Pal @halfacat raves about Green New American Vegetarian restaurant in Tempe, so I joined him and the lovely @JLKnapp for lunch.

I chose “The Secret BBQ Chicken Sandwich” pictured above served open faced. The sandwich comes with a whole Kaiser bun, but I just eat half the bun to cut down on carbs. With the chicken comes carmelized onions, peppers, espresso BBQ sauce, and vegan mayo.

I asked the waitress for suggestions and she told me that this BBQ sandwich was named by PETA as the #1 best Faux-Chicken Sandwich in the US. Here’s the full Top 10 list. So, out of curiosity I wanted to see just how chicken-like this faux meat made made out of a gluten and soy base tasted.

The sandwich as a whole was very tasty. I would eat it again Could this faux meat pass as real chicken if the eater didn’t know? I’d say there would be a pause because you can’t tell right away. But after chewing a bit, you get that it’s not real chicken. The texture though is almost spot on especially since it is cut thin. Looking at the picture above, the faux meat looks like real chicken.

For appetizer, I got the Crab Puffs. My Asian palate was curious to see how close Green’s version would come to the real thing. The puff was alright. I enjoyed the garlic flavor but the texture of the filling was on the too mushy side. It needed some beefing up so to speak to give it more of a “there’s some kind of meat in here” texture. In it’s current state, I’d call it a “Garlic cheese fried won ton.”

And lastly for dessert, @halfacatgot the Orangsicle soynami for all three of us to share. The dessert contains a soy based soft serve ice cream and vegan pound cake. This dessert was awesome to say the least, and @JLKnapp who is not vegetarian said that had she not known, she would not have guessed at all this dessert was non-dairy and non-egg. Excellent sign!

The dessert list at Green looked absolutely amazing, and if I had my way I would have tried one of everything because vegan desserts in the Phoenix area is on the scarce side. But, we have more reasons to go back to Green, and definitely you should check the place out.

Phoenix’s Green New American Vegetarian restaurant is our pride and joy – it’s the kind of place where you can bring omnivores to help them to understand that vegan food isn’t just about steamed veggies, tofu and rice. The menu claims to feature “new American style comfort food,” offering a good blend of mock meat sandwiches, pizzas, fried food and bowls. However, I believe Green pushes the boundaries of “comfort food” by bringing exciting new flavors to well-known dishes, redefining what vegan cuisine can be.

Green is located in a humble strip mall just close enough to ASU to draw in young people on a college budget, but also near enough to “Old Town Scottsdale” to attract older people with an interest in healthy eating. Any restaurant with a quote from Daniel Johnston on the wall has the potential to be “too hip for you” and intimidate the “regular folks,” but instead, Green is friendly and welcoming. You’ll always find a diverse crowd there.

Since we go to Green often enough to have explored most of the menu, I’ll only highlight two of our favorites in this post – the Spicy Peanut Chicken Salad and the Secret BBQ Chicken Sandwich.

I like the Spicy Peanut Chicken Salad so much that I have a hard time ordering anything else.

I had never tried a “chicken salad” before eating at Green – neither mock chicken nor actual dead bird. I’m the quintessential fussy eater who grew up using different pieces of silverware for each item on my plate and getting upset if the peas touched the mashed potatoes (aka nightmare child at a restaurant). The idea of a mayonnaise-based chicken-like mystery concoction makes me want to retch, and the modern chicken salad – pieces of grilled chicken on a bed of lettuce – befuddled me. A salad is a salad, chicken is chicken, and the two should never be mixed. I have even stronger anti-taco salad feelings, which I have yet to overcome. But, during one of many visits to Green I glanced at another table’s food and asked a server what they were eating. Upon learning it was the Spicy Peanut Chicken Salad I thought, “That’s a chicken salad?” It contradicted all of my preconceived notions of what a chicken salad is meant to be. The next time I went to Green I got bold and gave it a try. I now wonder what I’ve been missing.

The first thing I appreciate about the salad is the lettuce – it’s a basic, non-ambitious mixed organic baby greens. It gets a little wilty under the weight of the dressing and chicken, but its foundational flavor doesn’t contradict the variety of tastes in the salad by being overly bitter or sweet. I’m also not interested in having a bunch of wasted “stuff” in my salad (except when it comes to the salad at The Breadfruit, but we’ll save that for another post). Anything in the salad should be designed to either provide a texture contrast and/or soak up the dressing. Period. The crisp julienned carrots and thin, crunchy potato sticks do their jobs well.

