Sneak Peek: Stalk & Spade

A plant-based burger shop grows in Wayzata.

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It has been a big crazy week for the beef v. plant eating world. First, Fox News and pals decided to freak everyone out with a claim that Biden's climate plan was to steal the burgers straight from your mouth, like literally ban burgers. They had to provide a retraction, because it was a big juicy lie, which calmed much of the internet down. But then, the popular cooking site Epicurious announced that they won't be publishing new beef content and recipes. They promised that it was not anti-beef but instead a shift "solely about sustainability, about not giving airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offenders. We think of this decision as not anti-beef but rather pro-planet." The internet was apoplectic anew. Many vegans championed the move, others thought it was not meaningful enough, beefers were deeply offended. 

Then Taco Bell announced that it would be coming up with its own meat alternative, and Impossible Burger started marketing their engineered plant-based burger as meat instead of "meat". And while the movement lost a great haven for good plant-based writing and recipes, as tenderly decided to call it quits, it gained a new soldier in the fight: Stalk & Spade will open as a 100% plant based and dairy free burger shop in Wayzata on Thursday.

And owner Steele Smiley might be the warrior this skirmish has been waiting for. 

Let's be clear that there have been veggie burgers almost since the dawn of time, the Boca burger being the caftan-wearing grand dame that many veg eaters would slap with: it's fine. When vegan scolds started to become plant-based health and wellness evangelists, they began to trade up: Mrs. Roper for a Beyoncé burger. Places like Superiority Burger in NYC are making plant-based street food that is dead sexy. Their TFT (tofu fried tofu) sandwich is a legendary volley into the fried chicken sandwich wars that will seduce a bird eater like myself. After five years of dabbling with a veggie/meat mix, LA's popular burger shop Burgerlords switched last July to a 100% vegan menu. The Impossible Burger is at Burger King, the Beyond Meat burger nearly everywhere else, Shake Shack's meatless 'Shroom Burger has its own cult. I think it's safe to say that the plant-based beefless burger is here, not steer, get used to it. 

Smiley's mission is two-fold. First and foremost, it's simply to get people to try going meatless for one meal. "If I can get someone in here and they try the burger or the chicken sandwich, and it's delicious and filling and they feel good after eating it, they're going to come back. That's the win," Smiley told me during a preview meal. As the owner of Crisp & Green, this next business venture actually started out as a dad story, "I had my kid, and we were standing in line, when he looks up at me and asks, 'Why do we always have to have salads, why can't we have something else?' It crushed me! I want him to be proud of what I do and I went into the office the next day and said: we have to figure out a burger."

Instead of just adding a burger to a salad shop's menu, he worked out a whole concept. Stalk & Spade has five burgers and four chick'n sandwiches on the menu. There are fries, there are creamy dipping sauces, shakes, and sundaes. Nothing in here is made from animals or animal products. Sometimes in this movement actions are guided by health, sometimes it's animal welfare, and sometimes it's climate change. I asked Smiley, beyond showing off for his kid, why jump into this fray?

"I've eaten plant-based since January 1st of 2014, it was doctor mandated. I know what it did for me to be able to go from a meat-based diet to a plant-based one, I somehow felt like I aged backwards. So I've always believed in this movement, but the world doesn't need more zealots like me. I'm not asking for people to go exclusively plant-based, I believe people will be healthier and feel better by keeping an open mind, maybe give it a shot once a week, I believe it's a step in the right direction."

But there is that second part of the mission. "I firmly believe in ten years from today meat will be only fifty percent of the supply chain. Plants are the future. Our product has come so far along, to taste the same, that the benefits just far outweigh traditional sources. And I believe it's the future, so I'm making a ten-year bet by doing this. The young people are driving this trend, they are already on-board."

This is why Smiley isn't going to just change the minds of Wayzata, he's going to try to become the largest plant-based restaurant collective in the world. For the foodists who don't know him, he's not new to this. In his former life in health and fitness (founding Steele Fitness which was acquired by Snap Fitness), Smiley ran one of the largest franchise systems in the world, "I had a couple thousand stores in 25 countries before I did this, so I have an idea." Forbes thinks he could be the guy to create the next McDonald's. 

But when we get down to it, it all comes down to the question he asked me, a beefer. "If we could make this thing healthy, make it lower in calories, higher in protein, lower in carbohydrate, lower in salt, and it can be a plant-based meal that tastes the same as the original, would people choose it?" A lot of people would say yes. But, can they do that? Smiley believes they have. 

Because I am a carnivore by nature, I brought along my favorite vegetarian, Ali Kaplan. We first tried the S&S Burger with dill pickles, fried onions, fancy sauce, and American cheese. As a lifetime veg, Ali is not so much for the Impossible Burger because meat grosses her out, thusly she doesn't want to see her veggie burger "bleed". Her verdict, "Pretty good! More similar in taste and texture to veggie burgers than some plant-based meat burgers. Not at all grossed out." My verdict: I'm not mad at it, but as a lifetime burger girl, there's no chance that I would mistake this for cow. For me, it's in the delicious but different camp, and that's cool, I like adding things to my rotation. Though, here's what. That cheese was astounding. Very creamy and tasted just like cheese. Seriously I scraped it off the wrapper. 

We also tried the chick'n sandwich. Ali's verdict, "Wow, surprisingly tasty! My kids like soy nuggets, but I don’t typically seek out chicken substitutes … I’d rather just eat a salad with chickpeas or black beans. But if you’re looking for that burger-fries-shake fix, this delivers." For my part, it blew me away. It had all the right moisture and bounce of bird meat, and it held up to the frying to deliver a great crisp. I would not miss chicken in my life, and if I was going to sub out an animal protein, I would tap in this chick'n.

But I would have to know, if it's not chicken, what is it? Lots of foodists welcomed the news of this venture online with angry screeds about franken-foods and how lab-grown meat is not real food, and therefore can't be healthy. Maybe it's a bit hypocritical of me, I don't ask for an ingredients list for my ballpark hotdog and I couldn't tell you what's in that handful of Cheetos I ate while writing this, but because this is a thing pretending to be something it's not, I feel like I want to know. 

Smiley and team assured me that it's mostly chick pea flower, brown rice, some gluten, and natural things holding that chick'n together. But it's clear that there is some science going on to make this food, and maybe it's no more than what they're doing at the Herbivorous Butcher. It's their own proprietary blend, and truly other recipes like KFC's 11 herbs & spices have been long guarded, but when you're asking people to keep open minds, you have to be open as well. Because they are a small operation, they don't have to post nutritional information like Starbucks and Taco Bell, but if they grow they will. Smiley wasn't sure if burger loving people would want all the info, but I did tell him that this burger loving girl just wants access to it. 

Can they take over the world, one burger shop at a time? Can they convert burger lovers like me to put down the cow for part of the week? Time will tell. But when you have a leader who believes in the movement like Smiley does, but has the vision to see beyond his own experience, coupled with a deep understanding of multi-unit expansion know-how, I don't know how you bet against this ten-year wager.