How the Bay Area Taught Me to Love Vegan Food — and Make It Ghanaian

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bout two years ago, I went to my first vegan restaurant in the Bay. I was so excited to walk around Lake Merritt with my date, Kai, that I commuted one hour from the Mission and responded enthusiastically to her suggestion of lunch at Vegan Mob — even though I don’t like vegan food. Or I didn’t think I did, anyway.

It was my first time visiting Oakland, and its village charm and conspicuous Blackness made me feel happily nostalgic for my hometown back in Connecticut. By the time we approached the quaint lime-green building, I practically forgot we were going to a vegan restaurant. It helped, too, that Vegan Mob’s lineup of plant-based burgers and barbecue plates didn’t look like any other vegan food I’d seen. Reading the menu, I fantasized about the brisket and ribs from my favorite soul food restaurants.

Over plates of Impossible Burgers and candied yams, Kai and I joked around and recounted our childhoods. It was only after the meal, when she asked how I liked the vegan meat, that I began to consider the question. I was delighted but a little disoriented. I knew I had not eaten animal meat, but nothing about the meal felt vegan either. I appreciated the lightness of the mushroom burger patty, and just how tasty and everyday all of the food was.

Prior to this, my most salient experiences with vegan food were from the dinner parties my white, effective-altruist friend hosted during college. The tofu in the chickpea curry he cooked was always watery, and I pushed chunks of it around my bowl more than I ate it. Most of our mealtime conversations were about the self-sacrifice needed to create a more environmentally, racially and morally just world.

Like a good kid forcing himself to swallow his broccoli, I endured those meals because I believed the discipline was healthy and the discussions were thought provoking — not because the food actually tasted good. I saw veganism as a form of liberal asceticism, where taste and pleasure were less important than the morality of one’s diet. That all the vegans I knew were ardently political, and that the few restaurants they brought me to were absent of spice, supported this viewpoint.

Vegan Mob challenged these biases. A few months later, Taqueria La Venganza, a vegan Mexican restaurant in North Oakland, upended them. I’d suggested the place when Seiji, an old high school friend who is vegetarian, reached out to grab a meal. What I didn’t tell him was that I still suspected that vegan food was, generally speaking, kind of gross.

But each mouthful of La Venganza’s two-pound soy carne asada burrito — and the fresh lettuce, tomato and guac they packed into it — was delicious. We spent the first half of our reunion in awe of the food, and in awe of ourselves after learning how quickly each of us could eat an entire pound.

Eventually, we revisited our time at boarding school, which dug up complicated memories that I usually avoid talking about. But the bond that Seiji and I had formed over those burritos — the way the food made us feel so comfortable and at home — helped lower my inhibitions. For the first time I expressed out loud my sense of betrayal that a math teacher I had admired is currently in prison for sexually assaulting one of my classmates. We grieved and reflected deep into the night.

This is why I love food so much. Every meal is a ritual, a recurring pause that allows us to reflect on the beauty, joy and sadness of life — especially when we share those meals with others. Now I realized that vegan food didn’t have to be something I only ate when philosophizing about morality or social justice. It could simply be part of the fabric of my everyday life.

My newfound appreciation of vegan eating has also expanded my understanding of Ghanaian food — the food of my own cultural background. Because I had grown up on plates of crab in okra stew and chicken in jollof rice, I assumed the cuisine needed meat to achieve its savory and dense perfection. So whenever I discussed a vegan or vegetarian future with friends, it felt like I was envisioning a world where Ghanaian food didn’t exist.

But these new, ethnically specific vegan restaurants in the Bay made me realize that my assumption that Ghanaian cuisine had to have meat was unfounded. Recently, I asked my roommate, Russell, to help me make a vegan version of my favorite dish: peanut soup. This was the dish I always requested from my mom during breaks from boarding school, so nowadays, without asking, I always return home to omo tuo, or rice balls, waiting to be doused in this soup of peanut butter, tomato paste, spices and chicken stock. To make our vegan version, Russell and I used vegetable stock, and we used tempeh in place of the chicken that normally bulks up the soup. To compensate for the lack of meat, we reduced the soup for longer and added more peanut butter.

The result was the earthiest and sweetest version of the dish I had ever eaten. The velvety soup held on perfectly to the rice, and the mildness of the vegetable stock really allowed the peanuts to shine. As we slurped the last few spoonfuls from our second servings, we began fantasizing about the tweaks and adjustments we’d make on our next batch.

My folks back at home marveled over the photos of the soup that I sent to the family group chat. And the next morning, my mom called to share something I hadn’t known: that her grandmother, Akua, had largely avoided eating meat. Instead, she prepared jollof rice, tilapia bean stew and other traditional, “meaty” dishes using only vegetables.

These days, Russell and I cook both vegan and meat-based versions of dishes at the same time, so we can see how they compare — our most recent experiment was coq au vin. I am also reinterpreting more Ghanaian foods just as my great-grandmother Akua once did. Fufu, a ball of pounded plantains, served in a soup of palm oil and spiced peppers, is next. I no longer dismiss whole cuisines or dietary choices, or limit my thinking on what must be in a dish. All cuisines can be vegan, I’ve learned. And their flavors can deepen my understanding of myself and my world.