By Mark Woolsey
The Big Fat Vegan, an unusual mother-daughter collaboration dedicated to tasty plant-based food, has set up shop along Powers Ferry Road near I-285, an area thick with apartment complexes and corporate tenants.
Mother Tanetta Ellzey is non-vegan, describing herself as pescatarian while daughter Iyonna Poags Is thoroughly committed to a plant-based lifestyle.
What links them is a dedication to bold, engaging flavorings and a desire to bring comfort food to their clientele.
Both indicate the road that led them to start a food truck which operated off Howell Mill Road in Atlanta, then a brick-and-mortar location in Cobb, sprang from several factors, not the least of which was a fondness for jerk seasoning.
Tanetta says her daughter, vegan since 2014, started making her own meals in 2018 ”and I didn’t understand that.’”
“I said just tell me what to cook and what not to cook,” she says. Ellzey whipped up mushroom tacos and then plant-based “chicken” tacos and her daughter pronounced them “amazing.”
“She said ‘you don’t understand. We’ve got something big,’” Ellzey says,
Poags had had her own formative experience in the vegan foodspace. She attended went to culinary school (under the vegan banner) for a time in her early 20s, and took the school’s meat-based recipes, experimenting and converted them to plant-based alternatives.
The mom and daughter put their heads together to craft other vegan offerings, utilizing jerk seasoning (a family favorite) and a combination of spices and flavorings that neither wants to disclose. That led to their successful food truck.
Poags says since throwing open the doors early this month they’ve made believers out of a lot of people-family members and others-who initially shied away from their bill of fare, thinking It might taste “nasty.”
“Now a lot of my family members eat vegan,” she says. “Their minds have been opened up to it.”
Their adventurous menu includes burgers, jerk tacos, a Philly cheesesteak, chicken and waffles, and a barbecue meatloaf with two sides.
To help wash it all down, they feature a matcha lemonade along with a non-dairy cookie butter espresso along with other drinks.
The pair says that on the horizon are an expansion to breakfast and also a search for investors who could help fuel a further expansion of the brand. More locations could be in the pipeline.
Their website stresses that food is 100 percent wholesome, 100 percent plant based and 100 percent packed with flavor.
That sort of fits in with the Big Fat Vegan name.
“Our food is not really, I want to say health-conscious because that’s not our goal here, pretty much. Our goal here is comfort,” says Poags.
And they say that not just vegans are flocking to them, they’re also attracting a lot of people who just appreciate solid, tasty comfort food.
As Marcus T in Atlanta put in a post on the company’s website, “I’m not even vegan and this is the best burger I’ve ever had. No cap.”
Big. Fat Vegan is open Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.at 2110 Powers Ferry Road, Suite120. The restaurant seats about 50, indoors and outside.
Visit the Big Fat Vegan website for more information.
Read more food and restaurant coverage in the Cobb County Courier by following this link.
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