We were thrilled to discover this amazing vegan restaurant in San Diego’s fabulous North Park neighborhood.
Anthem is a huge all-vegan restaurant had humble beginnings, as a Speakeasy Vegan Brunch and also a food truck, as our server told us, and it’s now a large restaurant in a beautiful space, along with a small gift shop (with awesome T-shirts) and a grocery area where you can find vegan goodies from crunchy snacks to ice cream (yes, and some healthy foods, too).
The place also has the most lovely staff and a happy vibe — and best of all is the menu.
It was nearly impossible to choose what to eat. We were there too late for breakfast, which is a shame because the offerings look amazing, from cheesy breakfast sandwiches to soy chorizo scrambles, but on the plus side, at least this narrowed down the possibilities for us.
We decided to take the burger/wrap route and chose the AV Burger and the Gangster Wrap, both of which came with delicious, perfectly cooked, and delectably seasoned french fries.
The AV Burger is a Beyond Burger patty with cheddar, lettuce, fried onion, tomato, pickle, and garlic aioli — simple but absolutely perfect. The bun was a highlight: soft and buttery (like a vegan brioche).
We loved the Gangster Wrap, too. This is served on a gorgeous, lightly toasted tortilla with grilled buffalo chik’n, bleu cheese dressing, shredded carrot and celery, fried onion, and baby spinach. It had lots of spice and felt both decadent and somewhat healthy thanks to all the veggies.
Our only regret is that couldn’t try more on the menu … like Sunday Brunch (which looks fantastic) and dessert. Anthem serves a Chocolate Mousse Brulee, and the dessert display was filled with beautiful pastries.
We can’t say enough about this place and its offerings (there’s something for everyone, from burgers to salads to healthy bowls — and appetizers include mozzarella sticks and an “Onion Ring Tower of Power”). We look forward to returning and hope next time we can spend days trying as much as possible on the menu.
Alex Lockwood’s article “With a Hope to Change Things: An Exploration of the Craft of Writing about Animals with the Founders of Zoomorphic Magazine” appears in Writing for Animals.
Q: In what ways has your writing changed as your knowledge and awareness of animals has evolved?
A: Most fundamentally, I have chosen (as far as a writer can) to only take on new projects that foreground the nonhuman and their relations with humans, as much as possible to work towards texts, narratives, and stories that help bring our relationships to light, and to contribute towards a more equal and just sharing of this world across species. Although sometimes as writers we don’t know quite what compels us to write the next story or book or poem, there are conscious decisions we can make responding to the state of the world, and the disastrous state of our hierarchical and dominant current relations with nonhumans. As I come to know more about animals and the nonhuman world, the more I recognize my spiritual and practical responsibilities to attempt to redress through my practice the worst forms of these exploitative relations and hopefully envision new and more equal, kind, and loving relationships.
In particular, I have spent a lot more time working in the second person, and writing works that give serious credence to the voices and agencies of nonhuman others, to the existing and complicated relations between beings across species (in cross-species encounter) and the truly relational nature of who we are, in that without these relations we do not know ourselves and, when you get down to the biota level, we wouldn’t even be alive.
Q: What is the most important thing you feel writers should keep in mind as they write about animals?
A: Compassion. Do not repeat or reinforce dominant speciesist practices in your writing. Question why it is okay to depict or represent particular animals in particular ways. Enrich your writing through learning in the three Es — ethology, ecofeminism, ecocriticism — to continue to forge new visions for ways of interrelating based on kinship and not dominance. Change your own name to that of an animal’s and see where that takes you. Don’t get bogged down by questions of whether or not animals can be fully represented in human language, because your audience is human, generally. But do nurture an understanding of nonrepresentational theories, politics, and practices that shift you and your ego out of the way. If you’re a white, Western male, as I am, do everything that you can to mobilize your white, Western, male privileges and give your writing over to the practice of centering the lives and leadership and needs of all previously marginalised groups, human and nonhuman.
Q: Which authors/books do you feel do a good job of realistically and compassionately portraying the lives of animals?
A: Donna Haraway’s Camille stories are must-reads for how we are now thinking about our multi-species encounters. Cynan Jones has done plenty of good work around animals and viscerality. The animal poet Susan Richardson, whom I interviewed for my chapter, is an incredible writer, perhaps one of the leading animal poets of our day, following in and beyond the footsteps of Les Murray. Sara Baume, Melissa Harrison, Robin Lamont, pattrice jones, Barbara King, Carol J. Adams, Ceridwen Dovey, Lydia Millet are all women working in different genres and forms to respectfully and compassionately help us reach the lives of animals.
