Kitchen 388 (388 Grand Ave.) is a popular brunch spot in Oaklands Adams Point neighborhood thats known for its fried chicken and waffles and for serving about a dozen pounds of bacon on any given Sunday. So it was with a certain sense of mischievousness that chef Kevin Schuder chose the cafe to be the site of his new vegetarian dinner series, which hes dubbed Veg 388 a vegetarian pop-up that takes over the normally meat-heavy restaurant five nights a week.

At Veg 388, the seasonal menu of inventive and inspired vegan and vegetarian cuisine might feature a salad of koji-marinated carrots or house-made pasta served with a lobster mushroom ragout. Every dish is served vegan by default, though customers can add a poached egg or grated cheese to certain dishes if they want. Most of the time, people wind up sticking with the vegan option, Schuder said.

Schuder isnt vegetarian himself; hell eat sustainable seafood and, on occasion, meat. But the chef explained that he cut his teeth working as a line cook at Millennium, San Franciscos most well-known high-end vegan restaurant. And when it came time to develop his own restaurant, he decided that he wanted to promote some kind of environmentally sustainable idea. And when he looked around at the other vegetarian and vegan food that was out there, Schuder felt that much of it wasnt very good or, at the very least, it wasnt being done in a way with which he could identify.

What we dont do is label food in parentheses, he explained, referring to the practice of many vegetarian restaurants to describe dishes in relation to meat-centric cuisine: chicken parmigiana or shiitake mushroom bacon. As Schuder put it, Chicken, in quotation marks, isnt chicken.

I guess I do want [the food] to shine on its own merits. People shouldnt shy away from good produce, he said.

What that means, from a practical standpoint, is that Veg 388 serves significantly fewer beans and soy products which are traditionally deployed to emulate the taste and texture of meat than your typical vegan restaurant. (Schuder does, on the other hand, incorporate about five or six different varieties of mushrooms on any given night.) Meanwhile, a foam that Schuder makes with fermented cashews is listed on the menu, simply, as cashew foam not sour cream, in quotes.

Schuders resume is dotted with such prominent San Francisco restaurants as AQ, Izakaya Yuzuki, and, most recently, Bouli Bar. But Schuder said he identifies most with two of the citys best-known permanent pop-ups, Mission Chinese Food and Pink Zebra restaurants known for their punk rock, modern edge.

According to Schuder, what he shares with the chefs of those establishments is a fine-dining background that hes decided to apply in a more casual, accessible setting to strip away the pomp and circumstance of it. Like the chefs at those pop-ups, Schuder uses a blend of traditional and modernist cooking techniques. He does a lot of smoking, drying, and fermenting. But hell also add xanthan gum to a pasta sauce to make it adhere better to the noodles, and he uses an iSi canister to aerate the aforementioned cashew foam.

Veg 388 is now open for dinner from Thursday to Monday, from 69 p.m. Schuder also just launched Kitchen 388s new happy hour program, which isnt strictly vegetarian, from 46 p.m. those same nights.

Read more here:
A New Oakland Pop-Up Serves Vegetarian Food with a Modern Edge