What a Beaut

Beaut Burger opened as a fully vegan restaurant in 2018, o ering a variety of vegan burgers, fries and additional side dishes. (Photo courtesy of Beaut Burger)

Vegan burger eatery doesn’t sacri ce avor

Beaut Burger

267 S. Avenida del Convento 344-5907 beautburger.com

BY ANNIKA TOMLIN

Before Beyond Meat and Impossible burgers, Ari Shapiro was inspired to create a vegan burger after hiking with his partner, Kerry Lane.

He craved a juicy burger and fries, with one stipulation — the patty had to be vegan.

“I’ve been plant based for almost 20 years,” Shapiro says.

“My partner, who is a vegan macrobiotic chef, and I were hiking in Canada, and we were craving In-N-Out or Shake Shack. We just started wondering why no one is making kind of a veggie version of Shake Shack — juicy, sloppy fries, Coke and cheap beer. We thought it was a great idea. We believe in it.”

After years of development, Shapiro and Lane opened Beaut Burger in Tucson in 2018. Shapiro stresses that, unlike other vegan or vegetarian burger options, Beaut doesn’t o er “mock meat” or “textured soy protein.”

“We are not trying to mimic meat. That was never the intention,” Shapiro says. “The intention was to recreate the hamburger-fry classic experience.

“We put as much thought into the patty, the bun, the res, the drinks — all of it — because it was a holistic approach. What makes ours unique is that it’s unprocessed. It’s based on the idea of macrobiotics, which is like a balanced blend of whole vegetables, grains, spices, legumes. It’s gluten free.”

The top-selling items, which Shapiro jokes “keep the lights on,” include fries and the B4 Burger, made with griddled mushrooms, caramelized onions, Swiss cheese and mayo, along with the vegan patty, a choice of bun, and cauli bites.

“I came into this being a fry obsessive, and I think our fries are phenomenal,” Shapiro says.

He calls it “the perfect fry.” The kitchen uses expeller-pressed sun ower oil on the hand-cut, blanched potatoes.

“I’m a big fan of our fries,” he says.

Shapiro also loves the B5 Burger made with zhoug (jalapeno pesto), ranch, cucumber and lettuce.

“My new favorite it the Fooled Pork, the jackfruit sandwich,” Shaprio says. “I’m blown away at how great that came out.” a unique and creative name to match his other ventures, including Sparkroot, a veggie co ee shop, and Falora, a plant-centric wood- red pizza joint.

“I’m particularly fond of made-up words, or if I can’t make up a word, my second favorite option is like a defunct word that used to be in linguistic use and has kind of fallen o ,” Shapiro says.

“Beaut sort of fell into that category. It was used a lot in the ’50s and ’60s as slang. Farmers would say, ‘Look at my new tractor. Ain’t she a beaut?’ It’s used a lot in New Zealand and Australia, same kind of slang.”

As a shortened version of beautiful, Shapiro says he and Lane thought “Beaut Burger just owed so well.”

“Even though we are a plant-based fully vegan restaurant, we designed this for vegans, but we really designed this for omnivores,” says Shapiro, who adds that it was important to create a buzz about its fries and burgers.

“In Tucson, some our biggest fans are carnivores, and we are starting to see that a little up here, too,” Shapiro adds.

“It’s always the most pleasing part to me when people who aren’t necessarily vegan love the food here. Really we just want to be considered good food.”

That said, the hardest part about creating Beaut Burger was persuading prospective guests to believe in the concept, according to Shapiro.

“Three years ago, most people didn’t know about Beyond and Impossible. That is only within the last couple years,” Shapiro says.

“I think the hardest part of year one in Tucson was proving the concept and sticking with it. It was embraced by a large part of the Tucson community, but it also took time to kind of ingratiate ourselves into the city at large.”

Shapiro knows that not everyone will like the fully vegan menu but says “the people who like it love it but there are some people who think it’s not 100% for them.”

In terms of the Phoenix location, Shapiro says the lease was signed prior to COVID-19. However, after the pandemic hit, he was forced to ask “some existential questions” about if he should move forward in the dwindling restaurant industry.

“It proved to be really di cult around all of the complexities around COVID, but it’s working,” Shapiro says.