Final summer season, Belse opened as the most important vegan restaurant in New York Metropolis historical past on the Bowery, the traditionally tough stretch simply north of Chinatown. Belse was about 5 occasions bigger than the town’s common vegan restaurant with seating for almost 200—the capability of a subway automotive.
Matt Marshall
In a metropolis the place area may be very tight, Belse opened with a singular problem: an excessive amount of area. “We’re too large to fail,” Belse proprietor Steve Bellamy instructed VegNews a couple of months after opening, when the problem of filling a whole lot of seats per day was changing into clear.
As a devoted vegan trying to save animals one meal at a time, Bellamy might by no means think about a public defeat for the town’s largest vegan institution. It was a high-visibility vegan enterprise that wanted a profitable consequence.
Belse shortly grew to become a fixture within the NYC vegan group, changing into the go-to spot for internet hosting native vegan occasions. The meals was scrumptious. Nevertheless, too lots of these seats remained empty.
Matt Marshall
On January 1, Belse abruptly introduced that it was closing—with an enormous mission-preserving shock: Spicy Moon, one of many metropolis’s most-loved vegan franchises, would take over the huge area.
NYC’s largest vegan restaurant will get spicier
This week, Spicy Moon lands on the Bowery, opening its third location within the metropolis. It brings a longtime buyer base that has been packing its first two areas for years, and continues the restaurant’s penchant for regular, however vital, development.
Spicy Moon first opened in 2019 on East sixth Avenue, with roughly 20 very tightly-packed seats and a tiny closet-sized kitchen. In early 2020, proper because the pandemic was hitting, Spicy Moon opened a Greenwich Village location greater than triple the scale of the unique. And this week, opening at 265 Bowery, it greater than triples that Greenwich Village location, changing into the most important vegan restaurant in NYC.
Matt Marshall
Spicy Moon’s plant-based Szechuan delicacies is already an enormous hit with vegans and non-vegans alike. The menu presents spicy dan dan noodles with vegan beef, wontons in chili oil, crispy kung pao tofu, shiitake buns, vegan duck, crabless rangoon, and extra. The dishes are daring, distinctive, and made with absolutely plant-based components. That implies that even the “honey” on the menu is a vegan, bee-sparing various.
Spicy Moon is bringing that beloved menu to the Bowery, with the addition of some colourful new cocktails. The native chain has additionally stored the huge brewing gear left by earlier occupants, and never only for ornament. In coming months, anticipate Szechuan-flavored beers to hit the menu, brewed proper in-house.
As soon as operational, because of this Spicy Moon won’t solely be NYC’s largest vegan restaurant but in addition the town’s solely 100-percent vegan brewpub.
Vivid pink animal activism
The design of the area echoes the daring flavors on the menu. The newly painted bright-pink facade stands out from a number of blocks away. Passersby inevitably flip and touch upon the storefront, which is adorned in pro-animal murals.
Matt Marshall
Spicy Moon on the Bowery is opening with a visible bang—proper in tune with the punk rock historical past of the neighborhood.
Among the native love for Spicy Moon stems from the distinctive method it has overtly embraced the animal rights group: posting anti-fur indicators, hiring vegan artists to color animal-rights murals, supporting native sanctuaries, and even donating a bullhorn to activists for animal-rights marches. That daring moral stance continues within the new area, the place an enormous “Defend Animals” quote greets all guests contained in the entrance door.
Matt Marshall
The authors of that quote—activists Len Goldberg and Ashley Mahoney—traveled all the best way from Canada to get pleasure from a preview of the brand new restaurant.
“I really like being a part of Spicy Moon’s extraordinary work to attain animal freedom,” Goldberg tells VegNews. “It isn’t simply the tastiest restaurant ever, it’s an traditionally influential animal liberation shrine.”
For this huge area to be financially sustainable, the restaurant can even should entice 1000’s of non-vegan prospects to get pleasure from a flavorful, plant-based meal. Spicy Moon hopes to make this simpler by using the restaurant area in artistic methods.
Through the daytime, the bar will morph right into a vegan café providing pastries and Szechuan-flavored espresso. It additionally plans to host occasions within the massive private-dining area downstairs (which features a yard).
To assist construct an area that everybody in the neighborhood can get pleasure from, a stage has already been erected to welcome native musicians, comedians, and artists.
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Matt Marshall tracks the New York Metropolis vegan restaurant scene at @vegan.nyx on Instagram.
