e sse nt i al dining
JustVeggiez Vegan Fish Sandwich
JustVeggiez
by Kyle Jacobson
Veganism—a
word more loaded than a Parrot Head retirement party at Margaritaville. When I was a teenager, the idea of being vegan just didn’t click. I had decades worth of pop culture telling me it was dumb and a waste of effort. In fairness, vegan food in the 90s was failing really hard at trying to be meat; I was just thankful barbeque sauce existed during my first and only vegan Thanksgiving. But that was yesterdecade, and yesterdecade’s gone. In 2018, JustVeggiez in Madison joined the ranks of those taking on the impossible, recreating meat that the vegan-curious struggle to different from the real thing. When owner/chef James Bloodsaw made the switch to vegan, he found he’d entered snackfood dysphoria. He was an executive chef at Upstairs Downstairs Catering, a job he’d had since 1996, unable to eat his old favorite foods as he prepared and catered them. “So I started making my [vegan] food and bringing it in,” says James. “And then everybody wanted to try it, so they tried it and said, ‘Wow, this is pretty good. You should be selling this.’” What started off as James making food he could snack on became a mission to perfect his recipes. He was asking people at work to evaluate how close he was to the real thing, no frills. Perhaps the thing James missed most when he went vegan was chicken, particularly chicken wings. With the right mix of spices and proteins, James has made what might 12 | m a d i s o n e s s e n t i a l s