The dressing knocks down my second preconceived notion – that salads, in general, are boring. The miso vinaigrette dressing is tremendously tangy – a perfect complement to the spicy chicken. The (mock) chicken is sliced thin, grilled and coated with the same peanut sauce that is used in the Thai peanut bowl. They aren’t kidding with the “spicy” part either – I usually have to grab an extra napkin or two for my runny nose. You would think the miso vinaigrette and the peanut sauce would create a noxious, mis-matched blend of flavors, but they actually remain distinct tastes that don’t create a conflict in your mouth.

My second favorite menu item is the Secret BBQ Chicken Sandwich, served with thyme fries.

The sandwich is pretty straightforward – a standard hamburger bun loaded with thinly sliced grilled mock chicken, caramelized onions, red and green bell peppers and vegan mayo (which I leave off, due to the previously mentioned retching sensation I get at the thought of mayo – vegan or not). The “secret” of the sandwich is in the barbeque sauce – it’s an “espresso” sauce. I don’t know exactly what that involves, given it’s a secret, but it is tangy, mildly spicy, slightly sweet and very messy! I’ve never had a barbeque sauce like it. I’d buy it for home use if I could (along with that miso vinaigrette and Thai peanut sauce).

Both of these menu items require that you are down with the idea of mock chicken, which I think Green does better than any other place I’ve eaten at. It has the same texture and stringiness as chicken, without the death part, so I’m all for it. The flavor comes from whatever sauce they put on it and it’s been so long since I’ve had chicken I’m not sure what “tastes like chicken” tastes like anymore anyway. Just wash it all down with a glass of fresh-brewed iced green tea with a dash of fresh lemonade and you have a fine, fast and flavorful vegan meal!

Green is on Facebook and Twitter, and is open Monday – Saturday 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., and closed on Sundays.

Just two weeks ago, we went on a very quick road trip to Arizona. I’d never been before and was hoping to explore some of the vegan options. I wasn’t expecting much, and with the 115° heat, food wasn’t the first thing on my mind when we got there. Still we searched for something different than the usual vegan choices on regular restaurant menus. We were directed by friends to Green in Tempe as the place to check out. Finding some free time on our hands, we made the extra journey to scope it out.

As soon as I took a look at the menu and the various vegan items they had for sale in their mini-store I was ecstatic. Not to mention the extensive list of Tsoynami (think vegan blizzard) flavors listed on a chalkboard. The atmosphere of the place was charming and creative, with tons of space and very vegan vibe.

Shawn got the original “g” spicy poboy which was so amazing. Essentially it’s a vegan buffalo chicken sandwich. I want to eat one of these every day. It was spicy but not overwhelmingly so. The mock chicken was the perfect consistency, not overly fried or chewy. I got in big trouble for stealing the last bite of this sandwich. Oops!

I ordered the texas mooshroom poboy because I was so in love with the idea of espresso bbq sauce. Of course I was so distracted by the idea of mushrooms slathered in bbq that I kind of forgot that I don’t like peppers which this guy is full of. I ended up taking them out and the poboy was damn good anyway. If you like peppers it would probably be fantastic. The thyme fries that came with it were absolutely fantastic. I’m not really one to go nuts over fries, but these were so good, thin and crunchy and flavorful.

Let’s be serious here for a second though and talk about this ingenious treat at Green known as a Tsoynami. This is a vegan soft serve dream come true. Not only is the soft serve itself creamy and delicious, they have so many items you can mix in you would not believe it. They have a bunch of combinations for you to choose from but you can also choose your own mix ins. Shawn got one with coffee bits, chocolate puffs and chocolate syrup (that I unfortunately forget the name of, but that you can see above). I went for coffee bits and newman-o’s, which is my favorite soft serve combo. Despite the fact that I was stuffed after our lunch, I still gobbled down then entire tsoynami and loved every bite. This is the kind of dessert that doesn’t leave you feeling gross afterward. It’s also perfect for the Arizona heat. These things are 10 times better than a shake or an ice cream sundae.

Living in Los Angeles, we’re pretty spoiled with good vegan restaurants, but damn I wish I could go to Green all the time. This is the kind of place with a really nice relaxed atmosphere and artistic decor that we’re missing out on here. There are a ton of places to get great food in LA but not many of them have such a great vibe. Green not only had awesome food and really nice people working there, they also had a bunch of vegan items for sale to go, from Teese to bike tube wallets to recipe coloring books to copies of Earthlings. This is also the kind of restaurant you could take non-vegans to and they would still be thrilled; the food is just great. I can’t wait to go back and try more items off their menu! If you’re ever in the Tempe area you must go here, I insist.

