Are People Still Eating Vegetarian in Brooklyn?
Henry Trieu
Owner, Falansai (Vietnamese Restaurant, Bushwick)
We get a lot of compliments from our clientele about our vegan options for dinner: five main dishes out of 15 are vegetarian/vegan. Since we opened [in May], all five are among the 10 most-sold dishes. The other five are protein dishes that we’re kind of known for: catfish, shaking beef, pork belly, etc. So without much fanfare, the vegan dishes seem to be as popular as the ones that get more attention.
As far as demographics, the 20-35 group seem to order more vegetarian than, say, baby boomers. Gender doesn’t seem to affect as much though, but I think there might be slightly more females than males… Anecdotally, I feel that Bushwick probably has as many vegan-vegetarian types as the other, more-progressive parts of Brooklyn, which probably has more than the other boroughs. I used to live in Bushwick and remember that many of my roommates were vegetarians with some vegans mixed in.