Happy Elephant Vegan

Took my visiting (mostly vegan) family here last night for dinner.
While the hostess/​waitress/​bus person (one person) was SUPER sweet and the food was very tasty… the service was ridiculously slow, considering at max capacity (which it was not) there are only about 10 – 12 small tables.
There was a «help wanted» sign in the window, so hopefully once they ‘staff up’ service speeds will pick up as well.
They have an incredible menu and everything we tried was delicious. Hope that their service speed will one day be as impressive as their food.

I was definitely a happy elephant after having four Vegan sushi rolls (Deep Ocean, Broadway, E-​bomb, Emerald) for dinner I’m incredibly happy I found this place on Unilocal scrolling through vegan restaurants. The service is good and the food is delicious with many great choices to choose from. My boyfriend loves this place, so we will be back very often and soon.
P. S. Be patient, it’s a small restaurant with two people working. I promise it’s worth the wait

Why does it take an hour to make two sushi rolls?
The foods is fantastic but Dear God, if you’re ordering hungry bring a cut lunch to eat whilst you wait!

They are closed on Mondays. Owners need to change on website and Unilocal.Very disappointing to drive all the way there and find they are closed.

Soo… Originally I was going to give Happy Elephant Vegan 1 star but I felt like that was a little harsh considering that the food was good and the server was friendly. Here’s why:
The service was SO SLOW. I don’t think I’ve ever spent 1.5 hours in a restaurant that was fairly empty. My mom and I only ordered 3 things; the Happy Elephant Roll, the Deep Ocean Roll, and the Mango Sticky Rice. The wait time between each roll was about 15 minutes… There were only 3 people working the restaurant and they would alternate between making/​serving each table’s dishes. Extremely inefficient.
However, service aside; the food was good. Not good enough to make me want to go back and wait as long as I did but still good. The rolls were very flavorful from the sauces that were drizzled on top of the rolls. Props to them for making veggie rolled in rice as tasty as they did. I’d recommend both the Happy Elephant and Deep Ocean rolls. The Mango Sticky Rice came out the quickest out of the 3 items we ordered and it was quite delish.
The presentation of the food was very nice too. The rolls were a little tiny though. My mom and I considered ordering another roll but decided otherwise because we didn’t want to wait longer than we already had.
I don’t recommend this restaurant unless you don’t mind a long wait and have some time to kill. The food is good but expect to wait a while.

We enjoyed our dinner here. Unfortunately the vegan sushi chef was out this evening so no sushi for us. Instead we had a very nice miso ramen, some pad thai and a green papaya salad. All healthy and delicious. We will come back for the vegan sushi for sure. They also have some very reasonable lunch specials. This is a small seven table vegan joint with some outdoor sidewalk seating. Service was friendly and excellent. Street parking only. Recommend.

So clean and so good. My favorites are the pumpkin curry and the miso ramen! I can’t get enough of those and if you order anything over $ 8 during lunch, they have a free buffet of food available for your picking! The ginger soup is one my wife’s fave soup and I don’t blame her. =)

Found this cute little café on Unilocal,and I must say the food was delicious! We started with the hand made gyoza l which was cooked well and had great flavor. Next we shared an pineapple fried rice (which was sweeter than I anticipated, but still good– I believe it had curry, raisin, & pineapple chunks swerved in a whole ½ pineapple), and the snap pea salad (my fave)-Crispy snap peas with crispy fried shallots, baked tofu, and pickled onion with a chili coconut tamarind dressing. All very good. Lastly the coconut tapioca and the mango sticky rice were dessert. All great! I would give 5 stars except for the service was slow motion, but not horrible and some of the food was swerved on disposable plates. I feel it makes a world of difference if you serve good food on real plates. Regardless, I would come back again definitely!

Seriously the BEST vegan Thai restaurant in Long Beach! I absolutely love this place. I always get the coconut tempeh curry!

I love this place and they are NOT closed as Unilocal says!
I usually get the Thai iced tea.
The pot stickers are really good.
The awesome tofu is awesome and I don’t usually like tofu.
And of course you can’t wrong with mango sticky rice!
Everything I have tried here has been wonderful.
This is a small operation so you have to have patience. The owner is very sweet and I’ve always had good experiences dining in and when I order take out.
Help support local businesses and eat here :-)

Want Thai Gourmet Vegan food at a low cost? The Happy Elephant is a cozy, small eatery with fresh, vegan, Thai delicacies. The menu is enticing especially if you like coconut or curry. I loved the presentation! It felt very exotic and different for Long Beach considering we have so many Thai restaurants. There were only two tables being served while we were there, so the service was fast and friendly. Can’t wait to try it again.

