Layonna's — Restaurant in Oakland

After having spent some time in Taiwan, I wanted to recreate some of the amazing vegan food I'd had there. Layonna's to the rescue! One of the best sources for imported, vegan, Taiwanese foods in the bay. She has the quick to prepare things frozen (steamed buns, dumplings), ingredients that are hard to come by (tofu skins) and some things that I've only ever seen as garnishes that are quite amazing - if you've never had soy sauce paste, it's an incredible way of adding flavor that really "sticks" to things like dumplings. Owner is super friendly and will help you find anything in her...

Be careful of the food quality here. I asked the store staff about the GMO, the answer was "we do not have GMO products here". I know for a fact that the imitation meat from Taiwan are 99.99% GMOs. Last time I was there, I also saw signs the thawed frozen food got refrozen.

I switched to Yang Kee Trading in Richmond, because the store owner was very honest about the GMO, and much nicer...

I was told about this market by multiple people. It was my first time last week. Wow! All the fake meat products. It was super exciting getting to pick out all the yummy looking items to cook with. I definitely recommend the Lemongrass chicken, fake beef chunks, bacon, and jerky. All are amazing. I'll continue to support them and hope others do too.

Did I mention they're...