An Inside Look At The World’s Newest Entirely Plant-Based Food Hall
Republished from Matador Network.
By Matthew Meltzer
It feels a little strange eating a vegan pepperoni pizza in an old strip club.
In a place where smoke and strippers once ruled, I’m face deep in a pizza made with dairy-free macadamia nut ricotta, calabrian chili, and meat-free agave fennel sausage. The sweet and spicy pie seems like the best $20 anyone ever spent in this spot.
My pepperoni pizza comes from from Double Zero, one of two upstairs restaurants in Plant City, the first plant-based food hall in the world. It’s the brainchild of Providence plant-based investor Kim Anderson and chef Matthew Kenney, who’ve put four of the chef’s most popular restaurants in a classic old brick building near the Providence River.
At one time, the building housed an old-school steakhouse and a strip club. Now you’ll find offshoots of Double Zero — an Italian concept — Bar Verde (Mexican), Make Out Café (DIY bowls and baked goods), the first New Burger, and a Nitro coffee shop. Together, the restaurants aim to show the world that a plant-based diet can be just as delicious as a traditional one, and far better for the planet.
“All the transportation globally combined doesn’t equal the greenhouse gasses from animal agriculture,” Anderson says as we sit outside on Plant City’s sprawling patio. “So if you’re going to be involved in trying to reduce climate change, you need to show people sustainable food can be beautiful and delicious and served in a really cool environment.”
Her goal is working. After opening its doors in June, Plant City welcomed over 110,000 guests in just 10 weeks. And most of them weren’t vegans.
“It’s an idea whose time has come,” says Plant City’s executive chef Luis Jaramillo, who helmed the Ecuadorian favorite Fifty in Manhattan before coming onboard with Plant City. “Day after day I’d say 70 to 80 percent of the people we get in here are not plant-based eaters. It’s extraordinary.”
Still, news of a plant-based food hall spread quickly in the vegan community, and it’s become a major destination for those on an animal-free diet.
“For about an 80-mile radius, plant-based eaters drew a circle around this place as somewhere they needed to go,” Anderson says. “Our first weekend we had a gentleman fly in from Colorado who told us ‘Do you understand? I’ve been plant based for 20 years and I’ve been waiting for this.’ He got a hotel room and stayed three days because he wanted to try everything.”
