Hey, there! Log in / Register
Chef out to prove vegans more than just militant dirt eaters
By adamg on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 11:27am
Wheeler's Cafe & Ice Cream Bar, 334 Mass. Ave. (by Symphony Hall) opens on Dec. 15.
Owner Wheeler Del Toro says, in a press release:
I think people hear vegan and they think militants eating twigs and dirt! I love eating and I'm not going to create anything that doesn't taste good.
Del Toro, a recovering meat eater, says he'll be serving all-vegetarian salads and sandwiches and will offer free WiFi and the occasional DJ spinning "gentle jazz, house and trip-hop."
Topics:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Maybe I'm unclear on the concept...
But how can you have vegan ice cream? Doesn't ice cream have, you know, cream in it? Which I'm pretty sure is an animal product. Vegetarian sure, but not vegan.
The same way they have the other substitute stuff
Have you ever seen on a vegetarian menu items entitled "chicken" 'shrimp' etc. they're made from textured vegetable protein usually, and sometimes they spell them differently like "chik'n" and "s'rimp" which is also phonetically correct depending on what side of the tracks you're from.
It's just "Ice Cream SUBSTITUTE" but the word "substitute" or "phoney" or "artificial" doesn't sound enticing enough.
I hope this place succeeds. Always a fan of non-chain startup businesses.
-----------------------------------------
who and the what now?
Sorry, I was mixing Apples and Oranges
Guess I was thinking of the supermarket where it's highly regulated. Frozen novelty anyone?
SO anyone know what it tastes like? Curious monkeys want to know.
It DOESN"T taste like chicken!
It's not bad...as long as you don't expect it to taste like what it's a substitute for. Vegetarian chicken doesnt' taste like chicken. Soy ice "cream" doesn't taste like the dairy product, but I like it just fine as a no-cholesterol alternative.
Then also there's the some-are-much-better-than others phenomenon. I've had some awesome veggie burgers and also some crappy ones.
-----------------------------------------
who and the what now?
I wish him luck
My neice ran a vegan restaurant in Ann Arbor that was popular enough to keep her quite busy. Then one day, after she closed it to go to nursing school, I noticed that she was drinking milk.
I asked her why she changed her mind about veganism. Her response: VEGANS! It seems that when she ran a restaurant catering to vegans, nothing could possibly be vegan enough. It wasn't about humane values, but an obsession with purity. Rather than be grateful that another vegan opened an eatery where they could enjoy the food without worry, some of her clients were getting their panties in a bundle over minute potential for contamination by honey, or whether bread could be leavened and still be vegan, etc.
I hope that this guy can hang on to his ego, or that the vegan community has evolved past this zealotry.
Picky people ruin it for everyone
At least on the bread thing, I would think yeast is vegan since it's a fungus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeast
Or are mushrooms not vegan either?
And yeast naturally occurs on the skin of fruit.
Nucleated Cells
Some vegans don't eat yeast because it is more like animals than plants (yeast cells have a nucleus with the cell DNA in it). I know they are fungi, but that is the argument.
Of course, they don't agree on this point, so it makes for some interesting theater.
Er, plant cells are just as
Er, plant cells are just as likely to be nucleated as animal cells. They are both eukaryotes, a phylogenetic classification that also includes fungi.
Those in search of non-nucleated cells to eat will have to look at prokaryotes, namely bacteria and their relatives, archaea. I bet you could eat a bacterial mat, but I don't think it would taste good.
Don't Get Me Started!
Opps! Too Late! :-)
Those opposed to eating living (or formerly living) things are fighting an entirely unwinnable battle. The only way to not eat something that's alive (or was alive) is to not eat, period.
Everything we put into our mouths contains some form of bacteria or germ or virus or SOMETHING. Just because somebody refuses to eat a chicken, that doesn't mean they're refusing to eat creatures of any kind. What they're doing is choosing to only eat creatures of a certain size or smaller.
The only thing we can control, if we want to live, is to draw the line at what size of creature we're willing to ingest. I, for instance, refuse to eat anything larger than a hippopotamus.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
I once tried...
Along a similar philosophy, I once made a pledge to abstain from eating mammals. For a couple reasons: they're more closely related to humans, and ...well I have more emotional attachments to mammals. I feel bad at the thought of a cow being slaughtered....not so much about a chicken. But my idea was ruined by those damn porcine specimens being sooo tasty. Damn you, cute pigs....why must prosciutto come from you!
-----------------------------------------
who and the what now?
Not to mention bug parts in everything
Yep. Bug parts. In everything. All food that comes from things like grain silos and processing plants and farms has stuff like insect parts in it.
Doesn't get more unvegan than that. You can't escape it by buying from any source. Bug parts are in there. The FDA and Department of Agriculture even have permissible levels for bug parts.
Not hungry anymore
One of those things that I would have known had I thought about it, which is why I never think about it. But of course now I can't stop thinking about it.
