Chef Damon Brasch has owned and operated Green New American — a vegan restaurant — in the Valley for two decades. But, he doesn’t serve your average, crunchy vegetarian fare. He thinks vegetarian and vegan food should just taste good. And it’s OK if it comes with a side of fries.
Green was pretty groundbreaking in the Valley when it opened, and now, Brasch is out with the next new thing: Mother Board Analog Meats, a vegan deli serving up classic Italian subs using entirely vegan ingredients.
He said he worked in a deli early in his career and hated it. But, he has fond memories of homemade salami hanging in his grandfather’s basement and deli meats on crusty bread with pickled hot red peppers. And that, he said, is exactly what he’s trying to do with Mother Board — just without the meat.
Full conversation
DAMON BRASCH: It better taste good. I mean, we love cooking for people. I take it very seriously and, yes, you want to be healthful about everything that you do, but it’s really got to deliver something special. We’re doing it right, I think, because it tastes delicious and it doesn’t matter what your diet is.
LAUREN GILGER: Which is always kind of an interesting idea and probably was pretty groundbreaking at the time 20 years ago, huh?
DAMON BRASCH: To have it taste good, I think so. I mean, there were a few vegan restaurants around, but, you know, they were very, very kind of hippie and crunchy.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, right. And this is definitely not that. And the idea of doing a vegan deli is certainly not crunchy granola kind of vegan food, right? Like, you’re trying to take something that is really based on meats, right? Like, that’s the whole point of a deli.
DAMON BRASCH: Absolutely.
LAUREN GILGER: And making it vegan.
DAMON BRASCH: We’re trying to embrace our Midwest heritage. I grew up in a big Italian family, like my grandpa’s, like, dank basement where he had all kinds of crazy rusty tools and salami, homemade salami, hanging from the rafters. The food that my grandmother would cook, and those meats were just so delicious. And it makes me really nostalgic to have that again, but a different version of it.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. And so I’m guessing, as a vegetarian or vegan for a very long time now, did you miss that? You can’t have those kind of cold cut sandwiches you grew up on.
DAMON BRASCH: I definitely missed the nostalgia of it. Yeah, there’s just something about a sandwich, you know? I mean, it’s just in its — I mean, it’s not rocket science, I guess, but you got to make it good. It starts with the bread, you got to have killer bread. Obviously the lunch meats are everything, and the ratios of lettuce and tomato and onion and the sauce and — it’s just, it’s really important!
LAUREN GILGER: It can be a revelation! 100%. OK, so let’s talk about how you did this, because the idea for it is pretty original, and it definitely doesn’t exist here, a vegan deli. But you have to make the meat right, and it sounds like this has been a long process for you.
DAMON BRASCH: Yes, myself and our amazing team spent a lot of time doing R&D on the meats. And we kind of cracked the code for what we were looking for when we introduced nuts into the seitan.
LAUREN GILGER: Hmm.
DAMON BRASCH: It’s basically, it’s a whole protein and it’s vital wheat gluten, basically.
LAUREN GILGER: OK.
DAMON BRASCH: And the traditional way to make it is just to mix water with it and spices, and then you can boil it or braise it or fry it and do all kinds of stuff to manipulate it to get the kinds of textures and flavors that you want.
LAUREN GILGER: OK.
DAMON BRASCH: Ours is a little different because of the cashew milk that we make. So we make fresh cashew milk and incorporate it into the vital wheat gluten, which gives it a — just a more true and delicious flavor. The meat kind of like yields correctly to the bite of the sandwich.
LAUREN GILGER: That’s interesting. It’s like the feel of it almost has to be right. It’s the texture.
DAMON BRASCH: Exactly. It’s textural, absolutely. And that cashew, it just makes it — and I don’t know anyone who’s — I’ve never seen a cashew seitan deli meat or any other kind of meat, so I don’t know if we’re the first, but it definitely makes ours unique.
LAUREN GILGER: And that was sort of a eureka moment for you, it sounds like, in trying to make this happen.
DAMON BRASCH: Yes it was. And like most wonderful recipes that I come up with, I dream about them, strange as that is. And I woke up that morning and I was like, “Cashews!” And we went and we tried it, and that was the winner.
LAUREN GILGER: I want to ask one more question about this, and then we’re going to try some of this deli meat of yours. But when you’re talking about spices, how do you spice something to taste like ham, or, you know, a meat that just tastes like the meat itself? What spices are in there?
DAMON BRASCH: It’s trial and error for sure, and that’s why we love having meat eaters sample our stuff, because — oh yeah, absolutely, a lot of our staff eats meat. Like, we don’t care, we just want people to enjoy the food. And it’s great when you get somebody who is, you know, a full-blown meat eater who’s like, “Oh damn, this is really good.”
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. All right, so let’s try it. You brought two sandwiches, and I have to say, these are massive. What’d you bring for us?
DAMON BRASCH: We brought for you the Jersey Boss, which is our homemade seitan with — it’s a capicola ham and our turkey, and it’s got melted cheddar cheese on it. Everything is vegan on it. The other one is the Uncle Alan, which is kind of like our Italian version of a cold cut sandwich. It’s got salami, mortadella, capicola on it, hot and sweet peppers on there and all the fixings.
LAUREN GILGER: That’s the stuff! OK, let's try it. Mm, this is so good.
DAMON BRASCH: Thank you.
LAUREN GILGER: And the cheese is not cheese?
DAMON BRASCH: No, the cheese is not cheese.
LAUREN GILGER: You have made, again, a trick of the mouth, I guess, for lack of a better phrase. What do you think people like about that? Is it that they’re interested in vegan cuisine? Do you think people are interested in vegetarian, they want to like test it out and say, “Maybe I could be a vegan one day, maybe I could be a vegetarian one day”?
DAMON BRASCH: Well, I mean, let’s be honest. I mean, vegans can be kind of preachy sometimes, you know? And nobody really wants to hear that. I don’t even want to hear it, and I am vegan. But there are just so many great benefits to eating a plant-based diet, and it goes well beyond one’s own personal health. It goes well beyond the water table and animal welfare and the climate.
There’s just a lot of great things that it kind of solves. And nobody wants to eat, you know, a sprout burger or, you know — people want real food and they want it to taste good. And that’s always just been my mission and our mission at the restaurant. And, you know, we’ve been around for 21 years, so we must be doing something right.
LAUREN GILGER: And over that time, in a couple of decades there, you’ve seen the trend of the idea of vegetarian or vegan food kind of go up and down. It hit a real high with the Impossible Burger and lots of things like that just a couple years ago. What do you think happened after that?
DAMON BRASCH: I don’t know. I have a lot of interesting takes on that. I think it’s a combination of a lot of different things. You know, after the pandemic, everybody kind of was like, you know, YOLO! I’m going to eat what I want to eat, and I totally get that, you know?
But I think that there’s still room for vegan restaurants. I think there’s still room to change minds, and I think it’s wonderful that we have so many great vegan restaurants here in the Valley that are still thriving. And, yeah, I hope we’re on an uptick.
LAUREN GILGER: Do you think that mock meat like this has come a long way in the course of a couple of decades?
DAMON BRASCH: Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are so many wonderful products out there. You know, we’re just one of many, but yeah, it’s never been more easy to eat plant-based foods.
LAUREN GILGER: Damon Brasch, chef and owner of Green New American, the founder of Mother Board Analog Deli Meats, joining us. Damon, thank you so much for coming in, I appreciate it very much. Thanks for the sandwich!
DAMON BRASCH: Our pleasure, thank you. Thank you so much.
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