WILMINGTON — For nearly a quarter century, Front Street Brewery has served up brewpub classics, variations on meat and potatoes, and, of course, pulled chicken nachos. It’s not the first place you think of for vegan food, but the restaurant is trying to change that.
Front Street Brewery reassess its menu annually, spokesperson Ellie Craig said. This year, they heard more calls than ever before for plant-based options.
“When we did this menu revamp, as we do pretty much every year, we see what works and what doesn’t work from our side — but we also listen to our customers,” Craig said, adding that staff – servers, bartenders, and cooks – also had a say.
“We do have a lot of vegans and vegetarians who work for us— and we listened to that. I think they really felt ‘heard,’ you know. It meant a lot to them, I think, to have options on the menu that would be a good fit for them.”
One of the first things Front Street Brewery’s management team set their eyes on was the burger. Kitchen staff and management debated between the Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger, options from two California-based vegan meat companies that have been duking it out for plant-based burger supremacy. The two companies have gone back and forth, attempting to create increasingly “juicier” and “meatier” versions.
Craig said ultimately the Beyond Burger won out (including an admittedly strange taste-test of a bacon cheese-Beyond-burger). While that might sound like an odd choice for a vegan, Craig said she hopes plant-based options won’t just be for vegan customers, but for those who are looking to find healthier meal choices.
So, how does a restaurant known for burgers, pulled chicken nachos, and mugs of bacon fit vegan food into its menu?
“You can swap in a Beyond burger for any of our burgers — that might seem a little hypocritical with bacon on it, but we do see a lot of people are trying to cut down on the amount of red meat they eat or to find healthier options in general — and we think plant-based foods can be a big part of that,” Craig said.
“We ran a special the other day called ‘the hypocrite,’ it was our jalapeno IPA hummus with bacon on top,” Craig said. “It’s not a bad compromise.”
The restaurant’s take on barbecue, on the other hand, is completely meatless (and gluten-free).
It’s made from jackfruit, an ingredient found in Southeast Asian food, which has become a popular vegan stand-in for chicken and pork because it flakes and pulls apart in a similar way. Jackfruit also lacks a strong flavor of its own, which means chefs have a relatively blank canvas on which to try and recreate barbecue flavors.
Still, for Service Manager Sam Sumner and Kitchen Manager Dustin Sullivan, getting jackfruit even into the same ballpark as Carolina barbeque was no easy feat (author’s note: the restaurant opted for western-NC style — no word yet if the tomato vs. vinegar vs. mustard debate raging across the Carolinas extends to vegan barbecue). Ultimately, Craig said, the struggle to zero in their vegan barbecue was fun — “we got to play with food, and make food we felt good about.”
“Really all the credit goes to Sam and Dustin,” Craig said. “They really just put a lot of time and love into getting the flavor right and just getting to a place where it wasn’t just imitation barbecue but something genuinely good.”
Craig said while the “comfort food classics” wouldn’t be going anywhere, the response to offering vegan options has been good so far. So, while the restaurant be taking its menu further ventures into vegan territory?
“Time will tell,” Craig said.
Send comments and tips to Benjamin Schachtman at ben@localvoicemedia.com, @pcdben on Twitter, and (910) 538-2001
