Food & Drink

Gallery: Street Beet's 'vegan comfort food' comes back to Detroit's 3rd Street Bar -- to stay

February 04, 2020, 7:00 AM

Featured_meatless_nachos__street_beet_40251Meatless nachos have walnut mock-sausage, cashew cheese, pickled chiles, cashew sour cream, guacamole and pico de gallo atop Detroit-made Aunt Nee's torilla chips. Eight more food shots are below. (Photos: Street Beet)

Street Beet creators Nina Paletta and Meghan Shaw return to the Cass Corridor this week to cook vegetarian pub grub regularly, rather than as an occasional pop-up.

Starting at dinnertime Thursday, they'll serve at 3rd Street Bar five days each week. Unlike a three-night weekly gig there last November and December, this run is open-ended.

"We have a bigger, tastier menu ready for you and we can't wait to be back in the kitchen with our team," the two entrepreneurs tell 8,400 Facebook followers. Orders placed at a back counter will be brought to tables or barstools, and also be available for takeout.  


This not-chicken sandwich with Violife cheddar and fries looks like ideal pub grub. The roll is from Brown's Bun Bakery in Southwest Detroit.

Servings look familiar, but aren't actually fried fish, fried chicken or chicken nuggets. Street Beet's distinctive versions include Fake Chicken Parmie, Party Melt, Phony Cheesesteak, Fake Chicken Nuggets and No Fish & Chips Basket. (Think tofu and Beyond Burger instead of something that was alive.) 

The new menu, shown as the last gallery item below, has 11 selections, four styles of fries and a dessert. Prices aren't listed; they ran $6-$9 per non-dessert item last year.

Eater Detroit salutes the enterprise's roots at PJ’s Lager House in Corktown and Nancy Whiskey’s Pub in Nortrh Corktown:

Street Beet gained a cult following for its vegan comfort food pop-ups going back to 2018. Their blockbuster hit series was a vegan riff on Taco Bell called Taco Hell. ...

Paletta and Shaw had clearly found a niche; however, the logistics of running one-night-a-month events out of bars was unsustainable and the pair began to look for other options to grow the business. "We were tired of transporting our stuff all the time and dealing with the uncertainty of pop-ups," Paletta tells Eater. ...

Paletta and Shaw have expanded their staff from eight to 18 part-time employees to meet the needs of the restaurant.

Four months after being named best pop-up dining experience by Hour Detroit readers last June, the pair were finalists in the yearly Hatch Detroit opportunity for startups. They also tried a 2019 crowdfunding campaign to launch a North Corktown restaurant, which raised $4,500 from 89 people -- far shy of the $75,000 target. 

Fast facts

Street Beet shows what's cooking


Owners Nina Paletta and Meghan Shaw, right, built their business because "we had very limited [vegan] dining options available to us."

Four Supreme Crunchywraps (sold separately) have walnut "meat," cashew nacho cheese, lettuce, pico de gallo and cashew sour cream in a grilled flour tortilla.

This brioche from Brown's Bun Bakery in Southwest Detroit holds a gluten-free beer-battered "tofish" patty, tartar sauce and more veggies than are on the new menu description.

Macaroni in cashew cheese sauce will be available at 3rd Street Bar as a side dish.

Fake chicken patty, left, and a jackfruit patty that isn't on the new menu, alas.

Mock chicken nuggets no longer come in a cone with mac and cheese, but can be ordered as a six-piece snack. Marinated tofu is battered and fried in vegan buttermilk and a spice blend.

The entrepreneurs show this spread as an example of festival booth items prepared at events such as Mo Pop.

A scene from their 3rd Street Bar pop-up late last year for six weeks.

The new lineup, starting Thursday at 5 p.m.

 



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