Leonor's Mexican Food

"This isn't a real vegetarian restaurant," sniffed a hard-core vegetarian friend as we eyeballed the menu at Leonor's. Uh-oh. It included a few Mexican specialties made with chicken and beef.

But basically, Leonor's in North Hollywood is the sort of place where customers speak in hushed, reverent tones and the whir of a juicer is the loudest sound you'll hear. Though the decor runs to silk flowers, Christmas tinsel and Formica tabletops, it has attracted quite a few celebrity customers. On the wall you'll see head shots of Peter Falk and (gasp!) Barbra Streisand.

Maybe they came for the menu's Forever Young section, which features raw beets, carrots and cucumbers tossed with a refreshing dressing of cider, soy oil and rice vinegar. Or maybe they like the Forever Young special pizza -- a crunchy whole wheat crust with 10 toppings, among them soy cheese, red onions, sliced avocado and little soy meatballs.

You might start with juiced-to-order carrot or apple juice, followed by dense, crusty home-baked rolls, made from stone-ground wheat, molasses, soy oil and honey. (I would have eaten two or three, but the pallid soy margarine served with them stopped me in my tracks.)

My vegetarian friends ordered simply. One had a plate of steamed broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and spinach, topped with a nice saute of fresh mushrooms and chopped tomatoes. Another ordered the unusual Bolivian pejtu, a big, reasonably tasty dish consisting of lima beans, green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, onions and an energetically spiced Bolivian sauce, something like a lively catsup.

Despite bad vibrations from my charming but intractable vegetarian friends, I insisted on having one of the real beef burritos, which on my plate looked about as big as the Graf Zeppelin. It was a fairly classic example of the genre, stuffed with a mixture of rice, (oil-free) pinto beans and several ounces of lean, finely chopped meat.

You won't run out of choices any time soon. Dory's potato salad is made with steamed potatoes and cabbage, boiled eggs, olives and onions, and the soy mayo doesn't taste much different from store-bought. Joy's Golden Nugget is an avocado sandwich on whole wheat with some soy "chicken" thrown in. The guacamole and chips are perfectly fine, too.

Me, I'm having one more grilled chicken taco--real chicken, that is -- the next time I visit. Non-vegetarians can be intractable too, you know. -- Max Jacobson, Special to The Times

Suggested Dishes:
Forever Young beet salad, $4.50; Dory's potato salad, $5.70; Bolivian pejtu, $8; real beef burrito, $4.50.

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