Veg Out
First published in the TasWeekend magazine (The Hobart Mercury)
The Tasmanian vegan community is unique, according to Hobart chef Alan Whykes. “It feels more like a family,” he says. “The vegan community here really welcome people and that produces a really good vibe.”
Whykes runs Otis Beanery, a vegan cooking school in Hobart. Last month he gave two cooking demonstrations at Tasmania’s first VeganFest held in the Kingston Beach Hall and carpark. Three thousand people came. “You could barely move, the crowd was so thick,” says Whykes. “Most of the food vans had sold out halfway through the day. He says many of the crowd were committed vegans who had dragged along friends and family in the hope of tempting them into the animal-free eating world. People who have given up meat and dairy products to go vegan have made Australia the third-fastest growing market for veganism globally.
The man who organised Tasmanian’s first vegan festival, Chris Simcox, says the appeal of eating animal-free produce in Tasmania is growing. More Tasmanian restaurants are offering vegan options on their menu and a lot more vegan-friendly options have been added to supermarket shelves. “It’s definitely becoming a lot more popular than it was 10 years ago,” Simcox says. But Whykes, who has helped several Hobart businesses design vegan meals for their menus, says many Tasmanian chefs could be doing a lot more with the incredible, fresh produce being grown here. “It’s a shame that chefs don’t often see vegetables as a main ingredient in a dish,” he says. “Where is the signature Tasmanian potato dish? We don’t have one and that’s a shame because our chefs are putting them on the side of the plate.” According to Coles, the growth in vegan products has been significant in the past year, with many of the supermarket giant’s vegan options experiencing double-digit growth.
When Suzy Spoon gave up eating meat 30 years ago she really missed sausages and spaghetti bolognese. Supermarket vegan options were tasteless and rubbery, she says, so she took matters into her own hands and created plant-based alternatives her meat-eating friends and family loved. Now she’s running a wholesale vegan butcher near Sydney with 14 different hand-made and organic products including sausages made with seaweed skin, burger patties, schnitzel, pepperoni, bolognese, and lasagne. This year she’s been taking orders for her festive roast early because they always sell out of the roulades of seitan, tofu, nuts, cranberries and traditional herbs. Tasmanians can order and buy her products at City Organics in Criterion Street. Spoon says vegan business is booming.“It’s a massive growth - enormous,” says Spoon. “I have really noticed a huge growth in the number of people wanting to eat a plant-based diet. I have been making vegan food for 30 years and I have never seen anything like the growth we’ve had in the last five years. Almost every family has a vegan in it now.”
Passionate Tasmanians creating delicious vegan products out of home and industrial kitchens and running small, often-market businesses are also experiencing great demand for their creations. If you ask Dale Jeffery from Eden Pantry, the vegan movement in Tasmania is experiencing a real boom. He started making dairy-free deserts at his Huon Valley industrial site three years ago because his wife Jemma is lactose intolerant. Now, his organic, vegan-friendly, creamy tasting coconut yoghurt and ice-cream treats are available in shops all over Australia. Eden Pantry is a regular fixture at the Farm Gate Market and Jeffery says support from the Hobart vegan community has been overwhelming. His market sales are up 25 per cent in two years. “It’s growing so fast,” Jeffery says. “It’s been massive.” One of his regular customers is the woman who runs Raw Dealer, the vegan dessert stall that’s been next to him for five months every Sunday.
“The vegan growth has been huge in the last 18 months,” says Holly Oakden. Her delicious dairy-free, egg-free, honey-free deserts are stocked at a dozen Tasmanian cafes and she sells at both the Salamanca Market and Farm Gate. Her customers share their vegan conversion stories with her and Oakden says it’s largely social media vegans with huge followers and horror stories with gross and graphic details of animal cruelty who have influenced and converted them.