We always feel sorry for our vegetarian friends when the only things they can order off the menu are skimpy salads, side dishes, or the ubiquitous veggie burger. It’s a shame more places don’t cater to them. And it’s far worse for a vegan. Thankfully, there’s Green, where nothing on the menu bears a trace of animal products. And lest you think that equals bland health food, what Green does best happens to be total comfort food — flatbread pizza slathered in vegan barbecue sauce and vegan cheese, internationally inspired rice and pasta bowls topped with tofu and veggies, and a chicken Parmesan sandwich made with mock meat and vegan cheese, to name a few. Irresistible spicy buffalo wings are another highlight. If there’s any place that can satisfy even meat eaters with tasty vegan cooking, it’s Green.

We just got back from a trip to warm sunny Phoenix to visit the Mr.’s family (and by warm and sunny I mean in the 90′s… in Feb… crazy). I was really surprised to discover that the Phoenix area has many vegetarian/vegan restaurants to choose from. We checked out Yelp and found that Green New American Vegetarian had nothing but fantastic reviews and it was also in an area of the city that we haven’t spent much time in on our other trips to AZ. This new favorite spot really proved that you can’t make judgements about restaurants by their location. Green is in a Tempe strip mall surrounded by fast food, car lots, and pawn shops. If you weren’t looking for the name you would never place it as the down to earth eclectic vegan comfort food spot that it is. Once inside you feel like you have been transported to San Francisco, Seattle, or Portland. The atmosphere is spot on. All of the employees that we spoke with were incredibly friendly, adorable, and eager to suggest their favorite items on the menu.

We started with an order of Vegan Chili Fries because the gal who took our order insisted that their homemade chili was unlike any we had ever had. She was right, it was comfort food to the max. The super flavorful chili was not filled with beans like your typical vegan recipe but rather a mock ground beef and savory sauce. The chili was piled high on a large portion of thyme flavored french fries.

Because we both can’t resist any dish with mushrooms as main ingredient we didn’t hesitate when choosing the Texas “Moo-shroom” Po-Boy. This sandwich was filled with “pulled portabella”, onions, and peppers that had been slow cooked in Green’s Espresso BBQ sauce. This sandwich was amazing and also messy, just as a bbq po’boy should be. It wasn’t too heavy but just like the chili it was definitely comfort food rather than light vegan fare which was just what we were looking for on this day. We chose the tahini coleslaw as our side dish. YUM!

The beverage containers behind me had freshly brewed green tea and a couple other fun organic soda fountain type drinks with creative names. The tea was great.

Desert was a very hard choice. On our way out we grabbed this homemade creme filled oatmeal cookie (very reminiscent of the Little Debbie packaged cookies) and we were not disappointed. Aside from all of the cookies at the counter there was an enormous chalk board menu of Green’s signature homemade vegan milkshakes that they call Tsoynamis. Some of the flavors that I can remember were Rocky Road, Almond Joy, S’more, and PB&J (this one caught my eye with peanut butter, grahams, and strawberries). They had a huge assortment of fun ingredients to build your own creation as well. All of these are made with a base of Green’s vegan sort serve. We didn’t get one of these tasty looking treats because we planned on making another stop in before the end of our trip but unfortunately this never happened. I will definitley be stopping in on our future trips to AZ! There is so much left that I need to try.

Ten leaders in sustainability are in the spotlight as the Phoenix Business Journal debuts its Green Pioneers program.
These are people who struck out on the green path looking for sustainability before it became even remotely popular, said Patrick O’Grady, who edited a special supplement featuring the Journal’s first group of “pioneers.”

The 10 individuals cover a spectrum of industries. Development plays a big role, as does education, manufacturing and business leadership. The Journal’s goal was to find people who are practicing and preaching sustainability from different industries and see how they became interested in going green and have them share their ideas with other businesspeople. The group was scheduled to participate in a networking event and panel discussion Feb. 5 at Phoenix Civic Plaza.
“We realized early in the process that this inaugural section would only scratch the surface of what Phoenix has to offer in the way of sustainability.” O’Grady said. “But the idea was to get the conversation started.”
This year’s Green Pioneers are:
Philip Beere, owner, Green Street Development.
Damon Brasch, owner and chef, Green.
Diane Brossart, president, Valley Forward.
Mick Dalrymple, co-founder, AKA Green.
Mara DeFilippis, founder and CEO, Phoenix Green Chamber of Commerce
Kimber Lanning, director, Local First Arizona.
George Maracas, chief operating officer, Solar Power Laboratory and professor, department of electrical engineering, Arizona State University.
Charlie Popeck, president, green ideas – Environmental Building Consultants.
Laura Roberts, CEO, Pantheon Chemical.
Vernon Swaback, managing partner, Swaback Partners.
The Green Pioneers supplement is part of the Phoenix Business Journal’s Feb. 6 print edition. For more on the print edition, rduchene@bizjournals.com.

