Vegan Caribbean Soul Food Restaurant Real Veggie Cafe Opens in Jamaica, Queens

The vegan boom in New York continues with this month’s opening of the family-run Actual Veggie Cafe in Jamaica, Queens, which focuses on a mashup of southern Black American soul meals and Caribbean delicacies based mostly on meat-free cooking. Situated at 106-13 Man R Brewer Boulevard, it joins a choose group of vegan Caribbean eating places corresponding to Richmond Hill’s Veggie Fortress II and Crown Heights’s Ital Kitchen BK, which makes a speciality of Rastafarian meals.

Courtesy of Actual Veggie Cafe

Right here, chef and proprietor Hulando Shaw cooks soul meals classics like fried hen, black eyed peas, and collard greens, and Caribbean staples like jerk hen, rice and peas, and ackee and saltfish — all with a vegan riff. Take as an example: double-battered mushroom nuggets ($10-15, as an appetizer or in a bowl format) that might simply cross as fried hen wings. He dips oyster mushrooms into moist and dry batters containing Caribbean spices like allspice, black pepper, turmeric, and thyme earlier than pulling and squeezing them collectively to resemble hen. They’re presently provided in three flavors: jerk, barbecue, and candy warmth that’s fueled by Scotch bonnets. Ackee, a pulpy fruit associated to lychee and essential to Jamaican meals, is one other taste that may debut shortly.

The vegan, cross-cultural fusion additionally seems in Shaw’s black-eyed stew peas, historically made with pink kidney beans in Jamaica ($5 facet dish); a “pulled pork” sandwich with shredded jackfruit baked in a barbecue sauce ($10 with fries); and “salting”, a soybean protein that replaces the standard salt fish, and comes with a selection of ackee or callaloo (a part of a $15 Sunday brunch menu). He additionally plans to sometimes supply mushroom-based “oxtail stew” and mock jerk hen.

Caroline Shin

The wide-ranging menu attracts from Shaw’s cultural background, non secular observe, and concentrate on neighborhood. By age 10, Shaw says he “ran boats” in St. Andrew Parish, 5 miles north of Kingston. “All of the younger males would get collectively, and all people can be accountable for cooking various things,” says Shaw, who added that this custom of younger males gathering outdoor to cook dinner and eat collectively laid the muse for his future as a chef.

After following his mom to Jamaica, Queens, in 1995, his devotion to the Protestant Christian denomination of Seventh-Day Adventism, which emphasizes private well being and food regimen, led him to transform to an all plant-based food regimen in 2004. “I began trying on the physique and the way the physique was created, and the way it can heal itself” with “the proper gasoline,” Shaw says. “It’s similar to a automotive. If the automotive requires you to place common unleaded, and also you’re placing diesel in your physique — in your automotive — then what’s going to occur is that the automotive will really transfer however it is going to ultimately break down. And that’s the place the plant-based food regimen is available in.”

Shaw started cooking his vegan Caribbean recipes for church conferences. From there, his culinary profession took off. In 2007, he began his Actual Veggie catering firm in Laurelton, Queens, and took over varied chef roles at Andrews College in Michigan and Laurelbrook Academy in Tennessee. He returned to New York in 2017 to determine a brick-and-mortar operation in Island Park, Lengthy Island, which he closed throughout the pandemic and transitioned to weekly pop-ups.

“I bought sick in January of 2020 so we determined that we’ve got to reevaluate,” Shaw says. “We discovered a extremely cool area in Lynbrook [Long Island] that allowed us to really do pop-ups throughout this COVID time.”

Courtesy of Actual Veggie Cafe

Group is a pillar of Shaw’s work. Final 12 months, he helped cook dinner and ship over a thousand meals per week to the residents and important staff of southeast Queens by his partnerships with Queens Collectively, Black Useful resource Community, New York State Senator Leroy Comrie’s workplace, and his church of their shared mission to fight meals insecurity within the borough, as soon as the epicenter of the pandemic. In early 2021, Shaw launched his Actual Veggie cooking college, the place he teaches kids ages 8 to 12, largely from the Caribbean international locations of Jamaica, Trinidad, and St. Vincent methods to cook dinner vegan meals. “Should you educate a baby methods to cook dinner wholesome from the start, they are going to really proceed a wholesome observe, going onwards.”

Across the identical time, Shaw took over the lease of a restaurant beforehand owned by a colleague who requested that he protect the soul meals idea and proceed to feed Jamaica’s predominantly Black American neighborhood.

“In order that’s how I combined my Caribbean roots with a soul meals idea,” Shaw says. “Let’s really open a restaurant and meet a neighborhood the place they’re.”

Actual Veggie Cafe is positioned at 106-13 Man R Brewer Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens. Hours: 10 a.m. to eight p.m. Sunday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday.