How the Vegan Chef Challenge built community and made me less lonely in Santa Cruz

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The most remarkable thing I couldn’t have anticipated when I first went vegan almost eight years ago wasn’t that I could make egg replacements out of flax or a plant-based “smoked salmon” from ribboned carrots. 

It was how lonely it was going to feel. 

Most of us accept reality as “how things are,” but once you really look hard at what’s behind the scenes of what’s on carnivore and dairy-based plates, you can’t unsee it: how unthinkable harm to animals and planet are concealed from us consumers, how normalized cruelty is, how deeply entrenched meat and dairy are in the culture – not just in what we eat, but in the traditions, comforts and pleasures many people never stop to question.

After years of fluctuating between vegetarian and pescatarian eating, at 38, after the birth of my second daughter, I decided to try out being vegan. At first it was a hunch, a way to try creativity via constraints and break with some dietary doldrums — there’s only so much baked salmon or grilled cheese one can consume before monotony sets in. My plate and life became more colorful with three-bean chili, kale and chard, sauteed seasonal veggies and tempeh at their center. 

Then, the underlying reasons revealed themselves. While attending the first VegFest held in Santa Cruz, at the Cocoanut Grove in 2019, I picked up a pamphlet about the lives of dairy cows. I’d been consuming dairy for years without knowing how the mom- cows are forcefully inseminated, scream for the baby that’s taken away immediately after birth, milked to death and slaughtered. 

A nursing mother myself at the time, I viscerally understood the there-are-no-words-for-this attachment to the calf, the bonding, the feeding. I couldn’t imagine taking a baby away from another mom, no matter her species, using her body for my benefit because I liked the taste of ice cream and pizza. It felt hypocritical not to eat animals for meat, but support the torture and slaughter of mothers for milk. 

I knew then this vegan thing was going to become a permanent choice. 

I became so obsessed with the dairy cow issue I wrote a several-thousand-word essay that ended up, to my great surprise, being selected by a non-vegan chef for inclusion in the Best American Food Writing anthology in 2021. 

And ice cream and pizza didn’t even have to go. They simply changed forms. (Oatly! Miyoko’s!) 

I’ve always been down with rebellion, but suddenly, as silly as it may seem, even just seeing platters strewn with cheese squares triggered existential dread. I couldn’t relax and enjoy most social occasions anymore. My veganism was disrupting connection. I sought out other vegans, but most of the world, let’s face it, isn’t.

And, mostly, that was fine. So I’d feel lonely as a vegan. It was worth any trade-off.

I felt it, though; when you go vegan you no longer fit in with most of society. 

No matter how vegan-friendly a town you live in. 

So it was an absolute thrill when, in April, we vegans of Santa Cruz experienced what it would be like were our preferences the normalized ones. The Vegan Chef Challenge came to town. 

The Vegan Chef Challenge, an event curated by the organization Vegan Outreach, invites chefs in chosen cities to create new vegan menu items for diners to try for one month and then vote on their favorites, got me back into local restaurants. 

For months, I’d been near-exclusively cooking at home after starting — for health and, yes, connection and community — a vegan fitness program with a meal plan and a trainer, the Italian “vegfluencer” Luca Marshall Fent, who checks in most days to make sure I’m not slacking (ie, going out for the ruby-hued, perfect sweetness of the vegan rhubarb galettes at Vim, not on the plan). 

“I’ll be eating everything from this Vegan Chef Challenge,” I told him. “Sometimes a person has to break with their personal fitness goals to support the larger cause.” I gleefully jumped in on trying as many dishes as possible over the course of the challenge. 

I brought my two young kids to several of the restaurants. We’d walk in and order “one of everything on the Vegan Chef Challenge menu.” 

We loved the plant-based sushi rolls at The Buzz that came out looking like works of art; vegan asada, nachos, faux-crab cake made of mushroom, and tofu bahn mi at Lúpulo. We savored the creative stuffed sweet potato with chickpeas, pomegranate and microgreens and a delicious sauce at Pono. 

Throughout the month I went to several more, including The View, Vim and Trestles. I found it impossible to think about a winner. In my mind, they all won just for doing it. 

Everything was delicious, offering so much more to vegan and vegan-curious diners than fries and a salad — the more typical “vegan non-option” on an average restaurant menu of the past.

What I’d like to put out to the restaurateurs and chefs of Santa Cruz is, this is a great idea. 

Not just for a month or a challenge, but for everyday life. Please keep these real options on your menus. Vegan or not, people eating out in your establishments will love the sound of them, order them and enjoy them. 

Rinse (fresh seasonal veggies and fruits), repeat. Keep spreading the love and kindness.

On the flip side, I wondered where some of my favorite restaurants were and why they opted not to participate. Conspicuously absent from the list were some longtime locally famous and beloved eateries like Gabriella Cafe, Oswald, Home, Laili, Shadowbrook, The Crepe Place, Lillian’s, Copal, Venus Spirits Cocktails and Kitchen, The Crow’s Nest (love the salad bar, add some tofu), El Palomar. Where was vegan/vegetarian casual favorite Pretty Good Advice? Hula’s Island Grill has a vegan following but wasn’t seen in the challenge. The wharf spots had no representation (and most by far could improve on their plant-based offerings). 

And our breakfast spots: Harbor Cafe, Walnut Cafe, Zachary’s — perhaps missed a chance to show that plant-based at daybreak can go beyond tofu scramble. 

I’m not calling them out to criticize. 

I’m calling them into this opportunity to emulate the restaurants that did participate. I think every chef can be inspired by what the VCC accomplished and keep creating fresh, creative new plant-based options that anyone can enjoy.

It doesn’t require a special month. As local Vegan Chef Challenge organizer and food advocate Allison Garcia put it in her talk at the awards ceremony, “eating plant-based or plant-forward is the No. 1 thing each of us can do every day to make a difference — for the planet, for our health, and for the animals.”

To me, every restaurant and chef that participated is a winner. As a vegan in Santa Cruz, I know there are plentiful “plantiful” options —nearly every restaurant I’ve been to here has a vegan dish or will gladly provide one (even if off-menu customized as I have encountered dining at Oswald, Home and Gabriella). 

But as Garcia said in her talk at the awards event, one option is not really a choice. “The key word here is options,” Garcia said. “When an omnivore goes to a restaurant, they may have 10 or 30 choices or options. If there is only one vegan appetizer or one vegan entree on the menu, that by definition is not an option—there is no choice in the matter.” 

Certainly, choice implies there’s something to choose between. The Vegan Chef Challenge guided restaurants to finally provide that.