This Vegan Restaurant Is in It for the Long Haul (2024)

When Toad Style opened up at 93 Ralph Avenue, at Putnam Avenue, in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in 2015, the vegan restaurant landscape in New York City looked newly reinvigorated. Superiority Burger had opened in its original location on East Ninth Street; the now-closed Champs Diner had made itself a fixture in Williamsburg since its 2010 opening; Hangawi was (and is) serving vegan Korean food on East 32nd street; and old-school stalwarts like Angelica Kitchen and Candle 79 were still operating. The time was right for owners Jillian Camera and Tyler Merfeld, who grew up in New Jersey, to serve their soy- and palm oil- free takes on vegan comfort food to a customer base primed for scratch-made veggie burgers with housemade nut cheeses.

“There was so much excitement,” Camera tells me over Zoom of their opening in July 2015. The former fish market might have been an unexpected locale for a vegan spot, but they turned the space into a small restaurant where customers ordered at the counter from a chalkboard menu sign above it, boasting meatballs, chickpea tofu, and a tofu scramble in addition to the main attraction: an array of veggie burgers.

“It really felt like we were being lifted up and maybe that’s just a new business thing in general, but I think specifically for a more scratch-made, fast-casual vegan thing, it really felt like we knew that it was needed and everyone knew that they wanted it,” Camera says. “It seemed that people were eating so much vegan food already, but they wanted it to be better.”

By “better,” Camera means with attention to using recognizable ingredients and awareness of allergens. Since opening, they’ve focused on an affordable, whole-foods approach that was different from Manhattan’s more health-focused or upscale vegan restaurants. They have offered gluten-free options, from the start, too, which can be difficult and rare in conjunction with removing all animal products. When they served a gyro special in 2017, it was made with mushrooms and artichoke rather than the wheat-gluten-based seitan versions that could be found elsewhere. A seitan gyro has limited appeal, but when Toad Style makes one with mushroom and artichokes, the possibilities for who wants to drop by for lunch expand. Toad Style has always been, in short, accessible in every way.

History proves that small vegan restaurants don’t last very long in New York: One can run through the litany that have closed over the last decade. The secret seems to be in convincing omnivores to make it a staple of their dining routines, and Toad Style has the chops to do so.

But the Impossible Burger changed the trajectory — and fate — of vegan restaurants.

Before the dawn of Impossible Burger in 2016, independent restaurants in New York were largely making headway in introducing vegan foods as a healthy, accessible option that intersected cuisines, from American burgers or Thai fare. But with the introduction of Impossible foods, and the backing of big-name chefs like David Chang of Momof*cku, what’s in a (vegan) dish became less important than products that could mock meat — even if Impossible meats are are processed as it gets, made with genetically modified soybeans and containing 300 milligrams more sodium than a beef burger. By relying on genetically modified soybeans, ironically the most prevalent source of feed for cattle in industrial farming, these patties support monocropped agricultural practices that hurt biodiversity.

“Now I wonder if people aren’t eating as much vegan food because it’s not better,” Camera says, as these products have dominated the conversation and new vegan menu items everywhere from chains to smaller restaurants. They’ve added a line to their Instagram bio to let people know they’re Impossible and Beyond free. And though vegan food can seem trendy and subject to broader cultural whims, like interest in meat-heavy diets such as keto and carnivore, Camera has noticed omnivores coming in who want to eat plant-based meals more regularly.

“That’s something that has changed,” she says. “We really don’t get any comments anymore about people feeling awkward about not following the strict vegan diet. I think that ... it’s so normalized to diversify your takeout.”

But data has shown that people are eating out less, as inflation has cut into people’s disposable income. “Only the wealthiest households — those earning more than $200,000 a year — went to restaurants more often in 2023 than in 2019,” reports MarketWatch. That lowered demand post-pandemic has been difficult for many small restaurants, who are also dealing with higher food costs. This has all caused a squeeze on small businesses like Toad Style, which is located on a block that doesn’t see a lot of foot traffic. Camera and Merfeld have put in new booths, reminiscent of a classic pizzeria, in their small space, hoping to entice customers to make their restaurant a destination.

Camera had spent more than ten years working as a server in vegan restaurants before opening Toad Style, from spots in her native New Jersey to Peacefood, Blossom, and Champs in New York City. She came to her culinary sensibility by cooking at home for friends.

“One of the things that drove us to open and do things the way that we did was that we wanted the food to be something that could be made at home, but you wouldn’t necessarily want to make all these individual components,” says Camera. “So then it’s nice to go out and get it.”

“All these individual components” include the burger patties, cheeses, pickles, and a homemade ketchup that just goes on one classic cheeseburger served with almond mozzarella. They also serve vegan, gluten-free takes on the Taco Bell Crunchwrap, filled with five-bean chili, burritos of chipotle jackfruit, and a Buffalo cauliflower quesadilla. Camera is especially enamored of their pickle soup right now; a cup is $5.

Their pricing (burgers are between $11 and $15, with a weekday lunch special that allows you to add a seltzer and chips for $1 extra) has made them a staple for their regulars, but Camera says it only really works when they’re very busy. Serving a high volume of clientele allows for accessible pricing. While they survived the pandemic by focusing on to-go and delivery orders, like so many independent restaurants, they’ve found the last couple of years inordinately difficult.

“We’ve just been thinking a lot about what it takes to enter institution status. I didn’t necessarily think that [the restaurant] would last this long and have always thought that we only wanted to do it as long as it worked: that it would tell us when it was not viable anymore,” Camera says. “But now we’re feeling like, no, it should work and it should be here forever. And we just need to get everyone else to know that.”

Heather Benjamin/Toad Style

Alicia Kennedy writes a weekly newsletter on food, culture, and politics called From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. She’s the author of No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating and the forthcoming On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites.