The morning after winning the New York City mayors race, in November, Eric Adams stopped for breakfast at Marinellos Gourmet Deli, in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Adams will be the citys first vegan mayor. Last year, he published Healthy at Last, a book about his strict plant-based diet, which he credits with reversing a diabetes diagnosis he received in 2016. His campaign platform, which focussed on public safety and fears of crime, also included proposals for food access and equity, which he considers public-health issues. In Bushwick, a specially made vegan sandwich was waiting for him: spinach, red onion, avocado, egg substitute, and a potato-based queso sauce, all wrapped in a tortilla. Heard @eatplantega was on a mission to bring healthy foods to more NYC communities and that they created a wrap in my honor, Adams, who had stayed up late the night before with Ja Rule and Eric Schmidt at the members-only Manhattan night club Zero Bond, tweeted. [S]o naturally I had to stop by on Wednesday and try the Mayors Wrap and fuel back up after a long campaign!

The shoutout was a coup for Plantega, a vegan-sandwich company whose menu is currently offered in fourteen bodegas around town. According to Plantegas C.E.O., Nil Zacharias, New York has somewhere between eight thousand and fourteen thousand bodegas, independently operated catchall stores, open late and frequented by most. Theyre critical infrastructure, Zacharias said. Marinellos, a large corner shop on a busy block across from Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, stocks a typical inventory; Plantega is trying to expand the offerings at the deli counter. Inside the display case, breaded chicken cutlets and hunks of provolone sat beside slabs of plant-based egg, sausage, and fish substitutes. Zacharias, who was born in Mumbai, is a forty-four-year-old former lawyer and digital marketer. He began working in food after adopting a plant-based diet, eleven years ago, and likes to say that his company offers a plant-based menu-in-a-box for everyday stores, where regular people shop. You cant force someone to go from eating a sausage-egg-and-cheese to eating a kale salad, he said. Its all about changing the environment in which people consume food rather than forcing them to change their habits.

Plantegas bright-colored menu was hanging below a Boars Head poster. Launched under the auspices of a social-impact incubator called EFFECT Partners, which is based in Minneapolis, Plantega is a kind of middleman business. It sources plant-based foods from producers around the world, creates recipes that mimic popular deli offerings, and then pitches bodega owners on incorporating its menu into their existing deli counteroffering to train staff, cordinate deliveries, and help with marketing. Its a humbling experience, Zacharias said, of talking to store owners. If theyre a good bodega, the owner is working there, and has no time to talk to youthe biggest challenge is getting their attention. His pitch is simple, he said: I noticed you have a deli counter. Do you have any vegetarian options? And the second question is, Do customers ask for that? And the answer, nine out of ten times, is yes, many of them are asking for it. And then thats a good lead-in for me to show them my menu. It usually takes a few tries before they agree, because they are very skeptical.

Eight Plantega sandwiches were on the menu at Marinellos, each priced under ten dollars, including a sausage-egg-and-cheese made with Beyond Sausage, Just Egg, Follow Your Heart cheeseour flagship product, Zacharias saidand a butter roll made with Miyokos cultured vegan butter that Zacharias deemed classic New York. Two sandwichesa fish burger made with Good Catch breaded fish fillet and a barbecue pulled-pork sandwich made with substitute pork strips produced by a Hong Kong company called Omniwere new to the menu. This would have not been possible two or three years ago, Zacharias said. Because the products that we need to make it possible did not exist.

I ordered a Plantega sausage-egg-and-cheese from one of Marinellos grill guys, Leo Vivar Martinez. You got to be careful how you cook it, Vivar Martinez said. I try to keep a spot on the grill only for vegan products. The cheese is particularly tricky. If you make it too hot, it turns to oil, Zacharias told me. Because its made of oil. According to Vivar Martinez, Marinellos sells about forty Plantega sandwiches a day. Bushwick is a gentrifying neighborhood, with an increasing number of vegans. But non-vegans were ordering the sandwiches, too, including nurses from the hospital across the street. You know, the plant-based thing has a halo of health, Zacharias told me. We get asked the question often, like, is it truly healthier? And it depends what you compare it to, right? From an absolute standpoint, fruits and vegetablesreal foodare the healthiest things to eat. But, relatively speaking, we are definitely healthier. To me, its a degree of health.

When my sandwich was ready, Zacharias and I walked out to the sidewalk, where three Plantega employees were offering samples of the fish burger and the barbecue pulled-pork sandwich to passersby. I took a bite of the breakfast sandwich and then tried the others. The fish burger was soy-protein-based, with some other seasonings, Ava Nadel, one of the employees, said. I think they use an umami blend and different isolates to compound a seafood flavoring.

Probably has kelp in it, Zacharias added. (Good Catch, the maker of the burger, lists its ingredients as a six-legume blend of peas, chickpeas, lentils, soy, fava beans and navy beans, natural vegan fish flavors derived from seaweed and a blend of spices.)

Like traditional bodega sandwiches, Plantega sandwiches rely on taste and texture contrasts to become more than the sum of their parts. The breakfast sandwich was hot, chewy, salty, rich. The barbecue pulled-pork sandwich was sweet, savory, and pleasingly messy. Many of the pleasures of a deli sandwich are already plant-based: the way a hot kaiser roll will steam and soften when wrapped in foil, the refreshing crunch of shredded lettuce and onions cutting through salt and creaminess. The people trying the samples seemed to like them. You can get them twenty-four hours? one man asked, after being told that they were on sale inside. A man named Richard Thomas, on his way to a medical appointment, took a bite of the barbecue pulled-pork sandwich, and said, thoughtfully, Ive never eaten a vegan sandwich before. It interests me. Fatheh Cheema, a fourth-year medical student at Wyckoff, politely held a hand in front of his mouth as he chewed a fish burger. This one is fish? he asked. It actually has the texture and feel of chicken. Id say its pretty good.

Plantega is not alone in the vegan-sandwich market. Gregorys Coffee, a local chain with thirty-six locations, has started offering a plant-based breakfast sandwich. Vodega, a store on Staten Island, offers its own version of plant-based deli sandwiches. Zacharias said it was a matter of time before major national chains got in on the trend. In the beginning, we were doing a lot of explaining, he said. We used to give people a whole spiel about why you should eat these products. And we realized that just wasnt the right approach. The right approach is make it attractive, make it fun, and incentivize people to try and just because it looks cool, and maybe if they tasted, they would get it.

Last weekend, Eric Adams unveiled the transition team for his incoming mayoralty. Zacharias was listed as a contributor to the food-policy team. As Brooklyn borough president, Adams has pushed to ban bologna and other processed meats from school lunch menustheres absolutely no reason why we should continue poisoning our childrens health with processed foods, he saidand ordered the vending machines at Borough Hall stocked with nuts and protein bars. As mayor, he has said, he will increase funding for the Office of Food Policy, and leverage the citys food-procurement power to shift to a more healthy, sustainable, fair, and humane food system. Zacharias actually first met the Mayor-elect in 2018, when he went to Brooklyn Borough Hall to interview Adams for a podcast he hosted called Eat for the Planet. When I got there, he was baking bread, Zacharias recalled. And I sat down with him and I was like, O.K., hes not faking it.

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The Vegan Bodega Sandwiches That Eric Adams Wants to See in the World - The New Yorker