Vegan ​​​​​​​But Not As You Know It

At her Melbourne restaurant, Smith & Daughters, Shannon Martinez is changing everything you thought you knew about vegan food.

- Alecia Simmonds

I am perched with my friend Timothy at a window seat at Smith & Daughters, the plant-based restaurant owned by Shannon Martinez and Mo Wyse, peering out onto a wet, shivering Melbourne evening. Despite booking a week in advance, the window was all I could get. We are sipping sharp Italian-New York inspired cocktails and anticipating a feast of faux-carnivorous delights: carpaccio and meatballs for entrée and polenta with beef ragù and chicken schnitzel for the main course. I’m not usually so carcass-oriented, but my friend – a meat-lover – is curious: how could a vegan restaurant have such a meaty menu? Will this be a return to the glutinous horror of the mock duck we pretended to enjoy as failed vegetarians at university? And when vegans say “fake meat” don’t they really mean tofu or bready not-sausages?

Of course, I’m hoping for more. After all, Martinez and Wyse have been hailed for revolutionising vegan cuisine. Since opening in 2014, Smith & Daughters, and its delicatessen, Smith & Deli, have become a destination for vegans and vegetarians around the world, as well as being celebrated by omnivorous food lovers in their own right. “Our goal is always to show people that vegan food has moved beyond the trend, the joke or the dirty word it once was,” says the pair in their new cookbook,