VeganMoFo #26: What Would the Community Think?
I have never been to Urban Rustic, the localvore sustainable cafe and grocer just a few steps from Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s splendorous McCarren Park. They’ve been around for many years now, with their well-designed menu and website looking all ideal and awesome. And I must say I am impressed. Their space is built from Adirondack wood they harvested and milled themselves! They’re bringing the farmer and producer into the picture, allowing customers to learn the story of their meal. And they buy their electricity from wind-powered sources. So where’ve I been? Well, as a critic of greenwashing years ago (before it became a term), businesses who claimed to be environmentally-friendly yet sold meat… a lot of meat… were on my no, thanks list. Since we all know that an animal-based diet is thee biggest contributor to environmental destruction (see here since the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization keeps changing the link of the report), how on Earth can a cafe be “green” when they perpetuate the dietary habits that cause so much damage? Their menu, laden with beef, chicken and salmon, not to mention cheese and eggs, caters to the omnivore, not the vegan. So I never went to Urban Rustic in the years it has been half-butting its mission, if I may be so bold. But… since they do offer a completely vegan club sandwich, I decided I’d give them a try… finally. Ordering online at Delivery.com, they brought me my double-decker Unclub sandwich in neat biodegradable packaging (i.e. paper) promptly by bicycle and it was very, very good. Three slices of still warm, toasted yet not mouth-scrapy bread layered with tofurkey, tomato and sprouts and smeared with Veganaise and Dijon mustard. Simple and delicious.
There are 1 Comments to "VeganMoFo #26: What Would the Community Think?"
They also sell stuff like raw vegan ice cream (It's like a dollar an ounce), vegan treats (which is just about as sustainable as a twinkie), and various other vegan sandwich and soup options. However fetishized and contemptible, I applaud them for their effort to feature a lot of locally grown and even more locally made products. I don't feel though that responsibly procured meat or dairy (and I'm talking personal charge of accountability, not relying on a fancy seal of approval) has to contribute to mass wanton callous suffering. Suffering is a constant (some say the only constant) in life, and so working with it in the most humane way possible is sometimes all we can do to keep our heads. It's difficult for eggs, dairy, and meat to considered as "clean" at all though, no matter where it comes from, with so many afflictions attributed to their gluttonous consumption. I choose to not be a vegan (anymore) not just because of preferences in taste, but because after all is said and done, I'd rather support a system where we have closest connection possible without our food, and agriculture, fortunately or unfortunately, if it is to be sustainable, has to include non-human animals in its cycle. A faux animal product made from grain or beans that are grown in the same fields as CAFO feed perpetuate expectations of what food should be, but don't open it up to question about what it can be, and what we can be happy with in our on backyards. This of course is a major inconvenience for most people that would still be comfortable living life as they know it; it would still be even moreso inconvenient to take it one step further and all become frutarians and foragers and hunter-gatherers, doing away with agriculture (interesting side note: the agricultural evolution 10,000 years ago was the first recorded dramatic, though not significant, spike in carbon emissions). Sorry for the digressive monkeywrench.