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Veg it up
Whether you follow a vegetarian diet or you just want to incorporate more plant-based meals into your life, finding a delicious veggie meal at a restaurant can be a struggle in the Charleston area. While your meat-eating friends are debating whether to opt for steak or chicken, you may be scanning the menu hoping to find anything other than the standard black bean burger or yet another friggin’ salad.
A black bean burger can be delicious, but when it’s the sole vegetarian option on a menu with little variation, it quickly becomes tiresome. Same with the salad.
Luckily, with the increasing popularity of plant-based diets, many Charleston area restaurants are taking notice and crafting menus that are more accessible to people with different dietary restrictions.
At Post House in Mount Pleasant, chef Nick Wilber elevates the average veggie burger by using butterbeans — and he said it’s one of the restaurant’s top sellers.
“We wanted something that can give you the burger feel and look. It has that richness of the butterbeans, but you need something to give it a little more structure, so there’s some local farro and some chickpeas,” he said.
To really capture the chargrilled texture and flavor of a traditional burger, Wilber also folds roasted poblano peppers and onions into the patty.
“People that order the veggie burger are wanting that burger part of it, you know? The flame broiled [taste], the texture,” he said.
Beyond the burger
Though the butterbean burger is a top seller, Wilber likes to incorporate veggie-forward dishes in many ways.
“I think vegetables are just more interesting,” he said. “There’s always a certain amount of meat [options], certain ways you can cook them, but there are endless amounts of vegetables. And, you can apply those same kinds of techniques to vegetables.”
Instead of building menu items around a particular protein, Wilber considers what vegetables are in season and adds other ingredients from there.
“The vegetables are [often] an afterthought [in a meal]. Instead, it’s like, what’s plentiful right now? What are the farmers growing? Leeks? Awesome. What can we do with that?”
A popular lunch item, the quinoa bowl is a simple dish that changes seasonally to include the freshest in-season ingredients.
For pescatarians who avoid meat but still indulge in fish, Post House has several dishes that incorporate local seafood, including a blue crab rice with kimchi served during brunch.
Expanding palates
Jack of Cups Saloon on Folly Beach is known for bringing funky concepts to the table — and always accommodating plant-based diets.
Co-owner and chef Lesley Carroll has been a vegetarian since she was a kid and learned how to create veggie-forward dishes for herself and her family.
“I feel like I’ve always had the mindset of giving people what they want, like whatever they want to eat,” she said. “And having a table where everybody feels like there’s a choice for them.”
She certainly shows that in her menu at Jack of Cups, which changes seasonally. Many dishes, such as the curry nachos, are made without meat protein but come with an option to add meat. (The short rib is one of the most popular add-ons, she said.) This makes most of the options accessible to many different diets.
“I love salads. I’m happy to eat roasted vegetables, but when you go out, you don’t always want to just have that and a baked potato,” she said. “So I feel like from a very young age, I was always looking for more choices, and if I couldn’t find them, then I tried to create them for myself.”
Carroll, who owns the restaurant with her longtime partner Nick Della Penna, is always thinking outside the box when creating new dishes. Few menu items exemplify this more than her pad thai gnocchi and Cap’N Crunch Deviled eggs.
“It’s really hard to come up with a new idea that somebody hasn’t already had. Even if you didn’t find it somewhere, if you Google it, chances are someone’s already thought of it. So that is a challenge, and I’ve kind of pushed myself to really try to incorporate some flavors that are new to people, and hopefully they work.”
Because Jack of Cups’ menu is always changing, there’s constantly something new and exciting to try.
When it comes to giving people not only unusual dishes but veg-forward plates, Jack of Cups has plenty to offer. Carroll elevates a commonly used vegetarian ingredient — black beans — and gives them new life in a curried variety.
Many chefs say creating a great vegetarian dish is all about recreating a similar texture and flavor. After Carroll first tried a tofu banh mi, she loved the flavors of the dish, having never tried the Vietnamese sandwich before because it is traditionally made with meat.
This inspired her to create a tofu banh mi at Jack of Cups, which she acknowledges is not an attempt to recreate an authentic dish but rather provide another alternative for vegetarians.
“You’ve got to give [tofu] a little love,” she said. “It’s another versatile item. If you marinate your tofu and cook it the way you like it, it’s such a great option for vegetarians to have something different and use tofu in a different way.”
Something for everyone
You won’t find tofu at Leyla Fine Lebanese Cuisine, but this menu is stacked with vegetarian and vegan options — in addition to items for meat eaters.
Owner Dolly Awkar opened Leyla on lower King Street with her husband 10 years ago. Though the restaurant has had different chefs over the years, Awkar is currently running the kitchen. She said she had no formal training, but she studied recipes from her mother and sister, and used her own knowledge of Lebanese cuisine, to create recipes and gauge flavors.
“We rely a lot on vegetables and grains or legumes,” said Awkar, who moved to Charleston from Lebanon 20 years ago. “We come from a Catholic background where during lunch or on Friday we don’t eat meat, so it’s important to have the ingredients that you can use for both [vegetarian and meat dishes].
“It is part of our culture, of our diet, and at the same time, I want anyone who wants to come to find something to eat. That’s part of the mission of the restaurant.”
Most of Leyla’s appetizers are plant-based, including grape leaves, hummus and baba ganoush. For entrees, veg-forward eaters can choose Lebanese mousakka made with eggplant, and Mujadara, a delicious combination of lentils, rice and Leyla’s special seasoning blend.
Awkar described Lebanese food as similar to Turkish or Greek but said Lebanese cooking stands out as it uses different spices like sumac, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.
“The only way to succeed is by having fresh, good ingredients and definitely the recipes,” she said. “We do everything fresh every day.”
Though Awkar said incorporating veggie-forward dishes is simply part of creating authentic Lebanese cuisine, she also noticed the lack of vegetarian options in other restaurants.
“I feel bad whenever it’s [a] vegetarian or vegan [meal], it’s only a salad,” she said. “We have dishes that are really filling. When you’re eating, you’re not having a salad while someone else is having the lamb shank. You’re having an entree.”
To learn more about Charleston-area veggie-forward restaurants, check out our online list of 15 Charleston restaurants, cafes and pop-ups that cater to vegans, vegetarians.
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