Q: Your Q&A with the editors of Zoomorphic magazine highlights the role of literature in a changing world. What other media do you recommend for those who care about animals and wish to write about them with authenticity and compassion?
A: Literature remains for me the art form that can transform our relationship with the world most fully, but of course many would suggest film is the same or better at doing so, and films such as Okja have had a recent huge impact on the ways in which people have changed their relations to animals. Short films and exposes such as Dominion and Land of Hope and Glory have recently, from the documentary perspective, really changed people’s visions of how to relate in cross-species encounters and spaces. I think children’s books are vitally important in beginning that journey of love and compassion, or exploitation and abuse, depending on the forms in which they are written and the ways in which parents and teachers communicate them, and of course how writers write them, so I cannot recommend people such as Ruby Roth enough.
Alex Lockwood is the author of The Pig in Thin Air (Lantern Books), an exploration of the place of the body in animal advocacy, as well as senior lecturer in journalism at the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, Sunderland University, UK. He has published widely on human-animal relations and is currently working on a series of novels concerned with human-animal conflict.
Q: In what ways has your writing changed as your knowledge and awareness of animals has evolved?
A: My entry into the world of writing about animals was when I worked for Satya Magazine more than a decade ago. Each month was a deep dive into a pressing planetary issue. Writing about animals became a much larger project: one that probed the intersections with environmentalism and social justice. By doing so, it evolved into a deeper exploration of how both power and compassion operate. Satya was foundational to me, as I discovered the kind of writer I wanted to be: curious, concerned, and willing to confront the complexity of the challenges we faced. My writing about animals still aims to expose multiple truths about how human actions impact the lives of other animals, but I’ve also grown increasingly interested in the role of writing to imagine other ways of being.
Q: What is the most important thing you feel writers should keep in mind as they write about animals?
A: The lives of animals are often trivialized on the page. When animal stories make their way into the news, even the most respected journalism outlets resort to using puns. This instinct to make the easy joke is a self-defense mechanism, a way of avoiding the discomfort of facing the realities animals endure. As I write in my essay in this anthology, I’m interested in how we as writers create spaces in our work to allow the reader to process the uncomfortable and overcome that initial response of avoidance. Humor can still be a wonderful tool in this regard for the writer and animal advocate, but it’s important that the jokes aren’t at the animals’ expense.
Q: Which authors/books do you feel do a good job of realistically and compassionately portraying the lives of animals?
A: I trace the animal activism of my early adulthood back to reading Next of Kin by Roger Fouts, which documented the story of Washoe, the first chimpanzee to learn American Sign Language. Washoe and her chimpanzee family were portrayed as fully formed individuals with unique personalities. Reading this book led me to many others and inspired me volunteer at primate sanctuaries.
As a reader, though, one of my favorite things is encountering beautiful animal stories in books that are not specifically about animals, but where the author gives them respectful consideration. In my Writing for Animals essay, I introduce Ahmed Errachidi, a Guantanamo Bay detainee, who writes in his memoir The General about his daily visitors — the ants in his prison cell. Errachidi simply observes and appreciates their lives. He saves food for them and tries to protect them from the guards who stomp on them. It is one of the most beautiful and compelling passages about caring about and coexisting with animals that I have read. Similarly in Zeitoun, Dave Eggers tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when he realizes that so many animals had drowned or were left stranded. Both these examples illustrate compassion toward animals in places where there was also dire human suffering. Writing about animals did not detract from the other atrocities but helped to portray a fuller picture.
Q: Your essay addresses the challenges of writing about difficult subjects, with the hope of opening hearts. What is the most difficult piece you’ve ever had to write in advocating for animals?
A: Several years ago, I went to India to document the rise of factory farming and visited several battery egg facilities, dairies, and a chicken slaughterhouse. We live in a world where violence against animals is both normalized and hidden. Writing against the norm and exposing what is concealed is always difficult. For me, the challenges are multifold. First, there is the emotional difficulty of bearing witness to animal suffering. Second, there is challenge of keeping my readers in a place where even I don’t want to be. (I am the person who can’t handle the meat freezer aisle in the supermarket.) Third is trying to understand the larger story and forces at play — globalization, urbanization, and migration. The story about meat in India is also complicated by religion and the oppressive caste system. Fourth is the difficulty of my choosing — figuring out how to include so much of what I’ve learned in a way that does not overwhelm my readers but rather open their hearts.
