To pick a “best” vegan restaurant in California is, inevitably, a difficult endeavor—one that merits explanation. The state is no stranger to the plant-based movement, and, indeed, helped popularize the trend on a national level in the ‘60s and ‘70s with iconic restaurants like Follow Your Heart (of the popular brand Veganaise). Since then, there have sprung more contemporary re-imaginations of vegan cuisine, like Café Gratitude and Tal Ronnen’s elevated Crossroads. And then there are a host of “California cuisine” restaurants that don’t identify as vegan (and aren’t), but are brilliantly vegetable centered, like Josef Centeno’s P.Y.T. in downtown L.A. All this is to say: There are many noteworthy plant-based restaurants nearby. But Julia’s is different. A few times in your life, you eat at a place where the food is prepared with such love, such attention, that it has an emotional impact on you. Julia’s is such a place. It’s small, with only eight tables and a bar. There’s usually only one waiter and one or two people in the kitchen. Chef owner Anthony Gerbino has no dedicated cooks and does most everything himself. Still, somehow he manages to craft ravioli of the most delicate sort, stuffed with chanterelles or Agaricus lilaceps that he’s foraged from the misty woods of Big Sur. (He’s been doing this safely for years, and is currently up to thirty mushroom varieties.) He dries candy cap mushrooms and then powders them into a caramel for the rest of the year, and serves them with a coconut cream that is at once earthy yet sweet. There are pizzas (gluten-free optional) with locally roasted vegetables and melt-in-your mouth eggplant, peppery and garlicky. The menu changes every night, sometimes offering the comfort of yellow dhal that is breathed through with fresh turmeric, pierced with whole-roasted cumin. Other times, there are bowls of Thai curry that, while not facsimiles of their Bangkok street counterparts, are complex and nourishing with few rivals. Everything is well seasoned and bursting with flavor; one never desires to reach for salt or hot sauce. You can’t spend more than $40 in this place for two people, but it’s worth so much more. Gerbino’s emotional investment in the restaurant shows; we hope that Julia’s will continue as it is for a long, long time. m.juliasofpacificgrove.com