Mike Suchcicki

News Journal correspondent

It’s the question all families and groups of friends face almost on a daily basis:

“So, where do you want to eat tonight?”

“Let’s go someplace nice. How about that new steakhouse?”

“No, we can’t go there, because of Gretchen.”

“What about Gretchen?”

“You know. She’s a …” (whispers) “…vegan.”

“NO! NOT GRETCHEN! GRETCHEN, YOU’VE RUINED EVERYTHING!”

Stop yelling at Gretchen and calm down. Thanks to one local fine dining restaurant, you can have your steak and Gretchen can eat it too.

Gretchen’s however, will be a cauliflower steak, grilled and roasted by the folks at Skopelos at New World in downtown Pensacola. The restaurant has, just this week, added a group of vegan dishes to its menu, designed to entice and please not only the vegans in the group, but the meat-eaters as well.

Take, for instance, the aforementioned cauliflower steak. It’s a thick cut of cauliflower that’s first grilled to get a nice char, then roasted and served with a citrus risotto that uses no cream or cheese, with a hefty ladle of chermoula sauce on the side.

More:Skopelos' taste bud enticing events in October

Skopelos executive chef Gus Silivos said that when the restaurant was testing the waters of adding vegan items to the menu, they served the cauliflower steak one weekend as a special.

“We had people coming in the next weekend asking for that item specifically,” Silivos said. "It outsold some of the other features on the menu. When I saw that I thought, 'Alright, we’re on to something.’”

"At first everybody’s a little skeptical,” said Takara Smith, chef de cuisine and vegan, who nudged Silivos toward the vegan menu additions. “But I tell them, I promise I’ll never make you something that’s gross. I'll never make you eat food that I don’t absolutely love.”

Let’s have Smith, who moved to Pensacola from San Diego less than a year ago, describe the vegan/vegetarian difference:

"Vegetarian is no meats, no seafood,” she said. “Basically choosing not to eat flesh. For veganism, it’s no animal products, no dairy, no eggs. Anything that is produced by or taken from an animal isn’t consumed. You can go a step further, though. For a lot of vegans, there’s a difference between plant-based and vegan. Plant-based is solely dietary. Vegan is no leathers, no animal testing, no beeswax, that sort of thing. It’s a complete lifestyle change. It’s vegetarianism to the extreme.”

Smith, 32, said her choice to adopt the vegan lifestyle about a year and a half ago was, "I’m a huge animal lover and also, for me it’s more of an environmental issue, I choose to spend my dollars toward helping to improve our environment, instead of supporting the dairy industry and the meat industry where there are detrimental effects from those industries on our environment and on our health.”

She put her culinary skills to work at home, perfecting dishes for herself and her fiancé, also a vegan.

“He went vegan first and I looked at him as like a guinea pig or an experiment,” Smith said. “It was a culinary challenge for me, to figure out how to make vegan food taste good. Because if you ask most chefs, they look at vegetarians and vegans and they’re like, 'Oh, God, why? You don’t eat cheese, you don’t eat bacon, like why?’ But there are so many great options now."

So, when Smith met with Silivos to discuss modifications to the Skopelos menu, she took the opportunity to pitch some vegan ideas.

“I thought, ‘Well, we have a couple of vegetarian dishes on our menu, but why don’t we step that up a notch?’” Smith said. “We started talking about how we can fill that niche in the community, to offer that fine dining experience for someone who chooses to eat vegan. It adds a little bit more variety and it opens it up for everybody to have something.”

Silivos, with almost four decades in the professional kitchen, did not need to have his arm twisted.

“There is that change that usually happens about every 10 years,” Silivos said. "You’re going to have flavor, profile, cuisine, lifestyle changes. You have to adapt as a chef and as a restaurant to stay on the cutting edge. When you go out to dinner, you have to be comfortable. You’re not so comfortable when you have to ask for special requests. So people hesitate to go out, or to dine because the choices are not there. When you do have those selections on the menu. I feel you make it that much easier for the guest’s comfort level to know that hey, I can have this and I’m not disrupting. and I’m not being that person causing the commotion. I think that’s a unique thing about what we’re doing on the menu is we’re giving guests that opportunity to dine the way they choose to.”

Smith agreed. "To go out and have a really nice dinner and a nice fine dining experience while being able to eat vegan, that’s huge. A game-changer.”

Of course, it helped that Silivos’ chef de cuisine was a practicing vegan.

More:Peat & Pearls fuses regional oysters, fancy scotch, celebrity chefs in new Pensacola event

"It’s so much easier and better to incorporate a dish when you have someone who actually participates in and practices the technique,” Silivos said. “It’s not just something that you pull out of the internet or out of a book. Whether you’re talking about Asian cuisine or Greek cuisine or what have you, when you have somebody who actually does it, it comes out a lot better.”

