Le Pain Quotidien

Le Pain Quotidien has their vegan options marked with a carrot symbol on their menu. The following information regarding their Los Angeles lacto-vegetarian items is from the Los Angeles Regional Food & Beverage Manager:

"Our vegetarian cheeses are as follows:

• Brie
• Goat Cheese (we use 2, both are vegetarian)
• Aged Cheddar
• Ricotta
• Smoked Mozzarella

Cheese that is not vegetarian:

• Fourme D’ambert (blue)
• Gruyere
• Mozzarella di Bufala (The smoked is a domestic cheese and the bufala is from Italy. It is my experience that European dairies often use animal rennet.)

I am unsure about our parmesan, but would guess it contains animal rennet.

None of our vinaigrettes or sauces contain eggs, except currently we have a “Caesar” on our specials menu and the dressing contains mayonnaise (egg) and parmesan. Feel free to order it without the hard-boiled egg and with another dressing.

You can also order:

• Goat Cheese & Arugula Salad without the parmesan
• Ricotta Tartine with Mission Figs & Honey
• Board of Fine Cheeses swap out the Fourme d’ambert & gruyere for more of the others
• Mesclun Salad w. Assorted Cheeses comes with blue, gruyere, and cheddar…maybe only get with cheddar"

I also received the following information from customer service after I emailed via their website:

• "Chicken Curry Sauce (used on the Mock Chicken Curry Tartine) contains mayonnaise.
• Most of our vienoisserie items are made with eggs or egg whites; the croissant and pain au chocolate do not have egg products as ingredients but are processed in facilities that use eggs so we cannot guarantee there will not be trace amounts of egg in them.
• All of our breads are egg-free except for our Challah.
• Our Blueberry muffin [is] vegan and made without eggs or dairy."