NYC Restauranteur Changes 15 Bars & Restaurants To Be Vegan

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Cover photo of Mother of Pearl from Messy Nessy Chic

According to Ravi DeRossi, it’s go big or go home.

The New York restauranteur has had environmental waste and factory farming on his mind, and now he’s planning to make his fifteen bars and restaurants as animal free as possible. The first to make the switch will be his tiki bar named Mother of Pearl. Animal products will be eliminated from the menu on February 14th, a beautiful ode to a day we’re supposed to show love.

DeRossi has been in the business for eleven years, garnering a following for restaurants likes The Bourgeois Pig that feature cheese fondue and charcuterie plates. It’ll be reopening as a vegan wine and tapas bar called LadyBird as part of his vegan transformation, this summer.

Not all of his original projects have had illicit starts. Avant Garden is one of his successful already vegan vocations that will find expansion through this shift. “If we’re going to do something to help this planet, it needs to start,” DeRossi told Eater. “It needs to be me not just preaching, but me just doing it. I’m in the position to do it.”

DeRossi says he was a vegetarian and vegan long before his time in the hospitality industry. However, it was his cat’s terminal illness that helped him reevaluate his current choices. “You don’t realize that the average restaurateur does three times more destruction [to the environment] than the average person,” he said. “I have 15 restaurants and bars. It started to weigh on me.”

This sounds like the start of a vegan empire! Check out the first menu from Mother of Pearl below, and read more about what to expect from DeRossi on Eater.

Mother of Pearl’s New Vegan Menu

Edited to include DeRossi’s fifteen establishments will be made as animal-free as possible. He’s still involved with business partners in other spots so the changes will come to as many of those bars and restaurants as possible, not all.