Pad thai was a-​ok. Portions are small. The pumpkin squash curry is pretty good. Has a nice balance of spice and coconut. Does not come with rice/​quinoa. Have to order it separately. Was on the drier side, as though it was not fully cooked. I also tried their deep ocean roll which is basically a veggie roll with thin slices of carrots replacing salmon. The rice again was not fully cooked and was tough and dry. Service was ok, but server seemed as though she wasn’t happy to be there. I wouldn’t come here again. We left pretty hungry, even though I ordered 2 separate dishes for myself, if you don’t include the side of quinoa I ordered.

Atmosphere: small shop, about 5 tables.
Ordered items: Thai tea, quinoa roll and deep ocean roll
We came in at the perfect time, it seemed as if there’s just owned. We were seated and handed menus with sooo much to choose from. I was stuck on the sushi since that’s why I even bookmarked the place so I thought I wouldn’t venture off that. After some time reading all the rolls and searching through pictures ok Unilocal,we choose the deep ocean by popular demand and quinoa roll because it looked cool. After about 15 minutes or so our rolls came out like traditional sushi rolls, on a cool wood plank and wasabi and ginger. I personally LOVED the deep ocean roll, the combination of steamed veggies and warm rice with eel sauce and vegan spicy mayo was so mouth watering. I liked the quinoa roll but it was a bit dry to my liking, but the crisp on top were fun to eat up. I noticed they had a huge selection of Asian/​Indian vegan options, such as pad Thai, curries and spring rolls so I can predict I’ll be back to try em all!

Happy Elephant has an interesting concept but It just wasn’t for me. This restaurant is located behind a very busy neighborhood. Parking was an issue due to the high population of vehicles in the residential areas. But Anyways, this joint is a small hole on the wall. They have a few tables and chairs, but the customer service was great.
We came in and ordered 2 sushi rolls. The deep ocean roll and the quinoa roll. These vegan sushi rolls were very different compared to your normal sushi. They consisted of mostly vegetables with rice and seaweed. They had a very unique taste but not as good as your normal sushi. My favorite ordered item was the Ocean roll, just because the sauces on it made it more appealing. The Quinoa roll was okay, it didn’t taste like anything. I felt it need more sauces. The crispy stuff on top of the roll was very delicious tho.
Overall, Vegan sushi just isn’t for me. I give this restaurant credit for having the unique concept of vegan sushi and Thai food. I need to come back and try their Thai Food, but for now im basing my rating on the vegan sushi. I will back soon.

I will start out with saying that I am not a vegetarian or vegan, but I love the creativity I often find in vegan cuisine and think of myself as a vegetable lover that happens to also eat meat occasionally. My vegetarian friend picked this place out and after a few too many holiday treats, I was ready for a plant-​based meal. We tried:
–Amazing Seitan: Good, but an itty bitty portion. It came with «pickled» red onion, which didn’t really taste pickled at all. Each rectangle of seitan was around 2.5″ long and 0.3″ square with 5 pieces.
–Young Coconut Lemongrass Soup: I liked the general idea of this soup, but it was missing some depth.
–Crispy Eggplant Roll: This was the best dish out of the three we tried, but it wasn’t all that memorable.
We decided to share everything because it was our first time there and we wanted to try as many things as possible and get some variety. They serve everything on/​in compostable plates/​bowls and they cover the sushi platters in plastic wrap so they don’t have to wash it. I thought this was interesting. I guess it saves water?
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend Happy Elephant. I’ve tried many other vegan restaurants that were able to accomplish more depth in their flavors and even my vegetarian friend said she was still really hungry after our meal because the portions were tiny.

How have I not done a review on this place yet? I love the Happy Elephant, one of my favorite things about it besides the food has to be saying let’s go to the Happy Elephant.
I would have to say their sushi rolls are my favorite on the menu. Additionally their mango sticky rice is delicious these dishees are presented so beautifully, almost to pretty to eat, but hunger always wins that battle.
Their curry’s are really good too, totally something to check out and not to spicy and I enjoy their Udon very much very flavorful.
The dining room is really small and parking kind of sucks, but it’s Long Beach space is limited.

