20 Questions with Miami’s First “Plant Butcher”
Photos courtesy of Altas
When it comes to food, nothing’s more unsustainable than meat production. Breeding animals, raising animals, feeding and watering animals, slaughtering animals, processing animals, etc., etc. It’s insanely resource intensive, and, in fact, is the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution and habitat destruction.
Not to mention, livestock account for more carbon emissions than the entire transportation sector, combined; a serious problem when it comes to climate change.
But people love their meat. It’s quite the quagmire.
Luckily, there’s a new breed of butcher, and these culinary innovators are changing the paradigm by taking blood, guts and gore out of the equation. Instead, they use wheat, veggies and other plant-based products to create crowd-pleasing plant meats.
Just ask Ryan Echaus, founder of Atlas Meat-Free Deli, Miami’s first plant-based delicatessen, set to open in early 2017. Echaus has been making plant meats since 2013, and his sliced meats, cheeses, and prepared foods have been steadily growing in popularity across South Florida — among omnivores and herbivores, alike. Echaus is opening his storefront just in time for the South Beach Food and Wine Festival’s Burger Bash, a fierce, celeb-studded competition in which his will be the only vegan entry.
To get the skinny on his meaty concoctions, we posed 20 questions to the man behind the “meat:”
Paste: What’s your definition of a “plant butcher?”
Ryan Echaus: Someone who is severely confused, and doesn’t take no for an answer.
Paste: What first made you shy away from animal products?
RE: My wife opened my mind up to the idea, and my daughter’s shaming made me stop for good.
Paste: What was your favorite food before you went veg?
RE: Baby back ribs.
Paste: Have you re-created that food?
RE: Not yet.
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