Share All sharing options for: The Greasy Burger Goes Vegan at a New Fast-Casual From Chef Spike Mendelsohn

A pool of fat seeps out of the burger and surrounds the patty, frying it on the flat top with an audible sizzle. A square of yellow American cheese melts on top, assisted by steam and a cover that’s placed on the griddle. The recent scene inside a Silver Spring Whole Foods happens all over the world at countless burger joints. But at PLNT Burger, the new fast-casual cubby that D.C. celebrity chef Spike Mendelsohn opens today in Maryland, the patty, the cheese, and the milkshakes are all vegan.

“I feel like this is the future,” Mendelsohn says, a statement reinforced by his vegan wife, his flexitarian business partner, and the suddenly mainstream availability of meat substitutes at grocery stores and fast food chains like Burger King and KFC.

Mendelsohn and his longtime righthand man, PLNT Burger director of operations Mike Colletti, are forming patties out of a Beyond Meat 2.0 blend. Coconut oil provides the marbling and the extra fat on the grill. Maintaining the joy of tucking into a greasy, fatty burger was paramount.

“You do get a Maillard reaction,” Mendelsohn says. “Crispy and brown.”

Vegan cheese based out of potato starch comes from Follow Your Heart. To start, PLNT Burger is offering four burgers on the menu: a regular burger with a tomato, lettuce, pickles, and pinkish PLNT sauce; a cheeseburger; a double cheeseburger; and a mushroom bacon burger. The last option comes with smoky barbecue sauce and a dehydrated, maple-glazed shiitake bacon. It’s topped with “bloomies,” tiny onion shards fried in a rice flour batter.

PLNT Burger uses Schmidt’s potato rolls for the buns, but an off-menu option that Mendelsohn loves replaces the bun with a huge, green wrapping of Swiss chard. Herbed potato fries and sweet potato fries are both available as sides. Local gelato company Dolcezza developed an oat milk soft serve (strawberry or chocolate) for PLNT Burger, which makes shakes out of it with a splash of more oat milk. All of it is certified kosher.

Featured on Season 4 of Top Chef, Mendelsohn used the marketing boost to concentrate on his love of burgers by opening Good Stuff Eatery, a Capitol Hill staple that has expanded in D.C. and opened in Chicago and Cairo. It’s known for Obama-themed burgers and toasted marshmallow milkshakes. With PLNT Burger, Mendelsohn is attempting to provide an indulgent fast food meal without relying on environmentally harmful practices of industrial meat producers.

Mendelsohn says PLNT Burger is a separate entity than his family’s other businesses. Although it’s only in the Silver Spring Whole Foods (833 Wayne Avenue), Mendelsohn says the company has an “aggressive” expansion strategy to move into other Whole Foods stores.

He co-founded the company with COO Ben Kaplan and Julie Farkas, the Honest Tea co-founder who is listed as social impact director. Farkas’s son, Jonah Goldman, is the marketing director who left a job in sustainable agriculture in Israel to join the team. Goldman’s father, Seth Goldman, is the executive chair of Beyond Meat and the one who first introduced Mendelsohn to the meat substitute.

Jonah Goldman, 27, became a vegan at age 10 and slowly converted the rest of his household. He says his Bar Mitzvah speech railed against the cruelty of commercial meat. Now he’s a flexitarian, someone who eats mostly plants but occasionally consumes animal products.

PLNT Burger’s logo, which resembles a burger, a sunset, or a mountain depending on how you look at it, speaks to the brand’s ecological mission. The motto on the back of the staff’s shirts says, “Eat the change you wish to see in the world.” Mendelsohn likes the name because in addition to “plant,” it’s an easy stand-in for “planet” and “plenty.”

In D.C., Philadelphia-based HipCityVeg already has two locations serving vegan fast food. Several other chains and independents are either using Impossible and Beyond Meat products or developing their own veggie burgers.

PLNT Burger is open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. inside the Whole Foods at 833 Wayne Avenue in Silver Spring, Maryland; website