What: Houseguest Series featuring Thug Kitchen, chefs Shelley Sloat and Katie Lohnes from The Village Restaurant, Degree One and DJ Low
When: Sunday, 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Where: The Guild Freehouse, 1250 Wharf St.
Tickets: $55 at leftcoasthouseguest.com, the Village Restaurant, (2518 Estevan Ave.) and Munro’s Books (1108 Government St.)
Note: The authors will be signing cookbooks at 2 p.m. today at Munro’s Books
Most people don’t have a problem with eating healthily, as long as the food tastes good. Cooking smart doesn’t have to break your bank, either.
That’s the philosophy of Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway, a pair of 30-year-old bloggers whose vegan recipes and street-savvy presentation have made their blog, Thug Kitchen, one of the most widely read in the foodie nation.
Theirs is a practical philosophy, Davis said. In the first of many profanity-laced exchanges, she made no excuses for her brusque behaviour. She’s passionate about being healthy and eating well, and doesn’t think your tax bracket determines your diet.
“One of the things we fight against is the perception that giving a f--- about what you eat is an expensive undertaking that can only be done by the top one per cent of people,” she said. “I worked at a grocery store making $23,000 a year; did you think I spent 75 per cent of my budget on food?”
Thug Kitchen came to prominence a few years ago, in part because of the way in which Davis and Holloway presented their ideas. The “thug” in Thug Kitchen reflects their expletive-laden attitudes; the website was described by one critic as “what a food website run by Daily Show comedian Lewis Black and rapper Lil’ Wayne might look like.”
Subsequent bestselling cookbooks — Eat Like You Give a F*ck (2014) and Party Grub: For Social Motherf*ckers (2015) — along with a never-ending stream of catch-phrase slogans (“Eat chard, party hard”) furthered their cause considerably.
But at the end of the day, it’s the innovative recipes that sell the sizzle. Of particular note are their twists on meat favourites, such as Roasted Sriracha Cauliflower Bites — which serve as a hot wing substitute — Sweet Potato Chickpea Wraps and Beer and Bean Chili.
The problem, for some readers, came when the once-anonymous bloggers were revealed to be Caucasians living in Los Angeles — and not, as loyal readers had come to assume, black chefs coming straight out of Compton. A furor erupted, and Davis and Holloway weathered the storm unapologetically, buoyed by tips of the hat from Jamie Oliver and Gwyneth Paltrow, among others.
The two, who have dated, but are not a couple, have nearly 700,000 fans on Facebook, 164,000 fans on Instagram, and 62,500 followers on Tumblr. To their dedicated audience, the self-aware style and witty personalities of Davis (who does the majority of the cooking and writing) and Holloway (who writes a bit and shoots the accompanying photos) come across like a blast of fresh air.
They are the millennial opposite of stuffy haute cuisine. And they curse with impunity.
“If the food tastes good, nobody gives a s--- whether it’s vegan or not,” Davis said. “Obviously, the food has to be good. But because we’re a little more informal and we swear, it invites people to the conversation who don’t otherwise feel welcome.”
Davis and Holloway will be in Victoria for various events over the weekend. They are signing cookbooks at Munro’s today, and will appear twice on Sunday as part of the pop-up Houseguest Series, joining local chefs Shelley Sloat and Katie Lohnes from the Village Restaurant on Estevan Avenue at the Guild Freehouse on Wharf Street.
Tickets are nearly sold out, which isn’t surprising. Victoria vegans are spoiled, to a degree. Rebar, the popular Bastion Square restaurant, has been exclusively vegan and vegetarian since 1988, and in 2001, owner Audrey Alsterberg and chef Wanda Urbanowicz wrote The Rebar Modern Food Cookbook, one of the first widely read vegan cookbooks.
Success stories such as Rebar are rare, Davis said, but the movement is growing. Thanks to the impact of the Internet, more attention than ever is being paid to plant-based diets.
“The Internet has made it harder to pretend you don’t know the horrors of industrial farming,” she said.
“The Internet was this floodgate of information,” Holloway added. “Now, people can see on Thug Kitchen that [this lifestyle] is really affordable.”
Holloway, who was not a vegan until he met Davis four years ago, talks often to his male friends about switching to a meat-free diet. His advice? Make incremental changes. Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to adopting a plant-based lifestyle, he said.
“Being a guy and being a vegan is somehow seen as an oxymoron. But like I tell my friends, it’s an opportunity to explore your culinary horizons. There’s a lot of s--- you’ve never tried before. You don’t know, you might love a vegan diet.
“Instead of trying to replace what you’re used to, use it as an opportunity to expand what you’re used to.”