 My name is Rachel Simons, and I'll be your host today. Today we'll be talking about Cool Cuisine, the Battle of the Burgers. Today I'm here with guests, Anya McCann and Brandon Den. Welcome, thank you for coming. Hi, thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. So first off, Anya, I wanted to talk about what is Cool Cuisine and what is your purpose of this organization? Well, Cool Cuisine was founded five years ago when I moved to, little after I moved to Davis, when I was looking to find more plant-based food options in the restaurants when I was going out with friends. And we got together kind of a coalition of different groups in town that eat more plant-based foods for different reasons. Some of them do it for their health, some of them for the environment, and some for out of compassion for animals or religious reasons. And we all had one thing in common was that we wanted more options in the restaurants. So we decided to vote with our wallets. And we started having meet-ups in the restaurants where we would go and thank them for having a lot of options or go to encourage them to add some things. And this year we've sort of expanded that mission to be a little broader. We are trying to make community events and a little bit more accessible for us. And then also this burger battle turned into just the perfect timing. The stars aligned. There was a burger battle in June in Sacramento where they had 30 restaurants participated with 50 burgers, and they sold over 16,000 burgers in one month. So it was really fun. The community all came out and showed up for it. And the restaurants were really happy with the results. And many of them added the burger to their menu permanently. So in Davis, we sort of have a little bit of a... First of all, we're a lot smaller than Sacramento. And our mission with it was not so much to find food for people who eat a vegan diet or a plant-based diet, but to share with people who don't that there are really tasty, delicious foods out there that people who eat a plant-based diet don't just eat salad all day. We eat a wide variety of ethnic foods and strong flavors and very creative chefs. And so this is an opportunity for people to deal with a food subject which is very approachable, which is the all-American burger, and come and try a variety of them that have different flavors and are made out of different kinds of ingredients that they might not have tried before and have a fun time doing it. Yeah, I like how you mentioned that. People that aren't just vegan or have plant-based diets can come out and really explore the taste of something more than just what they typically think of something like that. I mentioned, you mentioned how this can affect people's environments and your body. So how does eating a plant-based diet, either help the environment or help a body? Well, plant-based foods are typically less processed. I mean, vegans eat lots of junk food, Oreos are vegan, but if you want to have a healthier diet, you can remove some or all animal products from your diet and you'll have lower cholesterol, lower fat generally, and you can eat a very healthy diet with using plants and grains and seeds and nuts. It's very well-rounded nutrition. In addition, for the environment, Beef, especially, the World Resources Institute did a shifting diets analysis a couple of years ago. And what they advise is that Americans tend to eat too many calories. So in order to have better impact on the environment and to help fight climate change, they suggest eating less calories overall, eating less animal products, and specifically less beef because beef is a very inefficient source of calories and protein to feed people a lot of, compared to if we were just growing plants to eat. Great. In terms of the environment, I know we have a visual on about how if skipping one meat burger can save up to six months of your phone battery, which is crazy. With the energy that's saved, yes, it impacts our energy and our land use, our water, air pollution, and you can fill 10 bathtubs with the water that it takes to make just one burger. Wow, it's pretty crazy when we think about it. So just small changes. And when we all come together, I mean the great thing is in this community, if we have, our goal is maybe to sell 5,000 burgers and then be able to crunch the numbers on that and how much water did we save, how much, you know, the other environmental impacts that we had together as a community, which helps our community reach our climate action goals in the climate action plan that the city has. Yeah, definitely, Dave is taking action just one step there. So tell me about this event. I know it's happening, it's already been happening since it is already March, but where can you find these burgers? What are options on the menu and more about the information in the event overall? Well, everybody can go out and dine and vote. We have a number of restaurants and some organizations, so I'm gonna read off the list. We've got Bistro33 is offering what we call a meat replacement product, which is the Impossible Burger. It's very popular, it's tastes remarkably like beef. And so they are offering that. And in addition, Devere's Irish Pub is offering a meat replacement called the Beyond Burger. Several of the locations at UC Davis, the Gunrock and Spokes Grill are offering a Beyond Burger. And then we've got more unique handmade creations that the chefs have come up with something that's really delicious and flavorful. I think we have some visuals on them. And Brandon is one of our chefs. So the one here is Spokes Grill. This is Brandon's burger right here, which he can tell you about in a second. We've also got Red Rum Burger, who's, you know, they've been the burger place in town for years and they've jumped on board. They're offering a black bean burger. The one that you're picturing now is from Smokin' You BBQ. And that's a restaurant where they just do smoked meat all day long. And the chef said to me, I want to make something that all of my customers would really like. And he was really excited because his girlfriend is vegan. Oh. And so. Oh. See, I'm spilling it. Happy girlfriend. He is really excited to make something that she would love. The one on the screen now is from Yari Nepalese Restaurant. And they really wanted to join in and said, well, this is kind of the closest thing in Nepal that they have to a burger. It's a special holiday meal. And