David Lynch’s films have always garnered cult followings, but in the case of his 1984 screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, there’s more magic than murder in the air. There are psychic “witches,” futuristic water suits, giant sand worms, a coveted, mysterious spice, and Sting in a mankini. Fans of the sci-fi flick showed their spirit by dressing up as their favorite characters from the film at “The Spice Will Flow” Dune costume party at Green Restaurant in Tempe on Saturday, October 25.

The party pulled in a couple hundred people, packing the restaurant and overflowing into the parking lot. The boisterous crowd made the always-substantial line across the street at the Rogue for “Shake!” look small by comparison. In addition to all the eye candy costumes, the party offered live music from local bands the Skinwalkers and The Necronauts, Green’s usual yummy vegetarian food (plus a special “Arakis Tsoynami,” made with gummy worms), and a screening of the movie Dune.

Here are a few photos from the fete. Check back with “Up on the Sun” on Monday for a slide show of the Dune costume party.

Read More …

I landed in Phoenix, AZ on Good Friday last month and left very early in the morning on Easter Sunday. I was there for the Angels’ spring training and knew that I would eat as many meals at Green as possible. This vegan girl knew ahead of time that there was so much to try at Green and so little time! Just check out their menu and you’ll know what I mean. I’d eaten dinner there once last year when I was out for spring training and I brought home a feast for a little Oscar viewing party the next night, so I’d already gotten a taste. I can’t wait to go back!

Read more …

If Morgan Spurlock, the guy who made Super Size Me, ever decides to do a sequel, I’ve got the restaurant for him.
A month of splurging on s’mores sundaes, spicy buffalo wings, burgers, and fries would surely expand his waistline as quickly as a diet of Big Macs and Egg McMuffins.

Spurlock would have a lot more options here than at McDonald’s. The menu at this place reads like a round-the-world trip in guilty pleasures, from flatbread pizzas to kung pao chicken to a Texas po-boy oozing with luscious espresso barbecue sauce.

While eating this food constantly would likely pack on some pounds and, perhaps, push up your cholesterol levels, you’d still be on one of the strictest food regimens around. At Green, a funky two-year-old bistro tucked in the corner of a north Tempe strip mall, the sundae is soy, and the buffalo wings are mushrooms. The burger is ground oats and barley. The fries are still fries, though, because no animals are harmed in the deep-frying of a potato.

Everything Green serves is vegan — meaning it’s not only meatless, but also free of milk, eggs, cheese, gelatin, or any other edible animal product.

Comfort food may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you say the word “vegan,” but this eatery aims to change that.

I’d eat there all the time if I lived a little closer — and didn’t care about squeezing into my jeans. But, hey, if I’m gonna blow my diet, this place gives me plenty of reasons to splurge.

Green is the brainchild of 34-year-old chef Damon Brasch.

He also owns That’s A Wrap, a sandwich and salad shop in Central Phoenix, and he created the menu for the recently launched The Center Bistro, an organic eatery housed inside a yoga center off Mill Avenue in Tempe.

Those two other restaurants are popular in their own right, with smart, appealing offerings — healthful salads and wraps in the case of That’s A Wrap, and organic cuisine for The Center Bistro. But Green is a tour de force, one of those so-simple-yet-so-clever-I-wish-I’d-thought-of-it-myself concepts that comes along once in a lifetime, and makes a guy a millionaire. Brasch has made vegan food downright tasty.

Though the nonprofit Vegetarian Resource Group estimates that vegetarians make up only 2.3 percent of the total U.S. population — with vegans accounting for up to half of that — an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the population “seeks vegetarian options at least some of the time.” According to a Mintel market research report, the U.S. vegetarian food market is expected to grow to more than $1.7 billion by 2010. And thanks to the influence of the Slow Food Movement, there’s a growing demand for organic local produce.

But let’s face it. There’s a reason our nation is still the world’s fattest. McDonald’s sales were up almost 10 percent in February, and although the company recently launched a lower-calorie Smart Choice Program, Mickey D’s isn’t raking in billions by pushing apple slices and grilled chicken salads. It’s the Big Mac that keeps them coming back. And someone’s still ordering fries with that.

Brasch knows it. So he took his desire to cook good food, promote his own philosophies, and run a successful business — and he came up with Green.

