Don’t say ‘vegan’ — the term is now ‘plant-based’

How do you get more people to try vegan food? Don’t call it vegan.

Indeed, the newest trend in vegan eating eschews the term that’s loaded with baggage and instead substitutes a new term: plant-based food.

“If I took somebody off the street and said, ‘My restaurant is vegan,’ they start thinking, ‘Hippie, tempeh, tofu, I’ll bet your restaurant has bamboo floors,’” said Scot Jones, the executive chef at Crossroads restaurant in Los Angeles. “People wrap their heads around ‘plant-based’ much more than they do ‘vegan.’”

Jones, co-author of “Crossroads,” a book that already has made several best-of lists, recently came to town to teach a class at the Culinary Institute of America-San Antonio.

At Crossroads, there are no labels such as “vegetarian” or “vegan.” It is described only as a Mediterranean small-plates restaurant.

“Even being in the vegan world for the last 10 years, I hated that word. It sounded like we were forcing something down your throat, that you’re going to suffer,” he said. “We want you to come to our restaurant and enjoy our food and, by the way, it just happens to be plant-based.”

In San Antonio, that shift has occurred with Mike and Chris Behrend, the team behind at the biggest vegetarian restaurant group in the city, if not the state. They own the two San Antonio locations of Green Vegetarian Cuisine and one in Houston, along with Earth Burger, and the recently opened Bok Choy, which they describe as “plant-powered Asian.”

“We feel ‘vegan’ is all about what you can’t eat and ‘plant-powered’ is about all the great things that you should eat,” Mike Behrend said. “It’s not an exclusive term. We want meat eaters to come to our restaurants.”

Indeed, even in the home of carne guisada tacos, medium-rare rib-eyes, tender barbecue and chicken-fried steaks, some 85 percent of the clients at Green are meat eater, he said.

“A lot of people are talking about eating a more plant-based diet,” Behrend said. “And our food tastes great, and it’s a great value.”

So what, exactly is plant-based cooking? It can be as simple as traditional dishes like guacamole or ratatouille, or as detailed as combining walnut shavings with nutritional yeast to mimic Parmesan cheese, or making plant-based pasta using tofu as a binder instead of egg, and a bit of palm oil to get the yellow-orange color.

“You have to give people texture, like in our Parmesan,” Jones said, and recounted a customer who raved about the veal Parmesan and was shocked to learn that the veal was a meat substitute. “He stopped and said, ‘Whatever it was that I just had was so great.’ And he’s a regular now.”

More than anything else, it’s about using resourcefulness and creativity to deliver great flavor.

“It’s layering flavor, it’s texture, it’s taking the vegetable outside the box,” Jones said. “Seasoning is the biggest thing. It doesn’t have to be salt and pepper. It can be nutritional yeast instead of cheese.”

Jones is far from being a lifelong vegan — he’s actually not even a vegan at all. From time to time, he still enjoys seafood and Parmesan cheese. He’s a native of Akron, Ohio, who started his career at an old-school Italian place in his hometown before graduating from the Culinary Institute of America-Hyde Park and later opening his own Italian spot that later was bought out by a larger restaurant group. He got into vegan cooking when he took on a restaurant project for a fellow Akron native, rock star Chrissie Hynde.

He firmly believes even the most confirmed carnivore can enjoy more plant-based food, such as the Impossible Burger patty that mimics ground beef to the point that it even “bleeds,” thanks to the use of plant-derived heme, a compound that’s also in meat and gives it part of its distinctive taste.

At Crossroads, the menu includes a “seafood” tower with hearts of palm filing in for crab in a crab Louie and oyster and lobster mushrooms serving as the base for cooked oyster dishes.

So if Jones can work to create great dishes that emulate seafood, he’d love to take a shot at serving Texas carnivores.

“You use jackfruit and make pulled barbecue,” Jones said. “Here in Texas, I would love the challenge of doing a plant-based barbecue restaurant. There are endless amounts of things we could do.”

But while Jones focuses his discussion on great flavors that come from vegetables, he sees a shift in diners’ attitudes about eating meat and more acceptance to eating vegetables.

“This is a chance for all of America to wake up and put their foot forward,” he said. “We don’t care if you eat bacon, but if you try putting in plant-based (food) once or twice a week, you’ll feel the difference.”

Besides, vegetables offer a variety that meat just can’t.

“There are great steaks out there, but there’s only so much you can do to it,” Behrend said. “Vegetables are where all the action is at.”