it's made out of lentils and it's thick. It looks like a little pancake, but it's like an inch thick and it's super filling. And it's really rich with flavors. And Brandon is the only one who did a seitan burger. And you can talk about what seitan is because a lot of people have never heard of it before. Yeah, of course. So seitan is, it's basically like a wheat gluten. And what it is, is it's like an isolated protein that they get from flour, from wheat. And basically what we do at the burger is that we have this seitan. And we marinate it with lemongrass, garlic, ginger and various herbs and sauces, right? Overnight. And then the day after when it's all fully marinated, we grill it. When we grill it, we put it in the sandwiches. And traditionally this is supposed to be an interpretation of the Vietnamese and French banh mi sandwich, which is, it comes on a baguette usually. And this is, so we have it in a burger here. And it has cucumbers in it, cilantro, jalapeños and all the good stuff. And I just wanted to figure out how to put it into a burger, you know, just to kinda. He's doing a risk on the burger. Yeah, so tell us about where is your restaurant down in Davis and how, Ania was telling me how you're part of, in Lazy Cow and it shays corner, correct? You're serving all vegan food, is that correct? Right, so it's actually a vegan pop-up restaurant. So it's a, we don't have our own store, but we're located inside of Lazy Cow, which is on G Street, G and Fifth. And yeah, that's where we operate for now. And we have like our own separate part of the kitchen that we use to make all the vegan food and whatnot. That's super awesome. So it's our first, I've been here for seven years and it's our first, there was a vegetarian restaurant for at some point before I moved here, but Brandon is our first vegan restaurant in town. So we're excited to have him here. And if you've never tried seitan, it's chewy and filling and it gives you that nice mouth feel that you're used to if you're missing, if it's, you know, you're worried that you're gonna miss meat, it's very satisfying. Yeah, that's great to know that there is these other options. You mentioned how it's a pop-up. Are you thinking of expanding in another city anytime? Yeah, I would ask you, the ultimate goal is to eventually have our own shop instead of Davis or in Sacramento nearby, but right now we're just kind of testing the water to see how the community reacts to an all vegan restaurant. And it's a Vietnamese vegan cuisine. So Vietnamese food, we have pho soup and banh mi sandwiches and all kinds of really good stuff. But hopefully we'd like to have our own store. That's exciting. So how can people vote? Where can they find you and go about this? Well, we have all of the information on our website which is coolcuisine.net. And if you go to the website, there's a voting and dining page which will tell you about how you can dine, how you can vote individually. There's a link that goes to a SurveyMonkey. It just takes like a minute to fill it out. It's very fast. And in addition, there's a description of how you can form a tasting team if you'd like to form a team of five people that can create their own award and make an award in their name, which is another fun way for especially community groups to participate or Rotary Clubs and sports teams and brownie troops. Our block is doing one and my office is doing one. And then there's also a burger information page and it's got photos of all the burgers, the locations and hours because not all of them are all day or all night. Some of them have specific hours. And just right before I came here today, I got word from foodnome.com which is a new group in town that is home-based chefs that have food that you can order online or that you can show up and have a communal meal with a group of people. And so this is gonna be their inaugural event, it's gonna be March 26th and it will be by reservation only as part of the burger battle and it will be held at I-House. So you can find that through coolquizine.net or you can go to foodnome.com and we've also got Zuma Poke and Lush Ice has their burger is only offered at the farmer's market on Saturdays. I think they will be offering it on Wednesdays when a picnic in the park starts in a week. And let's see. And then the UC Davis Dining Services this week is in the retail restaurants, next week is in the Dining Commons for the first three days of the week at lunch. That's exciting, all the first year students and can go and get a try. Those chefs are super competitive. They all wanna win a prize in this. I understand that if you are voting, you're entered into a raffle. Yes, we have prizes for first of all, for sharing and liking on our social media pages. We've got some contests running and Yelp has some contests running for us. And in addition, every vote gets entered into a raffle at the end for prizes like Dining Out and T-shirts and our grand prize is an overnight stay at the guest house at Animal Place which is up in Grass Valley and it's a very beautiful location where they have an animal sanctuary. That's exciting, that's a good prize to win. So it's definitely worth putting in the vote if you're gonna go and eat it. Definitely. Yeah, are we hopefully gonna add some of these burgers onto the menu permanently? We're hoping. I think some of the restaurants are really happy. I know that Devere's told me they sold 164 in the first five days so. Oh wow. They're really pleased with that and I think some of the restaurants are having equal success and hopefully it'll be a main stay after this. That's exciting. We have to finish up but again, do you wanna reiterate where you can find all the information? Yep, all the information is at coolcuisine.net. We have a voting page which has the voting link and we have a burger page that gives you photos and all of the information for where you can find the burgers and what time of day and what day of the week. Is there social media where you can upload Deer Burger? Definitely. We have a Facebook page that's very active and we encourage people to take pictures of their fantastic cooking food and post them and tell us about their meal. We've also, we're also on Instagram and on Twitter and we encourage posting. Great. Okay, well thank you so much for coming today and I appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Yes. This is Rachel Simons and this was on Studio. Thank you.