Since you decided to go there...
The fact that we accidentally eat bug parts and whatnot in our grain products does not logically lead to the idea that we should therefore choose to consciously kill other animals.
If I were to accidentally kill a pedestrian while driving, I'm not going to then say "well, I'm clearly no longer someone who avoids pedestrians while driving, so I'm just not going to bother to make choices so that my car avoids hitting pedestrians any more."
Also, I sometimes say things that hurt people's feelings. I'm never going to be someone who never hurts anyone. So should I just stop trying and be a jackass to everyone? No, of course not. I'm going to aim to be someone who respects humans and animals and makes choices that result in the least harm done.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Oh, I Certainly Understand The Ethos Involved
It just seems to my disordered mind that if one truly believes in that ethos, then the logical way to truly live it is to not live at all. Anytime you eat, you are consciously choosing to kill other animals. It is only a matter of how many and the size of them.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
just saying
Perhaps vegans in Boston are different from the ones in Ann Arbor? I find it odd that your niece gave up her convictions because other vegans annoyed her... Some democrats annoy me, but that doesn't mean I'm going to become a republican. (apples and oranges, I know.)
With any group, there are going to be zealots and there are going to be ones who are more or less moderate about their beliefs.
Moderate vegans? The thing
Moderate vegans? The thing itself attracts holier-than-thou kooks.
Yes and no
There are a lot of vegans who are asses about it. But there are quite a lot who aren't. I think you mostly hear from the loud obnoxious ones who want to preach at you all the time. In terms of the reasonable ones, you probably wouldn't actually notice that they're vegan.
It's kind of like people saying that "Christians" annoy them. They're thinking that Christian = annoying preachy holier-than-thou person, and not realizing that, um, most of the people in this country are Christian. And most of the people in this country aren't annoying.
At least not as pertains to their religious views... ;o)
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
authenticity and transparency
I'm in favor of both except on the beach.
Bu dump bump
But seriously folks...I invite people to join the dialog on my blog on Meat-free Tuesdays. When I ask the raw foodist - pre-emptively acknowledging my snark - isn't fire one of those things like opposable thumbs that put us higher up on the food chain....but also honestly saying, I welcome the input and welcome the opportunity to learn more about raw food etc...I get a response that confirms the humourless stereotype.
Too Bad.
I am an unapologetic omnivore but understand the joys, the benefits, the environmental impacts of all the choices we make.
I just want to Teach a Man to Fish
Opens Dec. 15?
That's kind of odd - according to various reports on Chowhound they've been open since some time in May or June. Maybe they renovated to add the cafe menu and that counts as an opening. They clearly sent out a catchy press release - this was also reported on the "Dishing" blog on boston.com today.
Folks on CH who have tried it say that the vegan "ice cream" (actually soy-based) is really good and much more intensely flavored than they had expected.
Yep
The press release says Dec. 15 is when it opens as a fullfledged cafe as opposed to an ice-cream shop/"test kitchen."
I admit, I didn't think much of the release until I saw the line about militants eating twigs and dirt. Say no more!
Folks on CH who have tried
That's what they always say. Everything is delicious, I'm not giving up anything, etc. What else would they say - this is like eating cardboard? I don't like it, but I'm doing it anyway? When was the last time you heard a Baptist say that it's no big deal being a Christian?
Non-vegans
I agree with you that evaluations by vegans aren't necessarily trustworthy, but at least one person on Chowhound who liked Wheeler's product was NOT a vegan - the same person reported last week on a dinner at Mistral at which they enjoyed roasted duck and tuna tartare.
I'm not a vegan
And I prefer soy ice cream and soy milk to most dairy stuff.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
wrooooong
I think people hear vegan and they think militants eating twigs and dirt
Not this omnivore. I think: "fundamentalist vegetarians who have lost their objectivity."
Oh, you mean the food? I think: "tasteless with poor texture."
Don't get me started on the "raw" nutjobs, or the #$@!ing idiots who can't understand the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation (ie, microwave ovens.)
I love vegans
They're delicious.
So are carnivores. AKA Long
So are carnivores. AKA Long Pig.
Not a Vegan, but
there are some moderates out there who just want to eat what they want to eat.
Check out some of Isa Chandra Moskowitz's recipes sometime. She uses "normal" ingredients and her chocolate goody recipes are to die from.
Stop and think for a moment
Most of what you consume is plant-based. Therefore, it's vegan. You might not prepare it in ways that the entire meal is vegan, but most of the foods themselves are.
Oranges? Yep, they're horrible. Totally flavorless. Taste like cardboard. And pasta? It's horrible vegan crap. That's why hardly anyone ever eats it. Oh, and coffee? Coffee is this weirdass bean-based thing that weirdo vegans drink instead of drinking steak. You probably wouldn't like it.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
AHAHAHAHA
drinking...steak...
Pass the au jus
Mmm, roast-beef juice!