Where Veganism Meets the South

Story by Matt A. Sheen • Photos by Alexandra Kennon

When people think of Southern hospitality, they primarily think of food. This is especially true in a place like New Orleans, where visitors come from worlds over expecting spreads of crawfish, gumbo, Cajun-spiced shrimp, and poboys. But with its famously rich meat and seafood-heavy brands of cuisine, Southern Louisianan hospitality can sometimes seem to leave out a certain population of diners: vegans.

“A lot of New Orleans food depends on spices,” said Wil Hernandez, lead bartender at Vegan Wit’ A Twist, noting that popular blackened foods (like alligator) result from spices turning black from the cooking process. “There’s no right or wrong way to make gumbo,” he offered (perhaps controversially) by way of example, pointing out that jackfruit or vegan sausage can serve as a substitute for shrimp, crawfish, chicken, or andouille. The only difference really, he said, is texture. “The flavor comes from the base stock. The baseline of most Cajun and Creole cooking is vegetables: the holy trinity of bell peppers, onions, and celery.”

The idea of a vegan gumbo is not actually all that novel, although the term is a relatively new one. Gumbo Z’herbes, traditionally a plant-based Lenten dish, has long been a New Orleans staple, according to Tiffany Burgin, assistant manager at The Gumbo Shop. “So people could have gumbo during Lent,” she explained. “Today, with the rules of Lent changing, a lot of people make it with chicken stock or other ingredients that are not vegan, but we make ours the traditional way. A lot of people probably order it because it’s vegan.”

Nothing says New Orleans like a poboy sandwich, originally crafted to provide downtrodden striking street car conductors with a hardy meal—hardy meaning meat-based, though potatoes were often used to cut the cost of beef in those early days (and even then, they were usually doused in beef gravy). Not so anymore: French Quarter sandwich shop Killer Po-Boys offers two vegan varieties: one with sweet potatoes, the other with cauliflower.

“Things change, things evolve,” reflected Burgin. “And so do menus.”

Not much of a meat-eater himself, Hernandez picked up a lot of vegan recipes from his aunt and found that for those who have the time and inclination to cook, “The more you invest in vegan food, the easier it is to embrace the lifestyle.”

Hernandez suggested that the growing prevalence of meat-inspired dishes on many vegan menus makes them more accessible to people transitioning to veganism, and friends of vegans who are joining them for a meal, without pandering to them.

The oyster burger at Vegan Wit’ a Twist, for instance, is made with oyster mushrooms, which are also served a la carte. Hernandez likened such variation to the adaptability of chili, which he said doesn’t depend on beans, but more on the spices and an individual’s preferred type of tomato (fresh, never canned in Hernandez’s case) and pepper: serrano, bell, or ancho reyes. “People had to use beans to fill out the dish in the Great Depression,” he said. Turns out, beans serve as an excellent meat alternative even in better times. “This isn’t the Depression.”

While veganism may not have been a consideration for traditional Southern Louisiana cuisine, a modern vegan menu can still reflect that tradition while offering an opportunity for innovation.

“I’m actually a Yankee, from Connecticut by way of New York City,” confessed Caroline Nassrah, owner of the Uptown vegan eatery Kindred. “I do think of Louisiana food as seafood, but it also includes things like poboys, beignets, sausage, lots of seasonings, and just overall great food. Whenever people from out of town talk about New Orleans or Louisiana, it always includes food. The key to providing a successful plant-based alternative is to make something that tastes similar, that definitely tastes well-seasoned and great.”

A vegan for over two decades, Nassrah said that the vegan food landscape in New Orleans has changed a lot in those years. “When I moved to New Orleans back in 2000, there was only one vegetarian restaurant, Old Dog New Trick,” she recalled. “There were vegan options at various restaurants throughout the city, but almost nothing was listed as vegan and usually required modifiers to become so. Slowly, there became more and more vegan options, and then eventually vegan restaurants started opening. I think having a vegan restaurant now is less of a challenge than it would have been ten years ago with vegan and plantbased [food] becoming more and more mainstream, athletes turning to vegan diets to improve their performance, and much more science about the benefits of a plant-based diet to a person’s health and the impact it has on our environment.”

Nassrah said that veganism is no longer such a niche market, and that being a vegan restaurant doesn’t necessarily mean you get a smaller customer base. “We promote ourselves as a restaurant with great food, drink, and service that just happens to be vegan. We use fresh ingredients and make most things from scratch, even our daiquiris are made from fresh juices, never mixes. Our ‘chicken’ is seitan [a chewy, protein-rich food made from wheat gluten] made in-house, which takes a substantial amount of time to produce. All of our sauces and desserts are made in-house. I think people, vegan or not, really appreciate that.”

In Nassrah’s experience, vegans are often foodies, active on social media promoting the latest restaurant finds and willing to drive in regularly from the Northshore for a good meal, but she also said that her customers span a wide spectrum. “In Louisiana, it really is all about the food. All we have to do is get you to try it once! New Orleanians are also really all about supporting local.”

Such a sentiment is exactly how she came to have a non-vegan chef in her kitchen. Louisiana born and raised, Chef David Breaux has adapted the cooking style he’s known all his life to vegan ingredients easily enough, though he did have to learn new terms like seitan and gluten. “You have a culinary background, you’re going to be able to gain the technique,” he said of the new experiences, like working with nutritional yeast.

“Using what you have is a Louisianan trait, so with Chef David nothing goes unused,” Nassrah enthused. “The Gambino’s poboy bread we use that doesn’t make the cut for a sandwich gets repurposed into French toast on Sundays, croutons, and breadcrumbs. Tomatoes get roasted in-house for our shrimp poboys, but also quesadillas and to top our eggplant burgers. Chef David even started making our boudin sausage with dried black-eyed peas that I over-purchased for our New Year’s Day plates.” As of July, Kindred has rolled out a new menu that no longer includes the boudin balls, but now offers buttermilk battered onion rings (and by “buttermilk,” they mean soy milk with just enough vinegar to create the necessary effect).

And as in any true Louisiana kitchen, at Kindred, seasonings and sauces reign supreme.

“Our creamy lime-cayenne sauce actually started as a dressing recipe of mine that I made way too spicy for myself, but that our customers love,” said Nassrah, who added that Kindred’s house-made buffalo sauce incorporates both Frank’s (for color) and Crystal (enough said) hot sauces, but also fresh citrus juices and zests.

When trying to avoid all animal-based products, even drinks may have to be reinvented. “Having a vegan eggnog daiquiri was very important to me,” she said. Kindred’s vegan variation on the traditional holiday favorite was so popular that the restaurant was still running what was intended to be a limited-time seasonal special well after Easter. “I’ve been told that our eggnog daiquiri tastes like a legit eggnog daiquiri, and although the season is over, we kept rolling with it, because, why not?”