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EXPLORING VEGAN BURGER OPTIONS AROUND TOWN
By Hillary Brown food@flagpole.com
a big handful of sprouts. None of those
things is necessarily bad, but the result feels
dated and unimpressive. The restaurant’s
switch from its longtime crinkle-cut fries
to more standard skinny ones is also a bit
sad. And if you either are or are pretending
to be a vegan, you can’t get the feta dress
ing, meaning you must, once again, rely on
ketchup.
The veggie burger at South Kitchen +
Bar turned out not to be vegan, although
it is made with housemade tempeh and
kidney beans. There’s an egg in there,
apparently, but it doesn’t lend as much
structure as you’d think. You should still
eat it if you’re a vegetarian or an omnivore,
given that it is topped with a delicious but
termilk-fried green tomato and some really
good housemade pickles. Add some grilled
asparagus as a side, and you can still feel
pretty virtuous, at least health-wise.
Did I miss the Happy Top cheeseburger
at White Tiger, which is my go-to in this
department? I did, but I’d happily order
many of these again. ©
(The non-vegan version of) The National’s Impossible Burger
Second only to the Popeyes chicken sand
wich last year in terms of news coverage
for a single food item was the Impossible
Burger, with a big profile in The New Yorker
on Impossible Foods CEO Patrick Brown,
who wants to make meat obsolete. The
plant-based patty is both vegan and, in its
2.0 version, gluten-free to boot. You can
even get it at Burger King, which makes
a Whopper with it. In connection with
Flagpoles Green Issue, I thought I’d not
only taste some Impossible Burgers around
town, but try to find and eat some other
new-to-me vegan burgers, too.
The first place I tried the Impossible
Burger was a few months ago, at
Grindhouse Killer Burgers, which offers
it at a $3 upcharge, but I wasn’t super
impressed. It had a sort of funk to it that
made it not only distinguishable from a
beef-based burger but also not totally
pleasant. And I say this as someone who
loves kimchi and cumin and cheese
that smells like feet. Maybe it was
an off day.
Chops and Hops, in
Watkinsville, makes one,
too, but if you ask the
folks there to make it
vegan, you’ll end up with
just lettuce, tomato and
onion, which is fine but not
exactly exciting, given the variety of
non-vegan burger toppings and the chef’s
general appreciation of vegetables. You
could assemble one yourself, with crispy
onions, mushrooms, roasted red pepper
and spinach, but it definitely requires a bit
of work on your part. Add ketchup, and
it’s fine, but that’s kind of the purpose of
ketchup, isn’t it? It either masks the taste
of something or adds flavor to something
without a lot of it. That’s why children eat it
on everything.
You’ll do better at
The National, which
makes an excellent
vegan Impossible
Burger. (I specify
because, although
the patty is vegan, it’s
easy to slip up with
toppings or a bun,
should you be actu
ally vegan.) Ask for it
vegan, and you’ll get
it without the bun,
Swiss cheese and
comeback sauce that
come on it otherwise,
but it doesn’t seem to
suffer much. Cooked
beautifully, it comes
with tasty sauteed mushrooms and cara
melized onions, served on top of a bed of
nice lettuce alongside a pretty salad with
watermelon radishes and a mound
of fries. It does not need the pome
granate ketchup that isn’t
vegan, anyway. Is it easily dis
tinguishable from a meat
version of the same? Of
course it is. I imagine the
difference is less perceptible
with a Whopper, which is
highly dependent on ketchup,
et al. See, for example, the “Buffy the
Vampire Slayer” episode “Doublemeat
Palace,” in which the burgers’ secret ingre
dient isn’t people but cellulose. The joke is
that no one can tell.
Heirloom Cafe recently replaced its
lentil-pecan vegan burger with a black
bean-based version, intended to be less
mushy and hold toppings better. Sans the
Tillamook cheddar that normally comes
on it, it’s still spread with tomato shiitake
jam and a house mustard, then topped with
shredded iceberg—the right choice here,
because it adds a nice crunch—and pickles,
served on a Luna sesame bun. It has little
crunchy bits around the edges of the burger
and is well seasoned. It does fall apart a bit,
but it’s tasty, and Heirloom has vegan and
gluten-free desserts.
Donderos’ Kitchen also makes a vegan
black bean burger, served on a chewy, sub
stantial ciabatta, with spinach, tomato, red
onion and mango chutney. As you’d expect,
it’s a little mushy—which the Impossible
Burger is not, having a very similar mouth-
feel to meat—and it could use a bit more
salt, but the chutney is great, and the whole
thing ends up tasting a little pickley. It’s
not trying to be fake meat, just a good
sandwich.
I also ate The Grill’s sunshine burger,
long on the menu in the vegetarian section,
but it’s the kind of thing that makes people
not want to try a vegan burger, constituted
of brown rice that is theoretically seasoned
and combined with herbs and spices, then
topped with lettuce, tomato, onion and
notes
Meatless Munchies
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