savor ENCORE
Vegetarian Variety
Kalamazoo offers many choices for meatless dining by
Tiffany Fitzgerald
W
hen Fuel, Kalamazoo’s only all-vegetarian restaurant, closed in June, it left a hole in the Kalamazoo dining industry. Denise Miller, who was the head chef and owner of Fuel, is working on opening a new restaurant in Chicago, Sassafras Soul Cuisine, as part of an urban revitalization program in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Great news for Miller and for Bronzeville, but what about Kalamazoo’s vegans and vegetarians? It turns out that Kalamazoo still has a lot to offer. “It’s really not hard at all being a vegan in Kalamazoo,” says Rachel Kincaid, a local author who has been vegan for two and a half years. “When I first started, I lived in Boston and I thought moving here would make it hard for me, but there are a lot of places to eat.”
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On the other hand, Kincaid, who dined at Fuel for brunch occasionally, says she will miss having a restaurant catering specifically to vegans. “Sometimes when you’re vegan, people think you only like salads and carrot sticks, but you still like greasy diner food,” she says. “Those cravings don’t go away. When you wake up hung over on Sunday, you want a large, gross breakfast.” Luckily, says Kincaid, there are other options in town, including the Studio Grill, at 312 W. Michigan Ave., which is owned and operated by the husband-and-wife team of Craig and Daphney Dotson. Daphney is vegan, and she echoes Kincaid’s sentiments. “When I go out to eat, it’s often hard to find something that’s not a salad,” she says. “I try to offer different options because of
that. The item on the menu that’s most near and dear to my heart is the pancakes. They have a nice cinnamon gingerbread flavor, and they’re dense. I call them ‘vegan junk food.’” Dotson says that much of the time “junk food” is exactly what vegetarians and vegans want when they eat out. “The first time I featured vegan biscuits and gravy, I used whole wheat to try and make them healthy, and people were like, ‘No. We want junk food.’” The Studio Grill menu features a number of items that are exclusively vegan or vegetarian, but Daphney Dotson shrugs off the designation. The veggie burger at the Kalamazoo Beer Exchange offers vegetarians a hearty meatless option.