Get your hamburger fix sans meat with the Impossible Burger.
If you’re a vegan or vegetarian who secretly pines for the juicy, fatty splurge of ground beef, stop by The Porch in Arcadia for an Impossible Burger ($16) – made with a
100 percent vegan burger patty that looks and tastes like the genuine article. Executive chef Paul Lindsay sears the patty (made by Redwood City, California-based Impossible Foods) in an iron skillet to get a crusty exterior and then slides it atop a vegan Noble Bread bun festooned with a thick slice of red onion, dill pickle chips, shredded lettuce and a swath of tofu-based garlic aioli. Biting through the layers, you’ll be hard-pressed to distinguish it from real beef. In fact, Lindsay has served it to friends on the sly who were completely fooled. Some vegans won’t touch it because it triggers their meat aversions, he adds.
In case you’re wondering what’s in this meat substitute miracle, it’s a mix of wheat and potato proteins, amino acids, sugars, binding agents, coconut oil, soybeans and heme, the same molecule that carries oxygen in the blood that’s also found in plants. But the meatless protein is not without its critics. “The wheat they derived some of their protein from has GMO in it, and it’s not gluten-free,” Lindsay says. All that aside, the Impossible Burger is a satisfying substitute for the real thing. “It’s a cool alternative.”