Instead of going the light, health-conscious route with piles of rabbit food (although you can get a salad to go along with your deep-fried tofu and sweet peanut sauce), Green’s menu capitalizes on our insatiable lust for fast food.

Apparently, omnivores aren’t the only ones who get hungry for pepperoni pizzas, burgers, and deep-fried snacks, and the vegan versions don’t seem to be much more healthful.

“A vegan who eats lots of fried foods, even if fried in what people refer to as ‘healthy oil,’ is still getting a lot of calories and fat,” says Sharon Salomon, a registered dietician from Phoenix asked to study Green’s menu. “Balance and moderation are key to any kind of diet.”

There’s actually an upside to frying foods in canola oil, as they do at Green; it’s considered the most healthful edible oil, with high levels of unsaturated fats, very little saturated fat, and no cholesterol. (Cholesterol is found only in animal products, says Salomon. However, blood cholesterol levels can also be raised by certain kinds of saturated fat.)

But that doesn’t mean you can gorge yourself with no consequence.

Maybe the pleasure centers in our brains are hard-wired for crispy and crunchy and gooey indulgences, no matter what the treats are made of. Last year, the results of a study at Tufts University suggested that it’s common for people to crave foods that are high in calories.

Brasch is no dummy. If fried pita chips and chocolate chip cookies get people eating vegan, even on occasion, then so be it. He’s more interested in saving animals than calories.

“Americans need to be stroked into it,” he says of the vegan diet. “I want to eat healthy, too, but I’m not gonna go out of my way to eat sprouts if it doesn’t taste good.”

From the faux chicken in my noodle dish to the meaty, shredded mushrooms in my barbecue, there’s no animal flesh in anything here. The cheese on the pizza, the soft-serve ice cream — all soy. No egg in the stir-fry. No animal products in anything.

Brasch wrote the business plan for Green 10 years ago but didn’t open the restaurant ’til 2006. Nestled in a sleepy strip mall on Scottsdale Road, the place is so inconspicuous that it’s easy to miss, even if you’ve been there before. But it’s destination dining in its own quirky way, frequented by a mostly young, arty crowd.

Service is fast-casual — order and pay at the counter, snag one of the funky tables (painted with jagged tree and plant silhouettes), and somebody will bring out your food when it’s ready. In the meantime, there’s plenty of atmosphere to soak up. A colorful row of old car doors and framed pieces of art fill opposite sides of the room, while tiny white Christmas lights and glowing paper lanterns brighten the green and orange dining room.

The bohemian cafe vibe isn’t particularly unusual, but the vegan comfort food is unlike anything else in town.

“Basically, I just wanted to take the taboo out of the word ‘vegan,’” Brasch says, “so the average Joe would think of it as just another kind of cuisine.”

For now, that’s a work in progress. To many, veganism still connotes a strict diet that’s more about philosophy than flavor, so even though Green is technically vegan, the restaurant bills itself as “New American Vegetarian.”

At first, Brasch considered leaving the word “vegetarian” out of it, too. He’s tried to keep the vegan message subtle, staying focused on cooking up craveable dishes, like jerk tofu salad, or drunken mushroom “chicken,” with noodles bathed in a heady mix of mushrooms, green onions, rice wine, and dark mushroom soy sauce.

“About 30 percent of the people who come into Green have no interest in vegetarianism — they just want a reasonably priced meal,” he says.

Ironically, if anyone’s given him any flack, it’s other vegetarians who want more healthful versions of Green’s food.

“It’s not necessarily the healthiest thing around,” Brasch admits. “A lot of stuff is fried here. And that whole aspect of it has kind of blown up in our face. Most vegans are health-minded, though some live on fries and smoke cigars.”

He’s already working on a new menu that will include more light alternatives, as well as some gluten-free offerings.

But don’t expect Brasch to stop serving vegan chili fries or chocolate-peanut butter Tsoynamis, his answer to the Dairy Queen Blizzard. Treats like those get meat-eaters in the door.

“When omnivores come in and say it tastes really awesome,” he says, “that’s the biggest compliment.”

Vegan” might not be a household word just yet, but it’s getting close.

The term was coined in 1944, when the newly founded Vegan Society created its name from the first three and last two letters of “vegetarian.”

Now it’s in vogue. Celebrities are clamoring for vegan luxury goods from fashion designer Stella McCartney. Pleather has a whole new cachet.

Cookbook author Isa Chandra Moskowitz is giving vegan food an enticing new image with books like Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin’s bestselling vegan diet book, Skinny Bitch, has spawned a bestselling cookbook, too: Skinny Bitch in the Kitch.

