Laventina's Big Cheese Pizza on the Balboa peninsula has been a community staple in the Newport Beach community for almost two decades now. The pizza joint, known for feeding Patron-powered peninsula partiers until 3am on the weekends, is committed to providing great pizza to their more mellow daytime crowd as well, not relying on booze soaked palates to carry their business.

I had previously had cheeseless vegan pizza a few times from Laventina's, which was good as is, but I was ecstatic when I recently saw an ad of theirs claiming "vegan, dairy-free and gluten-free options" now available. Last week, on a gorgeous, sunny Southern California afternoon, I decided to ride my bike down to the peninsula to check out the new offerings from Laventina's.

I'm officially declaring 2012 the Year of Vegan Cheese. We saw Daiya launch an exciting new line extension in their three wedge flavors, and Parmela is finally giving us a legit vegan parmesan. In my post about Expo West 2012, I talked about the new Vegan Shreds from Galaxy Nutritional Foods in mozzarella flavor that they were serving on pizza, and said it's going to give Daiya a run for its money. After trying the other flavor of Vegan Shreds; Mexican style, I stand by that.

Galaxy was kind enough to send me a couple packages of these, asking for a Cinco de Mayo post in return. I told them I love quesadillas, so I would surely write a post about using their shreds in some vegan quesadillas. Since I like to go above and beyond what is required of me, instead of just writing this post, I am throwing an entire vegan quesadilla party tomorrow for Cinco de Mayo at my soon to open sandwich shop, Phoney Baloney's. Can you guess what kind of cheese we'll be using?

My new vegan sandwich shop, Phoney Baloney's, which will open in May, is hosting a vegan quesadilla party for Cinco de Mayo! Here are the details: