- I don't know what the future will be,
but it's not sustainable to do what we're doing,
to get rid of our rainforests,
to cattle graze.
I know there's people out there
that are like vegans inside --
you love animals.
Try some cashew cheese, 'cause you just might be a vegan.
I was around 15 or 16 and just had always loved animals,
and then I made the connection that the food I was eating
was also animals.
When I became a teenager and was able to start cooking,
I started transitioning to vegan.
Your taste buds are the first thing
to start changing your mind.
If the food is good,
the rest follows.
Once you start tasting delicious vegan food
and have delicious vegan cheese,
it just kinda sets something off that says "OK,
maybe I can do this."
So I think it's really important that vegan chefs
are always moving forward and always coming up
with these new methods and new flavors.
Vegan cheese has come a really long way.
I really can't take that much credit for it;
there's a lot of different methods
that people have been developing
for the past couple of decades.
It's really made a huge difference
in how people react to vegan food,
because 30 years ago, vegan cheese did not taste good.
It didn't melt --
we don't even wanna talk about it.
(hissing)
You wanna get that tangy,
fermented,
aged flavor.
And there's lots of different methods to do it.
On our cheese plate,
we try and represent a few of those different methods.
We change the cheese plate quite a bit.
We've got a dill havarti,
which is just like my childhood cheese
that I loved growing up.
That one is cashew-based, and it's just
aged a little bit with probiotics.
It's got obviously the herbs and caraway.
The smoked Cheddar is one of those
where we're using miso to get the flavor in there.
We're also actually smoking the cheese,
so it's not like liquid smoke or something,
we're using methods that produce the best flavors.
So we're trying to go for the textures
and flavors that their namesakes have.
So like for the Cheddar,
we want it to be sharp, obviously,
and we want it to be pungent and powerful.
For the chevre,
like a lightness and herbiness
and just like a melt-in-your- mouth-ness that we're going for.
The burrata is kinda based on a mozzarella recipe
that's on the internet from a woman named Miyoko.
It's got a firmer texture outside
and a creamier texture inside,
and we use a cultured coconut yogurt,
and we use cashew for it.
And we use a brine and some agar agar,
which is a seaweed that is like gelatin
to kinda give it the texture that we're looking for.
So it was kind of an evolution.
(sizzling)
The mac & cheese is our signature dish,
both here and in Omaha.
And it's a roasted red pepper,
cashew mac sauce.
It's gluten-free as well.
It comes with blackened cauliflower steaks,
sauteed kale with tomato vinaigrette,
and a pecan cornmeal-crusted tofu
that some people compare to like a fried chicken,
and some spiced pecans.
And that is one thing we can never take off the menu;
it's our baby.
People just love mac & cheese.
If you have a really great mac & cheese,
that's what's gonna outsell everything else.
When I first went vegan,
a lot of the restaurants I'd go to were Ital restaurants,
and so I'd have a lot of West Indian food.
Jerk was one of my favorite flavors in the whole world --
I just fell in love with it immediately.
And like beef patties,
but they were vegan, obviously.
I always had tofu when I first went vegan in the '80s.
So we do serve a jerk yuba dish here that has
a really nice Jamaican curry powder.
Yuba is tofu skin, and I guess you can
compare it to duck skin in that it's just like really meaty,
and it's thin and crispy, and all the sauce gets into.
You get these nice crispy parts and burnt parts,
and then you get these nice chewy parts,
so that dish was really important to me.
I think it's almost impossible to compare
vegan culture now to vegan culture then,
because then it was such a subculture.
Now you can go to any restaurant,
anywhere in America at least,
and say the word vegan, and people will
at least somewhat know what it means.
Sometimes they'll be like, "You mean gluten-free?"
But they've heard the word.
Words have always changed meanings.
The word bean used to mean meat 200 years ago.
We just need to accept as food evolves,
as cultures combine,
that it's gonna change.
I think when you call something a hamburger,
and it's not a hamburger,
it still gives people a point of reference.
When it comes to vegan,
people are like, "Well don't call it a burger."
And I'm like, "No, (bleep) it,
I'm calling it a burger --
it's a burger."
Maybe in a 100 years people will be like, "Meat in a burger?
That's crazy."