Vegan Brunching in Vancouver

Dreaming of running your own vegan cafe but have a job/school/family taking up your precious time with the waffle iron? Host your own vegan brunch club! Vancouver Vegan Brunch in Vancouver, British Columbia is run by the ladies behind Vegan Mischief, Malloreigh and Kaylie, who were bored with the lackluster brunch options for vegans in Vancouver, and opted to combine their passions for cooking and serving delicious vegan food to launch a weekly brunch at their home in East Vancouver. The result? Saturday brunch at their own home featuring supportive paying friends, delicious and inventive offerings, plenty of coffee and conversation, and a friendly form of activism showing how delicious vegan food is!

Malloreigh and Kaylie, the duo behind the deliciousness!

VOTM: Who are you, and why did you choose to start your vegan brunch?

Malloreigh: We’re a couple of transplants to Vancouver. I’ve been vegan for 7 years, Kaylie for 3. We’re both from really non-vegan areas—Calgary and New Mexico, respectively—but we both have the same attitude about food. We’re both passionate about creating and enjoying delicious food that’s also nutritious and both consciously and ethically sourced.

Kaylie: We started brunch because there’s not enough options in Vancouver for vegan anything, and we want to make vegan food more accessible to everyone, including vegans.

Malloreigh: Yeah, we were tired of sitting around with our friends complaining about the lack of good vegan brunch options. We decided to take it into our own hands in the way we were best able to—by cooking in our own home and feeding the people we know.

Beet, arugula, smoked tofu, walnut, and avocado sandwich with potato salad.

VOTM: What challenges have you faced starting this brunch in Vancouver?

Malloreigh: Well obviously, money and legalities are stumbling blocks.

Kaylie: And personal ambition. But we didn’t face any of those challenges.

Malloreigh: We circumvented them by starting on such a small scale. I guess the biggest challenge was accepting that this was something we could actually do. Dedicating ourselves and actually doing it. Of course, at this point, as brunch gets bigger and bigger, we are dealing with some publicity and the legal grey area we operate in is making things a bit difficult. We can no longer use our original location and are looking for another place to host the event. A big topic in Vancouver right now is the “no fun city” angle – a lot of music venues get shut down here, and in some ways the difficulties we are having starting a restaurant fit into that. Getting all the licenses, inspections, and so on is very difficult and incredibly expensive.

Orange cardamom pancakes with chocolate sauce and coconut whipped cream.

VOTM: What have you learned since the brunch’s inception?

Kaylie: That people are really ready and receptive to it—I don’t know if it would be vegan food or the fact that you can have an underground thing like this—maybe they like the secrecy, the coolness of being included in a group like this.

Malloreigh: I think we learned that good vegan food is just good food, and people like good food. Vegan options don’t have to be the bland crap that’s on restaurant menus. Also, that food service work is really hard, but really gratifying. People are so excited about what we’re doing.

Tea-infused tofu and wilted chard benny, with avocado, mushroom cream sauce, and fresh organic strawberries.

VOTM: Why would you encourage other vegans to pursue their own projects—be it a business or just a volunteer stint at an animal shelter?

Kaylie: To build the vegan community.

Malloreigh: Yeah, it’s way easier to become or stay vegan when you have a visible support network. It’s inspiring and wonderful to be a member of a community like the one that we have here.

VOTM: What has the response been like for the brunch? Did the feedback from people unfamiliar with vegan food differ from the Vancouver vegan community’s? What kind of support have you received?

Kaylie: Some of our friends have been really supportive. We sell out every week and that is really encouraging.

Malloreigh: I think, in some way, we expected to fail, but the response was overwhelmingly positive. We have a bunch of really loyal guests who keep coming back, and most of them aren’t even vegan! In some ways I think the response from people who eat omnivorously normally has been even better than the vegan response. People seem to get really excited about how good vegan food can be. We’ve also had some vegan guests who are just so happy that they have choices on a menu, and that the cool food scene is finally including them.

Tofu benny with potato cakes and organic greens.

VOTM: Is there anything at all you might like to add?

Malloreigh: Obviously we want to continue doing Vancouver Vegan Brunch, because it’s possibly the most enriching, fulfilling thing we’ve ever done, but eventually we want to open up a full-time restaurant. We’re just hoping that the support and excitement we’ve seen around our brunch event will extend to a full-scale, fully-legitimate restaurant. It’s a risky business but doing brunch has shown us that it is more than worth it. We also want to encourage others to start events like this. I’d love to see more than one dinner event in Vancouver—and maybe even a Sunday midafternoon lunch event. There are so many options and I wish I could do them all.