bored of just being a bedroom musician, I guess,” says the now 22 Hannam. So he looked where any logically minded high-schooler would to build out a band—music class. Thus, in 2008, Glass Towers was born.

In the years since, the band has slowly gained notoriety on its home shores—playing Australia’s  Splendour In The Grass festival and getting picked up early on by the Triple J radio program, Unearthed, which features unsigned local musicians. Last year, the band released its debut full-length album, Halcyon Days, supporting the release with a sold-out tour down under.

With Australia firmly conquered, the band’s now moving the act stateside, playing its first ever American shows this weekend at LA’s Bootleg.

“It’s our first time in America, so it’s really exciting—can’t wait,” Hannam told us. “It’s funny, you grow up in Australia watching so many movies and pretty much every single movie’s made in America and so I think people get, like, pre-ordained viewpoints of what America’s like, but I’m kind of more excited to just explore it.” He went on to explain the origin of his fascination with exploring the US—”I mean, one of my favorite authors is Jack Kerouac and, I won’t have much time off because I’ll be playing too many shows, but I’d just love to do as much exploring as I can. I’d love to go back to America after this tour and kind of see the real America, you know what I mean, like outside of being a band, like kind of really exploring it properly? I’d love to do that.”

So far, Ben’s plans once he gets to LA are pretty humble though, with a visit to Amoeba Music and getting over the jet lag high on the priority list. “I’m really bad at sleeping on planes—I’ve been plying on planes my whole and I’ve never gotten any better at it.”

Of Halcyon Days, the band’s debut full-length, Hannam says it gives voice to his pining for days not-so-long-past. “Basically, when I was growing up—when I was 18 or 17—I was really nostalgic…or I was kind of nostalgic before I should have been nostalgic. It was kind of like present tense nostalgia. I used to call myself a nostalgia-holic. I’d kind of go to house parties and do that kind of stuff and I’d get kind of, like…not melancholy, not sad, but I’d kind of always be looking back…like, a party I went to a week ago, I would look back on it with kind of like a fondness and a kind of nostalgic outlook.”

He continues, bringing his literary influence back into mix—”Basically I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac when I was 16 and I kind of really dug his writing style, his kind of spontaneous prose, I guess. And that kind of influenced me to come home from parties and just, like, scroll down every kind of detail, every character at a party, every kind of conversation I had. And so I kind of built up these diaries of ideas and just crazy characters and events that happened in my life. And that’s where I drew the inspiration for the record. So, yeah, in a way it’s kind of a semi-concept record of growing up and finding your place and…being a teenager, really.”

And, though it’s new to most of us, the band’s already excited to move on to new material. “The new stuff I’m writing now, it’s really different. It’s just really exciting to write towards the second record. It’s kind of hard to keep the same energy when you’ve been playing the same songs for, like, a good five years, over and over again.”

Regardless of whether it’s new to us or new to them, we’re excited to see them play, especially given Hannam’s description of their live sets.

“Live, compared to our studio record and our EP, the songs are a lot more raw; there’s more energy in it; we kind of get…when you see us live, you’ll understand. We get really kind of wrapped up in the music and we kind of feel it. We’ve got some kind of crazed reviews before, like people think I’m high or I have some sort of weird problem with me.”

Quite the bar to set for your very first US shows, but we’ve got every confidence they’ll live up to the hype. See for yourself—Glass Towers plays the Bootleg Bar Saturday night, opening for Dub FX, and then Sunday as part of the 6th annual Aussie BBQ—a day-long musical extravaganza at BootlegHiFi, presenting Australia’s best + brightest before they head off to SXSW in Austin.

Heading to SXSW? They’ll be at Bungalow Bar, 3.12; The Brew Exchange, 3.14; Maggie Mae’s, 3.15; and, if past years are any indication, one thousand other showcases in between. New York—catch them at Piano’s March 18 + at Rough Trade March 19. A full listing of tour dates including other cities along the way can be found on the band’s Facebook page.

You can listen to “Griffon”, the lead song from the debut EP, above. Get the EP, Collarbone Jungle, via iTunes or from the band on the road. Their full-length, Halcyon Days, is set for a stateside release later this summer.

Band Photo: Wilk 

Forget who won big, who was snubbed, and who wore it best—here’s what we ate last night.