I would say come here for the lunch specials, only.
Comes with free soups, salads and fruits with $ 8 or more purchase, which makes it worthwhile. Monday-​Thursday 11 – 3. The peanut salad dressing is good and I can put it on anything.
Otherwise, if you come when there’s no lunch, it’s not filling at all. I would probably have to get two entrees to eat enough.
Granted everything is vegan, but I just feel like everything is lacking a little bit of depth. I understand if some dishes are lackluster due to the vegan restrictions, but some dishes don’t make sense to me why they are lacking in flavor because they normally/​naturally are vegan. The curry was watery, which it shouldn’t be because coconut milk is thick and rich — and vegan. The vegan sushi really needs more flavor. Maybe they need to add more spices to the veggies/​tofu they have. The presentation of the sushi is stunning, which I guess makes the taste that much more boring.
Also, all the plates are disposable, which I’m not a fan of.
Anywho, I still haven’t found my favorite vegan place around here, any suggestions?

Came here after checking out the Long Beach Art Museum, and this place is pretty cool. I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned it, but if you come here for lunch, they have a free buffet of salads, soups, fruit, and crackers. We didn’t end up eating any of the fruits, and crackers, but I wouldn’t have minded having more of their peanut salad dressing. It was that good!
We ordered 2 things, the first thing was the elephant bomb, and it was like super spicy! But you know when you have a good kind of burn, yeah that’s the type of burn you’ll experience when you eat this. Beware for people who are a lot more hesitant than me, if you don’t really like spicy foods.
We also got the deep ocean roll, because it looked good. That one was definitely milder, I didn’t even end up putting any wasabi on the roll.
The last and final thing we had was the mango sticky rice because that was mainly what I had came here for. Now that was BOMB​.COM! I really loved the mango and the sticky rice. It was really that good! Now, I can’t stop thinking about their mango sticky rice, thankfully the guy I’m seeing (who by the way wanted to come here with me, thanks babe!) is Thai! Because this was seriously delicious! :)

I came to Happy Elephant Vegan for lunch.
The food here is very overpriced and the portion is very small. The entrees dont come with rice. You have to order the rice separately as a side order and even the rice seem pricey at $ 3 for white or brown. So I find the set up a bit misleading because you are paying $ 8+ for an incomplete meal, a complete meal with rice would be $ 11+. I mean who eats curry without rice? What’s worse is the $ 11 curry and rice were so small in portion; the curry was served in a small paper bowl.
The sushi rolls (Deep Ocean & Happy Elephant rolls) were TINY and expensive. A lot of the Unilocal pictures that people posted were zoomed into the sushi rolls which makes them appear bigger than they really are but once the rolls arrive to your table, they are so small that it’s sad. It’s basically fancy looking vegetable rolls with ordinary vegetables.
Third, we were one of the first party to arrive for lunch. Yet, everyone else that came after got their food first and finished before ours came. Moreover, there would be a 10+ minutes gap between each dish’s arrival. After we finished the first tiny roll, we sat around and stared and waited 10+ minutes for our second tiny roll. Our sad and small curry was brought out last with another 10 minutes gap.
Finally, this place is terrible for the environment. Your pricey food is served in paper bowls and paper plates. The amount of trash each table produces really accumulates. At the price point they charge, they could at least offer diners real plates and bowls.
After spending $ 17 per person for lunch, my mom and I left hungry.

The first things you notice as you walk into the restaurant is that it’s very small and it’s very green. This place can fit roughly 10 tables of 2 – 4 people max.
F O O D:
Honestly I thought the food here was pretty good, after all it’s definitely difficult to make vegan thai food taste good. However, the reason why I’m giving this place 3 stars is because the portion size is too small. My friend and I shared the Happy Elephant Sushi Roll and Deep Ocean Roll and we felt like we didn’t eat anything at all. In fact, we went to another restaurant afterwards to get more food. It isn’t that we have super big appetites so I have no idea why we just weren’t full afterwards. The Deep Ocean Roll was really good because the flavor of the avocado was so prominent but the Happy Elephant Sushi Roll was meh… We thought the vegan cheese was really weird…
Even though each dishes here are reasonably priced be prepared to order a couple more dishes to satisfy your hunger.
P A R K I N G:
You shouldn’t have any problems finding street parking along the road.