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Street Beet Facebook page
A popular vegan food pop-up, Street Beet, has opened its first brick-and-mortar location at 1800 Michigan Avenue, in a spot previously occupied by Bobcat Bonnie's.
The Facebook page notes that the soft launch is happening this weekend, with the official opening set for Thursday, December 11, from 4–11 p.m.
Street Beet creators Nina Paletta and Meghan Shaw have built a big fan base with pop-ups in Detroit dating back to 2018.
We are Street Beet, a Detroit-based vegan restaurant with a menu that playfully rides the line between contemporary and nostalgic. Our plant-based twists on classic comfort foods create space for a diverse group of restaurant-goers, who enjoy their pleasures (a little) less guilty.
Deadline Detroit wrote about Street Beet in 2019.
Anthony Bourdain didn’t live long enough to make it to a Street Beet popup. If he had, it’s tempting to think he might have altered his droll assessment of vegans as vegetarianism’s Hezbollah splinter faction. A few surprisingly tasty bites into a Filet No-Fish or McFake Chicken sandwich, it’s possible to even be amused by them, or at least by Meghan Shaw and Nina Paletta, anyway, who are the women behind Street Beet.
These Detroit vegans specialize in plant-based food that masquerades as fast-food favorites, negating the argument that if it’s vegan, it’s boring and earnest and leafy and flavorless.
Their most recent feed, called McDaddy’s and held at Nancy Whiskey on a recent snowy Sunday had guests at a one-hour wait moments after opening. Diners were offered a selection of imitations of the fast-food classics sold by the ubiquitous chain suggested in the name. This was their second fast-food effort, after a monthly Taco Hell at PJ’s Lager House was so successful it allowed both women to quit their day jobs after only two months.