And if there’s any doubt that veganism is sexy these days, get this: Portland, Oregon, now boasts the world’s first vegan strip club.

Chefs are in on the trend, as well. In the National Restaurant Association’s 2007 “What’s Hot & What’s Not” survey of nearly 1,300 American Culinary Federation members, meatless/vegetarian dishes and vegan dishes are ranked “hot” by more than half of the respondents. Vegan and vegetarian options are de rigueur on menus, and exclusively vegetarian fine-dining establishments are cropping up around the country.

Certainly, veganism gets a boost in attention every time there’s another mad cow scare or large-scale beef recall; February’s USDA recall of 143 millions pounds of frozen beef from a California slaughterhouse was the biggest in U.S. history. If people think there’s a chance that eating meat might kill them, they’re quick to put down their knives and forks, even if it’s temporary.

Consumers also worry about things that might kill them slowly, like obesity, heart disease, and cancer. There’s a laundry list of health problems that have been linked not only to the cholesterol in animal flesh, but also to drugs and synthetic hormones found in industrial meat.

Advocates of veganism suggest that eschewing animal products altogether can prevent illness, although Damon Brasch doesn’t make any health claims about his deep-fried vegan delicacies.

But beyond the headlines, there are moral and ethical reasons for abstaining from meat that go back to ancient times.

Until the word “vegetarianism” came into use in the mid-19th century, the avoidance of meat was called The Pythagorean Diet, after the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, who was born around 580 BC. His belief in the transmigration of souls — that souls could inhabit any living thing — is considered a major influence on Plato and other philosophers who continued the debate about whether eating animals is ethical.

Similar beliefs about the nature of the soul perpetuated vegetarianism in various religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. In more recent times, a branch of fundamentalist Christians was behind the 1847 debut of the Vegetarian Society in England, while Seventh-day Adventists are among the most prominent contemporary advocates of vegetarianism.

Lately, the environmental and political arguments in favor of veganism and vegetarianism have been bolstered by the Green Movement, as consumers learn about how many resources are consumed and how much pollution is generated by factory farming.

Even among the general meat-eating population, there’s a trend of supporting sustainable agriculture — grass-fed beef is showing up on more menus, and restaurants are eager to promote their local, organic ingredients.

Brasch says he didn’t name his restaurant Green because of the Green Movement, though — he had the idea before the trend really took off.

“All these green people who change their light bulbs and drive hybrid cars . . . If they’re not eating a vegetarian diet, then they’re contributing to one of the biggest environmental problems,” he says.

That, and “creating a living, conscious being just to eat it is wrong,” he adds.

His reasons for being vegan?

“For me personally, it’s 100 percent about factory farming. It’s completely out of control,” he says. “But if you’re going to quote me on that, I’m a hypocrite, because I’m involved with two restaurants that serve meat.”

Well, he is an entrepreneur, after all. As it turns out, if it weren’t for all the omnivores patronizing That’s A Wrap, that business wouldn’t have been able to keep Green afloat in the beginning.

Nowadays, though, Green’s clearly in the black.

Brasch, who grew up in Chicago and moved to the Valley in 1992, says being in a big Italian family led to his love of cooking.

“Cooking was the nucleus of our family,” he says. “My grandmother threw these massive parties, but she had this tiny little kitchen. From a kid’s perspective, it was just magical.”

Brasch and his mother and sister had moved in with his grandparents after his parents got divorced, so he spent a lot of time in the kitchen with his grandmother.

“Instead of going out and playing baseball, I was inside with the women,” Brasch says of his childhood.

As it turns out, there’s a reason he was a homebody. It’s something Brasch says he’s never really talked about with people, but he’s compelled to tell me: He’s missing his left leg up to the hip, and was born that way. When he was a baby, doctors told his mother he’d never walk.

He later shows me a tattoo of a femur — that is, the thigh bone — which runs the length of his right shin. He got it when he was 18, after going through a period of self-reflection.

“It made me feel like a whole person,” he says.

Considering how much time chefs spend on their feet, it’s incredible that Brasch has pursued such a physically demanding career, but he’s always been active. He started walking with a brace as a toddler, and then had an operation at age 6 to be fitted for a prosthetic leg. He always took regular gym class in school. And eventually, he even got into skateboarding and racing BMX bikes.

“I give my mom a lot of kudos because she never coddled me in that sense,” he says. “She never let me use it as an excuse.”

Brasch recalls an experience in first grade when kids were teasing him about his disability. He went home and told his mom what happened.

