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Let It Grow: Las Vegas’ once-small vegan culinary scene continues to bloom

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Vegas Vegan’s sweet corn tamale cakes and creamy broccoli walnut salad
Photo: Wade Vandervort

Las Vegas’ food culture might be best known to outsiders for celebrity chefs and extravagant meals. But vegans in Las Vegas have carved out their own community, and vegan businesses are rapidly emerging to serve them.

Vegans don’t eat any animal products—including meat, dairy, eggs and honey—and some ethically minded consumers also don’t purchase items that have been tested on animals or are made with animals, such as leather or wool.

Newly available to vegan foodies is Heather Heath’s Vegas Vegan Culinary School & Eatery, a space in Downtown’s Arts District offering meals for purchase and cooking classes for all ages. The kitchen, filled with shiny silver tables and stoves that line the back wall, opened November 6 at 1310 S. 3rd Street.

Guests enjoy vegan food during the soft opening of Vegas Vegan.

Everybody will say, ‘I could never go vegan; I could never live without cheese,’” Heath says. “Yes, you can. Let us show you how.”

As new vegan and vegetarian restaurants have popped up around Las Vegas, so too have the number of people incorporating plant-based foods into their meals. One newly opened restaurant is Plant Powered, a vegan fast-food chain based in California that opened its first Las Vegas location in October at 7090 W. Craig Road (see sidebar).

Heath, who has lived in Las Vegas on and off since 1989, says it’s encouraging to see the growth around vegan foods in the Valley. “It’s crazy to have seen the city evolve to the point that it has. I’m glad that I have because I will never experience that again in my lifetime.”

Veganism isn’t a new phenomenon, and it has proved not to be a fad, says Diana Edelman, founder of Vegas-based website Vegans, Baby (vegansbaby.com). Edelman has been running the site since 2016, while consulting with restaurants and other businesses to include plant-based options on their menus. Vegans, Baby, also publishes an annual Las Vegas Vegan Dining Guide e-book; the 2021 edition featured more than 100 restaurant recommendations with all-vegan or substantial vegan options.

“[In 2016] there were, I think, five vegan restaurants, and that was it,” Edelman says. “I’ve worked to [help] put Las Vegas on the map in terms of being a vegan-friendly city, because in 2016 when I launched, it was not.”

Across the United States, plant-based eating has grown in popularity due to its reduced environmental impact, its health benefits and for ethical animal-rights reasons. A study from 2004 through 2019 indicates a sharp uptick in vegan diets, 9.6 million plant-based Americans in 2019 compared with just 290,000 15 years earlier. Among states with the greatest change, Nevada saw a 38 point increase in Google searches about veganism.

These days, many grocery stores offer the brands Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, which produce plant-based meat similar to ground beef and burgers. These products have come to define the alternative meat market, and both companies recently unveiled vegan chicken tenders—made of fava beans for Beyond Meat and soy for Impossible.

Veg-In-Out (2301 E. Sunset Road) is a grocery store stocked with all-vegan products, like Violife Cheese, vegan mozzarella sticks and no-cheese nacho chips, but cashier Alexander Seaver says the customer base isn’t exclusive to vegans.

“I moved from Colorado Springs, and they only have two vegan restaurants and no vegan grocery stores,” he says. “It’s very different [in Las Vegas].”

Las Vegan Camille Savage says she became motivated to go vegan for animal rights reasons. As the founder and lead organizer at Las Vegas Animal Save, she coordinates slaughterhouse viewings and vigils for residents interested in witnessing the impact of the meat industry.

Savage says that at age 21, she was content to stay vegetarian, before she began researching the dairy industry. “I came to this conclusion that I was not being consistent in my beliefs, and … that day I decided to no longer eat

cheese or dairy,” says Savage, now 30. “My association with veganism quickly became with activism.”

Heather Heath, founder of Vegas Vegan Culinary School & Eatery

Emily Lewis is a local therapist who specializes in treating vegan clients. She says navigating relationships with non-vegan family members and friends can be difficult, and that her patients can also suffer from compassion fatigue stemming from a feeling one cannot make enough of a difference.

“Seeing the animals suffer unbearable cruelties—for someone looking at that from a vegan perspective, that is likely different than how someone else would look at it,” Lewis explains.