American Hustle Disco Fries—Potato fries covered with vegan cheese + gravy—decadently, depressingly delicious, like the 70s.
Dallas Buyers Club Sandwiches—Hickory Smoked Tofurky Deli Slices, sriracha tempeh ‘bacon’, lettuce, tomato, mayo, finished off with a little AZT sprinkled on top.
12 Years a Slave Blackberry Ink—Blackberry compote syrup to mix with any vodka, gin, or tequila drink; use in place of vermouth in a bourbon drink; or attempt to write home to seek rescue after twelve years of enslavement.
Leonardo DiCaprese Salad—Salted tofu, heirloom tomato, fresh basil—simple + classy, like the Wolf of Wall Street (note: we didn’t catch the Wolf of Wall Street; it was classy, right?).
The Great Guacsby—A story of the breakdown of avocados in the face of modern tomatoes, onions, and jalepeños based not on status + inherited position but on innovation and an ability to meet ever-changing consumer needs. Obvs.
Wolf of Walnut Lentil Dip—Smokey walnut lentil dip for the dipping of crackers, daikon chips, or Jonah Hill’s junk.
HERbed Nut Mix—A mixed herb nut medley so good you could fall in love with it and start to have an oddly socially accepted relationship with it publicly.

Who doesn’t love the Oscars? While they can’t boast the wild-eyed, drunken chaos of the Golden Globes, they bestow an undeniable shimmering pomp and circumstance to America’s only royalty—the Celebrity. But, much like the events of Britain’s royalty, the Academy Awards can get a bit Dullsvile.

Which is why it helps to gather your friends around the television and throw a fête worthy of such a night, complete with themed snacks (Dallas Buyers Club Sandwiches anyone?), Oscar-nominated -film-inspired costumes, and play-along ballots paired with a healthy wager.

You can head over to the Oscars’ Web site for the official ballot…or you can download ours, which, we’ll point out, has reciprocated twenty-four-fold for the Joaquin Phoenix snub.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone, and a very merry Oscars to you all.

Clearly we like this.

Greeting cards + matching pins by Portland, Oregon’s Phun House. See their full line of greeting cards, pins, really awesome medals, and various other gifts on their site.

Last summer, before embarking on our great western adventure, we raved about the then-new vegan offerings from Brooklyn purveyor of fine ice creams, Van Leeuwen. Now that we’re Los-Angeles-based, it very easily—sadly—could have been added to the long list of things we miss about New York, along with dear friends, big old buildings, fast-paced-walking, and frigid, soul-crushing cold.

Wait, maybe strike that last one.

So imagine our delight when, driving by Oaks Gourmet Market on Franklin—a mere stone’s throw from our street in Beachwood Canyon—a sign reading ‘NEW VAN LEEUWEN ORGANIC VEGAN ICE CREAMS’ bold-facedly informed us we could promptly omit that item from the list of things to miss about New York.

What’s more, with their new packaged line, Van Leeuwen’s expanded from their initial vegan offerings of chocolate + vanilla to include six exciting new flavors: Mint Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk, Banana Nut, Sicilian Pistachio, Salted Caramel, and Coffee Crunch.

GMO-, gluten-, and soy-free, the vegan line of ice creams focuses on showcasing the purity in taste of limited, largely local ingredients. From their site:
“With just a handful of simple and pure ingredients we have created the creamiest and most decadent vegan frozen dessert possible. Van Leeuwen Vegan is always free of stabilizers, gums and thickeners. Made in small batches in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, our flavors are a celebration of some of the finest small farmers, chocolate makers, and producers in the world.”

The line also sets itself apart from the majority of recent successes by others in the vegan frozen dessert field by bringing in not only coconut milk but also cashew milk as a main ingredient—the primary one, in fact.

The result, from our recent experience, is fucking awesome. We picked up the Coffee Crunch, with crushed beans from Brooklyn Roasters, Toby’s Estate Coffee; Sicilian Pistachio, which is smooth and rich, made with finely ground pistachios imported from Bronte, Sicily; and—my favorite, by far—the Salted Caramel, a salty-meets-decadently-sweet, crave-worthy concoction that tastes (I imagine) like unicorns + rainbows.

The new vegan line is now available at all Van Leeuwen locations (Boerum Hill, Greenpoint, and the East Village), Whole Foods Markets in the Northeast Region, various other NYC locations, (randomly) the market down the street from us in LA, and rotating in by the scoop in their trucks in NYC and, now, LA (woo!).

Check Van Leeuwen’s Web site for a full list of carriers and follow them on Twitter for truck locations. We’ll certainly quickly work our way through the rest of the line and will be sure to post to our Facebook page when we do.