“She told me, ‘The next time someone does that, punch him in the nose.’ And the next day, I did. Nobody bothered me after that, but every year, it would be the same thing all over again.”

By high school, Brasch admits, he was known as a bully. To see him now — with his warm brown eyes, long beard, and mellow demeanor — it’s hard to believe he was ever aggro.

“I was full of a lot of rage when I was younger,” he explains matter-of-factly.

Not surprisingly, Brasch was drawn to the hardcore music scene in Chicago. That’s where he was introduced to vegetarianism. (Straight-edge hardcore, an offshoot of punk, started in the early ’80s as a clean-living subculture that rejected drinking and smoking, but it also became associated with animal rights by the end of the decade.) He’s been a strict vegetarian for 16 years now, a vegan off and on.

Around the same time, he began working in restaurants. His first job, at age 14, was as a dishwasher at a pizza place. Brasch continued to work his way up the kitchen hierarchy through high school, missing a lot of classes. He dropped out of college and continued working in the restaurant business.

When Brasch’s father moved to Arizona for a job, Brasch decided to come along for a change of scenery. He worked at different restaurants around Phoenix — “random places,” he says — including Tom’s BBQ, where he met his future wife, Kathy, who’s a nurse. (Even though he doesn’t eat meat, as a chef, he still enjoys cooking it.)

His big break came in the late ’90s, when he met Phoenix entrepreneur Randy Smith, who’d opened That’s A Wrap, on Seventh Street, north of McDowell, in 1998. Smith brought on Brasch to revamp the menu, to much success.

The following year, Smith started a restaurant and bar management company called Bottomline Hospitality Group, and recruited Brasch to be the chef at two new nightspots he was planning to open in Old Town Scottsdale: Mickey’s Hangover, in October 2000, and SIX Lounge & Restaurant, in April 2001.

“It was hard, but I was able to learn quickly because my friend’s ass was on the line,” Brasch says.

Shortly after that, Smith entered both restaurants in the Scottsdale Culinary Festival, promoting Brasch as an up-and-coming new chef. People were wondering who Brasch was, but he must’ve made a good impression — SIX won the festival’s People’s Choice Award for Best New Restaurant.

“Damon’s as talented as they come,” says Smith. “We were blessed to have him.”

Things went well until 9/11. Like many restaurants and bars, Mickey’s Hangover saw a drop in business after that. Smith was looking to shore things up by unloading That’s A Wrap, and coincidentally, Brasch was eager for a different work environment — he was an “unhealthy smoker” at the time, and working at a bar didn’t help. He took over as the new owner of That’s A Wrap in 2003, and he quit smoking, too.

Ironically, Brasch has the Atkins diet to thank for his initial success as a restaurateur.

The timing of the purchase of a wrap/salad shop was uncanny.

“I was gonna re-concept it, do something more edgy with it,” Brasch says. “But as soon as I bought That’s A Wrap, the low-carb thing hit. It was just a stroke of luck.”

Business started picking up as the Atkins diet fad swept the country, and customers sought out wraps and salads. Brasch figured, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Most items contain meat, like the Prince of Thai’s wrap (spicy peanut chicken with spinach) or the BBQ chicken bowl, although there are vegetarian options like the Mexican-style Señorita-No-Meata. Tofu can be substituted for meat in any of the wraps. Even now, with Atkins a fading memory, That’s A Wrap is packed at lunchtime.

Brasch finally opened Green in 2006. In just two years, the innovative eatery has carved its own niche in the local dining scene. And you’re just as likely to hear about it on Chowhound as on a vegetarian message board, thanks to Brasch’s accessible menu.

“We were very, very pleasantly surprised,” wrote one Chowhounder, a self-proclaimed carnivore. “We did Mandala Tearoom [a vegan restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale] about a month ago and for vegan food, the flavors for Green far surpassed Mandala.”

But Brasch doesn’t want to take too much credit.

“I think some of it has to do with luck,” he says. “I just let life happen.”

Just talking with Brasch, it’s clear that he’s more than just an idea guy. He actually gets things done.

How he manages to pull it all off, I’ll never understand.

“Right now, I’m tired,” he confesses.

It’s a mellow weekday afternoon at Green, with just a few tables of customers eating a late lunch. Brasch sits down to chat over a plate of buffalo wings, clad in baggy pants and a mermaid T-shirt that says “We are animal” (designed for Green by local artist Dave Quan, a.k.a. Luster Kaboom, as a fundraiser for Farm Sanctuary, a national farm animal protection program).

