An Interview With Martita Mestey
Make time for self-care. Every week we take time for ourselves by enjoying some relaxing sauna time! We learned we could not care for others until we took the time to care for ourselves.
In this interview series called “Chefs and Restaurateurs Helping To Promote Healthy Eating,” we are talking to chefs and restaurateurs who are helping to promote and raise awareness about healthy eating. The purpose of the series is to amplify their message and share insights about healthy eating with our readers. As a part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Janine Smalls Gueye and Lanise Herman-Thomas.
Janine Smalls Gueye and Lanise Herman-Thomas, Co-Founders of VeganHood, a 100% plant-based restaurant in Harlem, NY. Their concept was born in April 2020 at the start of the pandemic when they sold sea moss and handcrafted teas in a shared kitchen. Two years later, they expanded and are now a full-service 50-seat restaurant serving soul food and authentic Caribbean favorites with a vegan twist!
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know’ you a bit. Can you share with our readers a story about what inspired you to become a restauranteur or chef?
We launched our restaurant VeganHood to bring a familiar and relatable taste to our urban community while encouraging a healthier lifestyle by serving 100% plant-based menu items. We knew it would be a process to introduce vegan food to our neighborhood, and it would need to begin by serving comfort and family favorites that we grew up eating but using plant-based ingredients vs. animal products. Our goal has always been to debunk the myth that vegan food is boring without flavor. It isn’t, and we have proved that at VeganHood. Some top menu items are our Saint Nick Fried Chix’n, Soy-free Mac & Cheese, Vegan Oxtail, Mami’s Empanadas, and fabulous desserts like our Golden and Chocolate Oreo puddings. We say at VeganHood that we “veganize without compromise.”
Do you have a specific type of food that you focus on? What was it that first drew you to cooking that type of food? Can you share a story about that with us?
We are dedicated to preparing and serving delicious food that is familiar, hearty, flavorful, high-quality, and 100% plant-based. Our menu items are carefully constructed to create the optimal balance of nutrition and flavor, utilizing fresh fruits and vegetables, ethically sourced proteins, and other nutrient-rich ingredients. Our passion for our mission of bridging “veganism and the hood” was influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic, which claimed the lives of thousands in NYC, our hometown. VeganHood was an idea birthed out of our ghost kitchen to help our community as fast as we could. We started by offering wildcrafted sea moss gel, as they are known to support immune health, and our “VeganHood Total Tea,” which contains burdock root, sour sop leaves, elderberry, and other herbs rich in antioxidants.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that has happened to you since you started? What was the lesson or takeaway you took out of that story?
One of our most memorable and funniest moments was in the early days of VeganHood. We were working out of our ghost kitchen, and orders were coming in fast, and we had to move quickly to meet the demand. Our kitchen location had a long hallway to the office where the orders go out, but it was narrow, and to avoid knocking each other over, we would often bump into each other, even trip and fall. And the hustle and bustle of it gave us a laugh every time! We even found ourselves quoting movie lines from scenes that reminded us of what we were going through. Our ghost kitchen days were a happy time for us, and we will recall the funny stories for many years to come!
None of us can be successful without some help along the way. Did you have mentors or cheerleaders who helped you to succeed? Can you tell us a story about their influence?
Our biggest cheerleaders are our children, they’re watching our every move, and we love it! They motivate and push us to do our best and keep us going even when tired. Over the years, with both our nonprofit and restaurant, we’ve been blessed to have amazing mentors, including Melba Wilson, Owner of Melba’s Restaurant in Harlem. When we acquired our brick-and-mortar space, she embraced us and provided introductions to people we needed to know. She has been an inspiring and important mentor to us, and we feel we can call on her for anything.
In your experience, what is the key to creating a dish that people are crazy about?
Make it memorable by ensuring it looks great when served and tastes great when eaten! From the first bite, we want to reach into their subconscious and awaken a warm and wonderful childhood memory of eating their favorite meal with their family. Our customers are an extension of our family, and we want them to feel that way about us too! From our great food to our familiar, homey customer service, VeganHood is a place where we want everyone to feel like they belong, and we do that by ensuring they know how much we care.
Personally, what is the ‘perfect meal’ for you?
The perfect meal is when you can sit back after eating and smile, whether alone or dining with family and friends. We like to think of “the perfect meal” as a visit to your favorite cousin or returning to your most inspiring location. Specific cuisines spark a memory, and we love creating those memories for our customers.
