The New Yorker:

Vegan cuisine is hit or miss, a meat-eater would imagine, whether you like to eat food derived from animals or not. To this day, four decades after the “Moosewood Cookbook” revolution, it’s more miss than hit. Vegan cheese, made from soy or legumes or coconut, remains thin on flavor and terrible on texture; “burger” patties, in spite of inroads made with plant-based heme molecules, which lend a meaty flavor, are mostly dry and crumbly. But climate change is happening, and many people are trying, valiantly, to eat vegan, even if only sporadically, for reasons other than animal welfare and personal wellness. And so a place like Jajaja Plantas Mexicana, which serves vegan Mexican food with a millennial tinge, feeds both the striving masses and the Zeitgeist.

Pictured above (clockwise from left): buffalo-cauliflower tacos with chopped celery and shredded carrots; fish tacos, in which the “fish” is chayote squash; and the chorizo burrito, painted in the colors of the Mexican flag.Photograph by Jessica Pettway for The New Yorker
Jajaja opened two years ago, on a corner across from Seward Park, in east Chinatown, lately a hipster food hub that includes Dimes, Mission Chinese Food, Kopitiam, Scarr’s Pizza, Kiki’s, and Metrograph Commissary. (There’s a smaller Jajaja location in Williamsburg, and a new, bigger one in the West Village.) Judging from recent crowds, Jajaja is where the Everlane-mom-jeans-and-lavender-hair set heads after work to get the night started with pomegranate-jalapeño margaritas, or on weekends for kale pancakes and portobello steak and (tofu) “eggs.”

The pale beechwood ceiling, penny-tiled floor, Miami-mint metal chairs, and snaking philodendrons give the room a hippie-beach vibe; the list of more than sixty tequilas and mezcals signals party time. And what’s better party food than nachos? Nacho lovers can put up with pretty much any kind of cheese—in desperate times even movie-theatre “cheese” will do. Upon trying Jajaja’s nachos, which arrive in a gargantuan pile, those people might wonder if there’s any “cheese” involved at all, and then realize, oh, right, it’s that liquidy orange stuff. (It’s cashew cheese, with turmeric for that authentic color.) For some reason, there are peas and corn, too, but also beans and guacamole (thank God), and the chips are nicely crunchy.

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