Endless restaurants are always opening up in New York City. With that also comes the endless variety, and one type of cuisine that is picking up in popularity as well as general ubiquity is vegan cuisine. Once upon a time, I wasn’t that open to these types of restaurants, but seeing how creative food has become for non-meat eaters has actually been a bit inspiring for me. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have been gaining crazy traction to the point where the Impossible Burger is actually experiencing a shortage in supply; restaurants’ demands for this are exceeding the supply, so many places (like Roast in Detroit last week) are actually on wait lists to get more of these, and had to temporarily take it off their bar menu). And as I’ve been trying more vegan “cheeses,” I am more and more impressed with how delicious they’ve become.

Tonight, my friend and I went to a small, quaint vegan French restaurant in the West Village. Honestly, when I hear “French cuisine,” all I can think about are a) butter, b) cheese, and c) all things flaky pastry, which inevitably mean butter, eggs, and sugar. Well, this place does serve vegan croissants and sugar, but definitely no genuine butter or cheese. The tastiest thing we shared was the vegan “brie” that was actually made out of macadamia nuts. I probably could have just snacked on that all night and been totally satisfied. With all the innovations coming out of the plant-based food movement, I’m eager to see what else I can taste that is delicious and better for our planet.