Where does your inspiration for creating come from? Is there something that you turn to for a daily creativity boost?
Our inspiration comes from our community and culture. We’ve enjoyed so many dishes in our lifetime and enjoy keeping them alive and relevant, especially interacting with our followers on socials.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? What impact do you think this will have?
In 2017, before we launched VeganHood, we co-founded the Young Excellence Society (YES), a 501c3 nonprofit, to support Harlem youth with innovative after-school programs. One was inspired by Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move Initiative. It is called FOOD (Finding Other Options Daily) to help students, ages 9 to 13, learn about the benefits of exercise and healthy eating. We donate a portion of our VeganHood profits to YES and tell our customers they are “eating for a cause,” as these donations are making a difference with valuable learning, mental health support, and meaningful mentorship programs for these youth.
Ok super. Let’s now jump to the main part of our interview. You are currently leading an initiative to help promote healthy eating. Can you tell us a bit about what you and your organization are trying to change in our world today?
We need to change the perception that vegan food is bland. When plant-based food is well-prepared, you won’t miss it! We have many customers who come to VeganHood and are eating plant-based food for the first time and are thrilled! Using the right flavor profiles, vegan food is delicious!
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to initially feel passionate about this cause?
We were pescatarians for many years and became vegan after we watched powerful documentaries on healthy eating and protecting the planet. Once this became our way of life, we wanted to find ways of sharing this diet option with our community. This got reinforced even further when the pandemic happened because we knew we needed to help others on a higher level by bringing vegan-eating to familiar foods, which we call bridging veganism with the hood! As native New Yorkers, when we have an idea, we’re ready to execute, and this is where we first established our ghost kitchen using multiple delivery apps. We gained popularity and were scrambling to handle over 200 orders daily; from that moment, we knew we needed a storefront space and staff to take this on.
Without saying specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was helped by your cause?
So many individuals and families across the community have praised us for helping improve their lives with our food and handcrafted teas and appreciating the information we share on holistic vitamins and herbs. We have heard about their years-long challenges with digestion and skin rashes that have subsided by switching to a vegan diet by dining with us or preparing food at home based on recipes we have given them! We are proud to have inspired them to change their eating habits because, through our menu items, they discovered that vegan foods are just as delicious and a great way to enjoy dining with family and friends.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
- Include healthy eating in the education curriculum. We need to have a way to communicate healthy and proper dietary choices through our education system to better inform our youth, teachers, and the entire school community about healthy eating.
- Leaders need to feature vegan food. When our leaders serve vegan selections at public events, they are helping build awareness and acceptance for plant-based food and vegan eating.
- Create more small business opportunities. Local leaders and community planners should create more opportunities for entrepreneur growth and leadership from grants to accelerator programs to mentor initiatives.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started as a Chef or Restaurateur” and why? Please share a story or an example for each.
- Get ready to be exhausted. Starting your own restaurant takes hours of working “in” the business and working “on” the business. Running a restaurant takes more time than you can imagine on prep, planning, and operating, but lucky for us, our satisfied customers keep us invigorated and energized!
- Stay away from naysayers. Not everyone will want you to succeed, so surround yourself with the ones who do! Focus on the people that love and support you and start every day with a bowl full of optimism!
- Save for a rainy day. We are reaching our first year as a brick-and-mortar and now have a better perspective on what it means to prepare for the times when business is slower. Start preparing for that from day one so you will be ready when it happens.
- Make time for self-care. Every week we take time for ourselves by enjoying some relaxing sauna time! We learned we could not care for others until we took the time to care for ourselves.
- Have fun! We love serving our community and seeing our customers smile! We went into this business to introduce our community to something new, give back and inspire and have fun, and experience joy during the day is all part of it.
Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? They might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
We would love to meet with Carla Hall, the world-renowned Chef and television personality. We admire how she has always tried various cuisines, and when we’re experimenting, we create some of those same dishes and “veganize” them, of course. We “met” her when she was on The Chew, and she has inspired us. We would love to talk with her about her different cuisines and learn more about how she got started. She is our “best friend” in our heads and hopefully we will get to meet her soon!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Visit our website:www.VeganHood.net
Facebook: VeganHood
Instagram: Veganhood__ (We have two underscores!)
Linkedin: VeganHood Foods
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
How Janine Smalls Gueye and Lanise Herman-Thomas Of VeganHood Are Helping To Promote Healthy Eating was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.