Anthony Lagrosa runs vegan Filipino spot Roll the Veg with his wife, Jamie McNeal. The couple went vegan in 2007 to include more healthy foods in their diet but soon stopped. Back then, they say, they couldn’t find adequate vegan options at grocery stores and restaurants. They re-embraced veganism to help McNeal combat her psoriatic arthritis, a condition that affects one’s skin and joints.

On a Wednesday afternoon at Slice Kitchen—a shared, rentable space at 6235 S. Pecos Road from which Roll the Veg cooks each Wednesday—McNeal navigates orders and the kitchen with ease. Since returning to a plant-based diet, she says, she has seen a drastic change in her skin’s appearance and a reduction in pain.

“That would be enough to keep me on it, if it weren’t for the wonderful environmental impact that you can make by going vegan,” McNeal says.

Roll the Veg’s menu includes homemade vegan meats covered in sticky sauces and sweet or savory Indonesian and Filipino spring rolls known as lumpia. Lagrosa says he typically buys his spices and other supplementary ingredients from Veg-In-Out.

“Our lifestyle is [about] helping people transition from meat—going vegan without having to give that up, missing that meat texture in your mouth,” Lagrosa says.

Las Vegan Nicole Ellis turned her diet into a passion, creating the YouTube channel Nicky’s Savory Vegan Eats, dedicated to vegan recipes and reviews. In one popular video, Ellis cooks up fried vegan catfish from banana blossoms, which she bought from the Asian grocer Seafood City.

“I get influenced by recipes on Pinterest, but then I’ll turn and make it my own, put my own spin on it,” Ellis says. “I’ll see other YouTubers or an idea will just come to me, or maybe it’s a dish that I’ve had in the past, and I want to veganize it.”

Edelman says another prominent aspect plant-based culture in Las Vegas has been the introduction of vegan options from non-vegan brands. Lele’s Sweet Spot, a local bakery run by Chef Lele, offers nondairy and sugar-free pastries to residents who request them.

Chef Lele says she didn’t anticipate a vegan customer base when she launched her business three years ago, but when the specialty orders came in, she drew on her culinary experience for the substitutions, like using vinegar and nondairy milk to create a vegan version of buttermilk. Doing this avoids using eggs as a binder, she explains.

Her most popular item, the strawberry crunch cake, uses vegan buttermilk, nondairy butter for the cake and icing, freeze-dried strawberries and Oreos, which are naturally vegan.

“Luckily, with culinary school they taught us how to do a lot of food substitutions, because it wasn’t just for vegans,” she says. “It was for people with dietary issues we want to be able to accommodate.”

Las Vegans Brooklyn and Ryn Smith first went vegan in December 2020. Once Texas residents, they dined on the state’s famous barbecue. Vegan options in Texas were present, they say, but nothing like Las Vegas’ vegan scene.

The Smiths chose to first go vegetarian, then vegan, they explain, after a shrimp quesadilla from a favorite restaurant made them sick the morning after. Since then, they say, they spend less on groceries and have found a supportive vegan community and great dining options.

“Pretty much every restaurant I’ve been out to here as a vegan has been 10 out of 10,” Brooklyn Smith says. “It has just totally changed my perception of food.”

Plant Power brings its vegan fast food to town

Plant Power’s Big Zac burger and strawberry shake

If veganism and fast food don’t seem like a fit, think again. Plant Power, a chain with nine California locations, arrived in Las Vegas on October 15, and it already has a following.

“The reception has been pretty incredible,” says Barry Tu, owner of the local franchise. “The vegan community here is super-supportive, super-friendly, super-understanding.”

Tu says customers have gravitated toward the restaurant’s “chicken” tenders, Big Zac burger—Plant Power’s take on McDonald’s Big Mac—and its oat milk-based milkshakes. He estimates most customers are “flexitarian” —vegans and vegetarians who occasionally eat animal products.

Heather Heath, co-owner of Vegas Vegan Culinary School, has already visited Plant Power several times since it opened here.

“I think their concept is amazing,” she says.

The former East Coaster who grew up loving seafood before she went vegan, says Plant Power’s “fish” fillet sandwich satisfies both her nostalgia and her cravings. “It’s pretty cool that you can actually do that with plants,” Heath says.

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