#19: Healthy-ish
Let’s start with a joke: How do you know someone’s a vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
It's rare that pokey little Amsterdam would be at the front end of launching a trend, but given the culture's keen design sensibilities, it's maybe not that surprising the world's first avocado-centric restaurant was engineered here. Not to be outdone, Avocado Appetite recently opened in NYC, a city where already there is no shortage of avo-centricity. Don't stop til you get enough, I say.
Trends can often take their sweet time making their way over here, but when they do land, they land hard, gripping the city in a stranglehold until the next thing comes along. And thus, Amsterdam is now host to the very aptly named Vegan Junk Food Bar, which is more or less a plant-based burger bar with a few pieces of 'Chik'n' thrown in. Also featuring heavily, the beloved staple of a vegan diet, fries with stuff on them, some made of sweet potatoes.
But back home, inventive vegan junk food has been on a steadily growing trajectory for ages. One leading evil genius behind the fryolator has been James Beard Award-winning pastry chef Brooks Headley, whose Superiority Burger is generally held up as the gold-standard for veggie burgers, and possibly just burgers overall. What started as a pop-up around 2014 morphed into a constantly slammed hole-in-the-wall joint in the East Village, churning out some crazy vegetarian (and mostly, accidentally vegan) food that will make you take back all the mean stuff you said about hippies and tofu.
As far as the nation whose cuisine has delivered us delicacies such as mushy peas and the chip butty, the UK is definitely keeping up in the arms race to turn plants and vegetables into artery-clogging post-pub munchies. Behold the Temple of Seitan, London's first (I mean, of course it's the first) vegan fried chicken shop, which, I hear, is blowing people's minds but also pissing people off. Naturally a vegan kebab shop is the next frontier; Boxpark pop-up favorites What the Pitta are opening a permanent location next month.
Chef and TV presenter Gizzi Erskine will also be taking her 'Pure Filth' concept ("Healthy Food for Hedonists") from its pop-up at the Tate Modern to a location in Hackney (duh) later this summer. Finally, 'American-inspired' mini-chain Dirty Bones are also launching a 'Dirty Vegan' concept in Shoreditch, wherein cauliflower (!!!) will stand in for the chicken in a cauli-and-waffles dish.
With a decidedly less punk rock vibe, the ever-expanding By Chloe empire has also recently hit London and will surely continue it's adorable world domination.
***
When you don't want a vegetable to taste so much like a vegetable, there are several secret ingredients chefs use to stand in for the flavors and textures of animal products. Nutritional yeast, aka "nooch" has been a major player in the veggie game for years. Bon Appètit has been known to call it 'nature's Cheeto dust,' for the savory and funky, and yeah, kinda cheesy flavor that makes it a damn tasty popcorn seasoning. But popcorn topping is only but a kernel of nooch's potential. You'll find loads of recipes for vegan "parm," which is essentially a finely-ground blend of almond, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, and salt, which makes a surprisingly convincing garnish for this surprisingly convincing vegan carbonara.
When paired with another secret ingredient, dulse, which is a type of seaweed, nooch creates an intense hit of umami with a subtle marine quality. I've been working on replicating Lalito chef Gerardo Gonzalez's brilliant vegan ceasar dressing to pretty tasty results. His inspired interpretation leans on blending dulse and spirulina to stand in for anchovy's fishy depth, plus capers and their brine for tang, and of course more nooch. This recipe is a good starting point for experimentation.
Ah, but how to achieve the smooth, rich creaminess? Cashews are the workhouse of vegan dairy, from versatile nutmilks to a miraculous creamy queso (for your vegan chorizo tacos, of course) to an increasingly diverse array of cheeses.
Liquid smoke is the last powerhouse of the larder, adding the signature campfire flavor that easily tricks our palates into experiencing a savory, meaty bite. More often than not, even actual 'smoked' meat (well, the processed ones, anyway) is not likely to have touched any actual flames, dosed instead with these magic smoke drops. Thanks to liquid smoke (and smoked paprika), there's a nearly limitless number of ingredients that you can transform into something that resembles bacon, including mushrooms, more mushrooms, eggplant, and sure, what the hell, coconut! I've tried all of these, and they actually are quite delicious. They are definitely not bacon, but in a way, that should be beside the point.
***
Vegan baking has become nothing short of an art form, and if you can pull off gluten-free as well, you're probably going to become a bazillionaire juggernaut, like Erin McKenna who started Babycakes in NYC back in 2005, can you believe it!? London also just got it's first vegan doughnut shop, Dough Society, which also appears to include pizza as well as doughnuts for dogs, because why not.
To be fair, vegan baking is not quite a matter of sprinkling on some flavorings. There's magic, aka chemistry involved in creating stable mixtures that hold air. Some of the ingredients required for baking McKenna's signature goods include things like xanthan gum and arrowroot. Her recipe for vegan butter is not for the faint of heart. Creating a vegan egg substitute is a kind of sport unto itself, with clever solutions spanning apple sauce to chia and flax seeds to–wait for it–the weird viscous water from a can of chickpeas, known now as aquafaba.
If you're looking for inspiration, word on the street is that many innovative and technically experimental vegan bakers and patissiers swear by the guidance of chef Fran Costigan. But if you're looking for a gateway vegan dessert, cheesecake is the way to go, even better if you are talented at free-handing naturally colored mandalas.