Sangamithra Iyer is a writer and civil engineer. She is the author of The Lines We Draw (Hen Press), was a finalist for the 2016 Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, and is the editor of Satya: The Long View (2016). Sangu served as the assistant editor of Satya from 2004 to 2007, and as an associate for the public policy action tank Brighter Green. Her writing has been published by n+1, Creative Nonfiction, Waging Nonviolence, Hippocampus Magazine, Local Knowledge, Our Hen House, and VegNews. Her essays have been anthologized in Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy and Sanctuary; Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice; and Letters to a New Vegan. She was a recipient of a Jerome Foundation literature travel grant and an artist residency at the Camargo Foundation. She lives in Queens, where she works on watershed protection and water supply infrastructure planning for New York City.
Many local restaurants are making great improvements in its vegan dining options. For one, the all-vegan food truck Two Peas is at the Growers Market in Ashland (as well as at other Rogue Valley locations), and Louie’s continues to add yummy additions to its vegetarian menu and its “vegan cheat sheet.”
One of our most fun discoveries in Ashland of late was seeing the Impossible Burger on the bistro menu at Alchemy. (Note that this entire meal is vegan, as it should be; the Impossible Burger is on another local Ashland menu, but the bun is not vegan, which rather defeats the purpose of ordering a burger.)
The Impossible Burger is known by vegans for, well, being vegan — and it’s known among non-vegans for being the closest thing to a “real” burger; it has all the flavor, all the texture, and none of the cholesterol, fat, hormones, toxins, and animal cruelty involved in producing meat. Best of all: It’s truly delicious.
We’ve had the Impossible Burger before, and it was terrific — but the way Alchemy serves up this plant-based burger is truly delectable. It comes with the pommes frites piled onto the burger itself, and the whole thing is smothered with vegan cheese and sauce that is creamy and spicy and delicious.
It’s thrilling to see this amazing dish at one of Ashland’s most popular restaurants, as it shows a commitment to the vegans who are both local and visiting, and it will also help show the omnivores out there just how good plant-based food really is. In fact, we returned within a week just to enjoy this meal again, and it was served up slightly differently (but was every bit as delicious).
Unfortunately, foie gras is still on Alchemy’s main dinner menu, which is a shame, as this is likely to keep a number of vegans from even walking through the door. We do hope, though, that those who visit Alchemy try this vegan burger and make it even more popular, so that perhaps one day Alchemy will see the interest in delicious food that is cruelty free — which is better for their customers, for the animals, and for the planet.
We were thrilled with a recent visit to Salt Lake City, not only because we got to eat at the delicious Vertical Diner but because we learned that this all-vegan restaurant is one of many in Salt Lake. Check out the Utah Animal Rights Coalition, and keep an eye out in town for its Veg Dining Guide for more vegan options.
Of course, Vertical Diner should be a stop on your journey; it’s delicious comfort food. We began with Buffalo Tigers, fried tofu in a spicy buffalo sauce, served with celery and carrot sticks and vegan ranch sauce. (This appetizer was so good it disappeared before we could take photos.)
Breakfast is served all day, and among the delectable options is La Mesa, a gigantic meal of potatoes, black beans, rice, tofu scramble, and grilled peppers and onions. Everything is covered with vegan cheese, sprinkled with sour cream, and topped with guacamole.
Another breakfast plate, The Avalanche, comprises two pancakes with tofu scramble and fries, with a choice of breakfast sausage or tempeh bacon.
For those who love gravy, look no further than the American Diner, which is a bowl of hand-cut fries (or mashed potatoes) and fried tofu “tigers” smothered with gravy.
A meal at Vertical Diner will provide you with more food than you could possibly need, but (in the interest of research, of course), afterwards we went to the Monkey Wrench, a glorious all-vegan ice cream shop, which also serves coffee and tea.
All the bakery items, even the ice-cream cone, are vegan, and flavors range from rocky road to pecan to mint chip, which I finally settled on after tasting just about every other flavor. There are also a lot of vegan toppings available.
Of note: This ice-cream shop is right next to the Bolt Cutter, another all-vegan restaurant, best known for its giant nacho plates. It also serves gourmet street tacos and other Central American dishes and has a wide selection of tequilas, mezcals, beer, and craft cocktails. We didn’t have time to visit, but it’s at the top of our list for next time…
Again, check out UARC and the Veg Dining Guide for more places that are not only vegan but that are UARC partners.
