Vegan Real Estate In The East Village, And Beyond
If you were to dine at Double Zero completley blindfold, it would taste like deliscious pizza. Delicious pizza it is, but it’s also plant-based, which is a less explicit way of saying that it’s vegan. It wasn’t until half way through my dinner at Double Zero that I noticed the two neighboring restaurants had similar branding, and atmospheres. Even stranger is that they are all completely plant-based. This is because all three lower east side restaurants (Double Zero Pizza, Sestina, and Bar Verde) are part of Chef Mathew Kenney’s culinary vegan empire. With 47 restaurants spanning across 24 different cities and 5 different continents, Chef Mathew is spreading his ambitions for the future of food.
Historically, Vegan food hasn’t always had glowing support from the culinary world. Vegetables have been humble side plates to prime cuts of meat or other animal products that are celebrated as desirable delicacies. At Kenney’s restaurants, vegetables are certainly not brushed to the side. They are celebrated as the main ingredient, and hidden within innovative garnishes. dressing or imitation dairy products. Kenney’s secret ingredient to ensuring great tasting food, isn’t actually an ingredient. Instead, he makes sure to understand the local agriculture, and create a menu around seasonal ingredients. This has always been an essential component of his culinary success, from his early days as a raw food chef, to his current high profile status.
Disagreeing completely with the traditonal food pyramid, created in 1972 in Sweeden, Mathew Kenney and his team came up with a different food pyramid, which they feel guides peoples towards a diet that promotoes health and wellness more accurately.
Kenneys global sucess speaks to the chanings times we are living in, where alternative approaches to life as we know it are needed to combat the changing climate. Veganism is proven to be better for our plannet, but even without considering the significant positive affect of a plant-based diet, the food at Mathew Kenney’s restaurants feels good to eat.