Silivos and Smith said the creation and development of the vegan selections was an all-hands-on-deck production. For instance, sous chef Coti Miller contributed the vegan risotto. Someone else suggested the cauliflower steak.

“When we were developing these dishes, I would ask the vegans I knew, particularly those who were new to the lifestyle, ‘What do you miss the most?’” Smith said. Her goal, in most cases, was to replace traditional ingredients with items that would mimic the same texture.

So, in the vegan Reuben sandwich, for example, portobello mushrooms replace the corned beef.

“Portobello mushrooms are so much meatier,” Smith said. “It has that filling, kind of meat substitute to it. Even if you’re not a vegan, it’s still kind of a filling veggie sandwich.”

"It’s all about the mouth feel,” Silivos said. "I think that’s where the flavors come in. And you have those flavors and you feel it in your mouth, it’s like, ‘That’s fine.’"

Smith said, "That cauliflower steak’s not trying to be a steak, it’s cauliflower. But it kind of scratches that itch.”

Same goes for the popcorn cauliflower bites, served with tahini sauce, that mimic the finest Buffalo chicken wings. Or for the mushroom lumache, that serves lumache pasta, a mushroom mix and blistered cherry tomatoes alongside asparagus in such a way that you would swear the dish contained some kind of grilled poultry.

But lest the fine diner think that the Skopelos menu will be overtaken by vegetable dishes, the restaurant also has added some new, non-vegan items to its menu, including Brown Butter Steelhead Trout, Spice Crusted Lamb, Seared Jumbo Scallops, Lamb Lollipops, Grilled Octopus and Roasted Free Range Chicken.

Silivos said he’s confident the new vegan items will be met with a warm welcome.

"I think you’re having a next generation that’s trending toward the vegan and vegetarian diet more so than before,” Silivos said.

Referring to the test menus they’ve been offering over the past few weeks, Smith said, "A lot of people who were eating these dishes weren’t vegan, they just were interested and curious about it and they loved them. It’s exciting for me to bring this kind of food to people and say, ‘Hey, vegetables are delicious. We can make all of this stuff delicious.’”

Want a seat at the table?

What: Skopelos at New World

Where: 600 S. Palafox St.

Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday; 5-10 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.

THE DISHES

Here are some of the new vegan dishes on the menu at Skopelos at New World, with description by Chef de Cuisine Takara Smith.

Popcorn Cauliflower Bites — “What we do is we take the cauliflower and we tempura-fry it. We make a light, fluffy batter that uses baking soda with soda water that allows us to get that crispiness and texture without having to add any kind of egg or fat, like butterfat. And then we toss that in our wing sauce and serve it with our tahini dip, which serves as our vegan ranch.”

Grilled Cauliflower Steak — “We grill it, to get a little bit of char on the outside, and then roast it in the oven, and then we serve that with our chermoula sauce and our vegan risotto. It’s arborio rice, which is traditionally used for risotto, but we add orange juice and fresh vegetables. There’s no cream and no cheese, but you still have that risotto feel.”

Vegan Reuben — “It really mimics that Reuben flavor. We use portobello mushrooms, because they are so much more meatier. It has that filling, kind of meat substitute texture to it. Our sourdough we make in house. It’s akin to some of the good delis I used to go to in San Diego, with that vegan flair to it, with sauerkraut and little pops of coriander seeds."

Mushroom Lumache — “This is our mushroom mix, in the pasta, with blistered tomatoes, chile flakes and the asparagus. It’s for someone, even if they’re not a vegan, who just wants a lighter pasta. I’m a huge pasta fiend. I eat it all the time.”

Banana Chia Seed Pudding — “This is a dessert item that features coconut cream, bananas, vanilla and chia seed. Other than what’s in the coconut cream, we don’t add any sugar, and it's thickened only with the chia seed. Chia seed is a great ingredient."

VEGAN VS. VEGETARIAN

Like vegans, vegetarians do not eat any animal flesh; no chicken, pig, cow, sea animals, nada.

In addition to not consuming any animal meat, a vegan doesn’t eat eggs, dairy products or any other product derived from an animal.

Vegetarians, on the other hand, tend to eat eggs and dairy products like milk and butter.

Vegans also avoid using products that have been tested on animals, like makeup and skin creams, or products made from animal skins such as leather belts and shoes. But vegetarians tend to be a bit more lenient when it comes to using products derived from animals.

When it comes to being a vegetarian, the definition isn’t always clear cut. You might meet a vegetarian who doesn’t eat dairy but eats eggs, or a vegetarian who doesn’t eat eggs or dairy but still wears a leather belt.

Veganism, however, is clearly defined: no eating animal flesh, no using products tested on animals or wearing products derived from animals. Vegans just leave animals alone and let them live their lives, period.

Source: VeganMotivation.com