Oakden mixes her biscuit-base cheesecake-like, moose centred creations and bliss balls and slices in her Sandy Bay home-kitchen. Her products are “raw", which means they aren’t heated above 48 degrees Celsius. Her top-seller is her Snickers cake, an all-chocolatey creation with salted caramel and peanuts. But many of her products are nut-free too. Her non-vegan family and friends test her new creations because she knows if they enjoy eating them, her vegan customers will love them. She’s just had to buy a fourth 500-litre freezer to keep up with demand. When VeganFest was on, it clashed with her Farm Gate market so she asked her mother, Debbie, to run the Kingston stall and she was inundated. “She kept calling me saying ‘I need more stock, I’ve sold out again’ so I was ferrying cakes back to her three times before 1 pm. It was incredible. I don’t think anyone expected those sorts of crowds for our first-ever vegan festival.” Fear of missing out, is something people exploring a plant-based way of eating are worried about she says. “Many of the people who buy from me have confided that they were initially hesitant about going vegan because they didn’t want to miss out on treats like dessert,” Oakden says. “But people don’t have to worry about that because the vegan options are endless. You don’t miss out because there are so many delicious alternatives.”
Julie Martyn says it’s the fear of missing out on cheese that has largely driven the success of her northern Tasmanian vegan cheesery. “For some people, the thought of saying goodbye to excellent cheese is too much but when they taste our cashew-based cheeses those fears are forgotten.” The vegan, ex-scientist runs Artisa - an upmarket, plant-based cheese business near Launceston. She uses cashew nuts blended with filtered water, coconut oil and Tasman seas salt and then cultured with dairy-free probiotics to create hand-made, plant-based cheeses that champion Tasmania. “We have forged our own path and created a range of products that are like no other,” she says. “Our cheeses are flavoured by Tasmania. We add ingredients sourced from our pick of the many local gourmet producers here.” She’s talking about the native pepper berry that’s dusted over her Kunanyi cheese, the stout used to wash her blue vein Launceston cheese, the black truffle flecked through her Tamar Fresh cheese, cold smoking with local apple wood that enhances the nuttiness of her Gladstone cheese and the vine ash in the Ben Lomond.
Artisa have a stall at the Evandale Markets every Sunday. Last year it took out the Gold prize at the Royal Hobart Fine Food Awards for its Coal River cheese dusted with foraged fennel pollen. Martyn says picky French tourists who have been dubious about the quality of vegan cheese from Tasmania have been hugely impressed after tasting her creations. In October she packed her products into a suitcase and flew them to several European countries where she says some of the global giants in plant-based cheeses gave them a very big tick of approval. Her products are “world class” according to the great vegan cheese masters. “These makers are so experienced and knowledgeable and we’ve been fortunate that they’ve tried our products and absolutely loved them,” Martyn says. “Their feedback is our cheeses are up there with world-best standard.”
When Portia D’Anverrs was a little girl she used to help her father muster and brand, castrate and ear-tag the cows on their cattle property near Rockhampton. “It’s a bit gory,” says D’Anverrs who is now following a whole food, plant-based diet. “But we would shoot the cows to feed the tourists.” D’Anverrs was only 10 when she first started questioning the killing of animals and two years later had cut out all meat from her diet. Last month the 28-year-old, Hobart-based fly-in and fly-out locum doctor was named a finalist in a national sexist vegan competition run by an animal welfare group. She is passionate about encouraging everyone especially people struggling with obesity to start eating more fruits and vegetables, lentils, pulses, nuts and seeds. “Some people think vegans are a bunch of weirdos but we're not,” she says.
When she’s not working as a doctor, D’Anverrs helps busy women to reach their fitness goals. She runs a Tasmanian-based, 90-day plant-strong program for new vegans. “We work out how we can fit in plant-based and whole foods and achievable strengthening exercises into their week and then I touch base with them weekly and talk through their struggles,” says D’Anverrs. “It’s all about slowly, slowly improving habits and they can take a long time to change.”
Most Sunday mornings, after a workout, D’Anverrs will head to Farm Gate Market in Hobart and support the many businesses there who she says make amazing vegan-friendly products. “Tasmanians are so lucky to have an abundance of locally grown fruit and vegetables and a plethora of small businesses who make delicious vegan foods.”