He says he’s been spending a lot of time in the office lately, working on a lot of different things. I could’ve guessed as much from his full beard, which might get in the way in the kitchen.

Along with running his businesses and staying involved with The Center Bistro, a new organic restaurant owned by Robert Black and Austin Vickers, Brasch does restaurant consulting as well as high-end catering.

And he’s married, with two little kids. And he’s in two bands, Vine Land and Misr Wat. And he writes for a local zine called Hoozdo. In recent issues, he reviewed legendary Phoenix steak house Durant’s — from a vegan perspective — and wrote about his “chef crush” on acclaimed pizza guru Chris Bianco.

And did I mention he’s been thinking about writing a cookbook, too?

Brasch has even more projects in the works, although he’ll share that stuff off the record only. Still, I think it’s fair to say he’s remarkably plugged in to what’s current — he’s already proved that.

The Center Bistro is only the latest example. Have you found yourself hearing, saying, thinking about the word “organic” more often than you used to? Have you eaten anything organic lately?

Brasch already has you figured out. His dishes at The Center Bistro are 95 percent organic. And although they aren’t vegan, you can order vegan versions of them.

“I just saw that as the next step,” he says. “It starts out with people being a little bit open-minded.”

The Center Bistro is noticeably more upscale than Green or That’s A Wrap, with sleek, contemporary décor as well as a higher price point (no doubt due to the higher cost of organic ingredients). Instead of simple, cheap eats, expect something more sophisticated: a $12 free-range organic roast beef sandwich with organic beets, or perhaps a $6 organic soy-coconut smoothie boosted with a $3 shot of pure açai juice.

The Center Bistro is deliberately more healthful than Green, too. “We don’t have any deep-fryers there,” he says, laughing. Two years ago, his discovering that he’s diabetic gave him “a new perspective on creating healthy food,” he adds.

It’s an altogether different kind of approach to shifting people’s attitudes. While Green gets you by the jugular with its guilty pleasures, Center Bistro goes the intellectual route, tempting you to try dishes that aren’t just organic, but often raw.

Yes, raw — another healthful food trend. Originally, Brasch thought he’d try doing an all-raw menu.

Proponents of raw foodism claim it has numerous health benefits, but at its extreme, the diet can go to absurd lengths to mimic the cooked foods that diners are familiar with. The results can be off-putting, if not pretty disgusting — how about “living” pizza made with flaxseed, or “ricotta” made from puréed nuts and raw garlic?

Gratefully, The Center Bistro doesn’t go that far.

“We thought it would spook the people who could benefit the most,” he says.

That echoes the attitude he’d expressed when talking about bringing vegan cuisine to the masses.

“The best way to solve a problem is to do it from the inside — brow-beating people to not eat meat won’t work.”

For that reason, I think Green is Brasch’s best idea of all. He’s taking something we all know and love — comfort food — and using it to usher in the next big thing. He knows what we crave.

That means that even if you don’t give up meat entirely, you might find yourself eating less of it. Maybe you’ll go for a salad instead of a steak. Or perhaps you’ll find you can inhale a plate of vegan buffalo wings just as easily as the chicken version.

Anecdotally, I can definitely attest that people are eating vegetarian food more often.

Brasch is counting on it.

“I’m laying the groundwork to make Green more than just one unit — probably in the next year or two,” he says.

Don’t be surprised if, someday, you see a Green alongside the Subway at your neighborhood strip mall.

I’m crossing my fingers it has a drive-thru.

By now, faithful readers should know plenty about Green, the Valley’s best (and, um, only) place to get vegan comfort food. I’ve been trying to write about less well known veggie-friendly restaurants, but I have to pause for a second to sing the praises of what I consider Green’s finest creation: the Soynami.

It’s summer. We live in Phoenix. It’s unbearably hot. One of the joys of living in such a hellishly hot place is that it makes little things — like enjoying ice cream when it’s 115 out — a hundred times more enjoyable. But if you’re vegan — or a possibly lactose intolerant vegetarian, like me — your options are pretty limited.

Which is just one more reason why I’m eternally grateful that Green exists.

The Soynami is basically like a Blizzard from Dairy Queen, but uses soy instead of milk. It’s delicious. I’d even venture to say it’s better than ice cream. I’m partial to the Chunky Monkey — a blend of banana, walnuts and chocolate chunks. Recently I tried a new blend of coconut, chocolate and almonds – it was like a frozen blended Almond Joy, and is possibly in the running as my new favorite.

Fun new Green fact: they now feature a tiny vegan market. It’s new since the last time I was in a few months ago, and has all kinds of yummy sweet treats for sale.