Miami Food Blog

Jacob Katel

Chef Bernie Matz, Books & Books owner Mitchell Kaplan, and Julio Maza at the Café at Books & Books' fifth anniversary party.

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My first brush with vegetarianism was fish-related. I was 6 or 7 on Florida's west coast, tagging along with my father on an orchestra gig. Being raised by a musician dad, I'd been to the opera, salsa gigs and renaissance fairs but never on a fishing trip. We took a walk by the pier and my eyes caught sight of a fresh catch flopping on the deck. Before I could think twice the amateur angler took a sharp knife to the fish's abdomen and spilled it's dark guts on the sun-bleached timbers. It would be years before I would go near seafood again.

In my teens I regret to say that I discovered sashimi and had a fling with that for a while. However, before long the feeling returned that it just wasn't right to eat "anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he or she could" (James Cromwell) so I ditched the pesca- prefix* for good and haven't looked back.

In the kitchen, my role has always tended to be chef rather than baker. The whole "measuring ingredients" thing was always way less my forte than licking the spoon to see which spices the dish needs more of. That said, when I heard Fort Lauderdale vegan mecca Sublime was having a "Vegan Baking 101" class, I signed right up, hoping to get inspired to start actually making the amazing vegan dessert recipes I keep coming across.

Sublime's head pastry chef, David Kalas, led about 30 (mostly female) folks interested in learning new ways to bake animal-byproduct-free and the many ways you can replace the role of an egg in traditional baking. Baking, as it's been said, is a science, and clearly the eggs are there for a textural/binding purpose as opposed to being eggy-tasting.

Once in a while being a vegetarian can be a royal letdown. You espy a lovely bean burrito on a menu, but upon inquiry it turns out that the beans are cooked con puerco and the rice was simmered in chicken stock. Or how about this sumptuous-looking roasted tomato soup? Ahh, the base is beef stock. Thank you, but no thank you.

Many omnivores still need it explained to them that even if a food isn't made of meat, if it was cooked with meat it is absolutely no longer suitable for vegetarians. My brother, the comedian, accused such foods of being tainted with Chickenitis B, as in "You don't wanna eat those mashed potatoes Laur, they were served right under my dripping chicken filet and have Chickenitis B."

Lifefood Gourmet, which moved a while ago to an airy new location on Coral Way, promises to be a mecca for healthy eaters, vegans and raw-foodists alike. Advertised as "the most sustainable cuisine on the planet," Lifefood makes guilt-free dining easy with no dairy, wheat/gluten, soy, corn, chemicals, "strange proteins" or anything artificial -- everything on the menu is truly fresh, raw, wholesome, and thankfully, legitimately delicious.

My companion and I arrived hungry and got to work on the appetizer sampler. The cucumber rolls were filled with a sumptuous nut pate that could put any cream-based filling to shame, and the Mexican nachos were smothered with a hearty amount of guacamole and pumpkin "meat" (though it could have included a few more chips as we grabbed forks to scoop up the remainder of the topping). The nori crisps were better than the best blue corn tortilla chips. The world-traveler dining next to us couldn't help but comment that he bought some to take with him on his next trip to Costa Rica, but only made it down the block before he devoured the entire bag.

It's a fun fact that Oreos have long been so fake that they are in fact completely free of egg and dairy. A lot of meal ideas are either likewise  vegan or easily made so with the slightest tweak. Some surreptitiously vegan everyday items include guacamole, salsa, portobello burgers, pasta primavera, hummus, veggie sushi rolls, veggie chili, and most dark chocolate.  Here are a few more to start with:

Pasta Puttanesca (or "whore sauce" as my hilarious brother calls it): A wonderful, flavorful Italian dish that is completely vegan with the omission of anchovies. The base is your favorite whole wheat angel hair, a can of black olives, a jar of capers, and fresh or canned crushed tomatoes. What really makes it pop though are the spices: rosemary, oregano, sage, and as many red pepper flakes as you can handle. I can't imagine that dissolving oily fish into this could possibly be an improvement.

Most of you readers have probably experienced fake meat or a veggie food item. It might've been a mouth-watering, paradigm-shifting experience or something you tossed after one bite.  The point is, veggie food is just like all other food - some of it's awesome and some of it sucks horribly!

The worst fake meat I ever tried was fake fish, which was just a bad idea to begin with.  I prepared it according to the package specs and was left with a greasy, mushy, "fillet" surrounded by tough seaweed fish "skin" that was so revolting I'd hesitate to feed the leftovers to a starving feline.

On the flip side, there are some really incredible products out there with new items being dropped on the market every day.  Here are a few of my favorites that leave me feeling anything but deprived.

Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread: Developed by nutritionists who were trying to prove that diet could change your good-to-bad cholesterol ratio and stumbled upon a delicious, buttery gold mine. Earth Balance is non-hydrogenated, non-fakey-tasting and can be used for spreading, baking, sautéing, frying -- you name it. Earth Balance is also the key ingredient for the most sumptuous vegan mashed potatoes ever (trick: add it until you feel guilty, then add some more). The best part is that it's grown in popularity so much that it's available at every Publix for just $3.49 a tub. Please, never consume I Can't Believe It's Not Butter again.

via divinemisscopa's Flickr/CC

Editor's Note:Meatless in Miami columnist Lolo Reskin is ba-a-a-ack. In her first column, she talked about becoming a vegetarian. She'll be writing on the site regularly.

MYTH: It's hard to be a vegetarian in Miami.

REALITY:  It's actually a breeze, and only getting breezier...

This is the main misconception that inspired this column. Just this past weekend during Bike Miami Days I stopped by Eleven Leprechauns, a fairly new Irish-themed restaurant in the Grove.  Usually at these sort of places buffalo wings and fries-that-were-probably-fried-in-the-same-fryer-as-the-wings are the standard options, but this place had real live veggie burgers on the menu!  Things are indeed looking up.

There are really only a small few restaurants where you'll literally end up eating a salad or nothing (Outback Steakhouse comes to mind, but really, why eat there anyway?).  Even restaurants I've been to who offer say, chicken livers wrapped in pig bacon, also have a handful of tasty options to suit those who would rather starve for an evening than eat the aforementioned dish.

(Editors Note: Lauren "Lolo" Reskin, Sweat Records owner, promoter, and all-around cool lady, will occasionally contribnute columns to Riptide about veggie eating in the big city. For more detail, see her blog meatlessmiami.com.)

Vegans and vegetarians are alive and well and living in Miami. It may be shocking to read but despite the renown of Miami's steakhouses and churrascarias, thousands are happily living meatlessly among you.  A recent survey puts vegetarians at 3.2 percent of the U.S. population, and rounding Miami's population to a cool 5 million, that's 160,000 of us.

Me? After reading a few books on the subject, I quit meat cold turkey (sorry) just before the end of seventh grade in 1994. My parents thought it was another fad (like my very serious plans to grow up and professionally train dolphins and/or design stickers for Lisa Frank) but here it is almost 15 years later and I'm still happily flesh, fish and fowl-free.

Nowadays it's downright easy to live veggie-style.  Back then it still wasn't that hard to be a vegetarian, it was just hard to be a GOOD vegetarian.  Side-item samplers and Boca burgers (if that) were pretty much the end of the line when eating out, unless you could stomach a salad for every meal.  Fast food French fries and a smoothie were often called "lunch" and as a result, I was anemic until I learned how to eat a balanced variety of foods. I'm happy to report I can now donate blood without being turned away for iron-deficiency.