(New York Jewish Week) — Chef Guy Vaknin may not be a household name, but if you’ve dined at a vegan restaurant in New York City in recent years, there’s a good chance the establishment was one of his.
Vaknin, who was born in Israel and raised Orthodox, claims to have served New Yorkers more than 2 million plant-based meals through his restaurant group, City Roots Hospitality. Many of those have been at Beyond Sushi, the vegan sushi establishment he launched in 2012 that, prior to the pandemic, grew to seven locations in the city. He also runs Willow, a vegan American bistro in Chelsea; Coletta, a vegan Italian restaurant in Kips Bay; and Anixi, a Chelsea eatery combining the flavors of Greece, Turkey and Lebanon.
Now, he’s added Mexican cuisine to the list: Earlier this month, Vaknin opened Siete, a new vegan eatery promising “a vibrant culinary journey through Mexico” in the Flatiron District.
Siete, like all of Vaknin’s restaurants, is certified kosher by the International Kosher Council, an agency specializing in vegan and vegetarian kitchens. His aim with his diverse array of restaurants, Vaknin told the New York Jewish Week, is “to provide something for the plant-based community that they remember, but hadn’t had in years, [while] providing the same experience for the kosher community.” The new restaurant joins an increasingly diverse array of kosher, plant-based restaurants in New York City, including the newly revamped Ethiopian-Israeli restaurant Tsion Cafe.
“It’s very versatile,” Vaknin said of Mexican food in particular. “Everything is very fresh. There is a lot of depth to everything they do — from the simplest vegetables to mole, which has multiple levels of flavor.”
What’s more, Vaknin has no plans to stop expanding his wide-ranging culinary empire anytime soon. He plans to open two more vegan and kosher eateries in New York this year, as well as two next year — all representing different cuisines. “Boredom motivates me,” he said. “I’ve always been interested in learning. I’ve always been curious about different cuisines, cooking methods and techniques.”
Vaknin, 40, was born in Sderot in the south of Israel, and raised in nearby Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Or HaNer. All three communities were violently attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7. Vaknin, who moved to New York in 2005, was devastated by the attack and wistfully recalled a happier time when there was no fence separating Gaza and Israel, when his nanny would come to their home from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis and his family would fix their cars in Gaza.
“I know those areas, grounds, buildings — I grew up in those for many, many years,” he said. “I loved that area of our country. I knew a time where all of this hatred did not exist.”
As a teen on the kibbutz, he worked the carrot and wheat fields, milked cows and tended chickens. His experience slaughtering chicken as a teen left a lasting impression on him, he said. “You get a better perspective of what [it is] taking a life when you got through those experiences killing an animal,” he explained.
Vaknin became a vegan within six months of opening his first Beyond Sushi in 2012. He did it first for inspiration, he said, but then he and his wife, Tali, who was already a vegetarian, embraced veganism as a lifestyle. “It grew on me,” he explained. “Jewish values have always been about compassion when it comes to humans. I saw that when it comes to animals.”
The couple, who live on the North Shore of Long Island, are raising their children — Dylan, 9, Kobi, 5, and Camryn, 2 — vegan. “We all eat with our memory,” he explained, and since his kids have never tried meat or cheese, they don’t crave these foods.
Still, he would not stop his kids from trying animal products, if they so choose. “If they want to eat it, it’s okay — it’s their choice,” he said.
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Vaknin himself was raised within a large Moroccan Jewish family where he learned to cook from his mother and grandmothers. More than any dish, he enjoyed making couscous, a pasta made from semolina flour originated by the Berbers of North Africa. His family would make it by hand “the hard way, opening it, opening it and putting it in the sun to dry,” he said, adding that he loved the process as much as the result.
“They’re all about the food,” he said of Moroccan Jewish families like his.
Vaknin’s parents divorced in the 1990s and his father left Israel for New York, where he opened a series of glatt kosher restaurants known as Village Crown. Vaknin joined his father in New York when he completed his military service in 2005.
“It’s like a giant beast,” he said of the city. “Coming from a small town of 20,000, this felt alive and exciting.”
After a brief stint studying computer engineering at City College, he started working at his father’s business, which had transitioned into a catering outfit called Village Crown Esprit Events. Vaknin put in short stints in every position, from chief cook to bottle washer. The business was handed over to him in 2007, after his dad returned to Israel and he finished a seven-month program at the Institute of Culinary Education.
Encouraged by his wife, Vaknin started to experiment with making sushi without fish, using only fruit or vegetables he had in the kitchen. He served his creations at catered events and, soon after being eliminated from season 10 of the cooking competition series “Hell’s Kitchen” for his poor preparation of steak, Vaknin — who was the first Israeli contestant on the show — introduced New Yorkers to the world of vegan sushi, opening his first Beyond Sushi on East 14th Street.
Over the years, Vaknin opened six more vegan sushi restaurants in the city. Today, as his portfolio of restaurants has expanded, he has pulled back on the flagship brand, and just two Beyond Sushi locations remain: one on West 37th Street and one on East 56th Street.
At his new Mexican joint Siete — so named because seven is Vaknin’s lucky number — the menu features items like a faux-tuna ceviche, beet carpaccio and grilled lime “chicken” with tomatillo salsa. He also serves chicharrones, substituting the traditional deep-fried pork skin with tofu skin. In creating the menu, Vaknin said he relied on longtime employee and current head chef Orlando Tepi, who hails from Puebla, Mexico, to advise him on some of the finer points of the country’s diverse cuisine.
At Siete, Vaknin is working with two new Israeli-based companies: Chunk, which produces a cultured, fermented soy and wheat protein, which provides full cuts of “meat” for such dishes as carne asada, and Oshi, a plant-based salmon.
“You have to adapt as a business owner to what people want,” said Vaknin, who had previously sworn off using imitation meat. “I reached a certain glass ceiling in 2019, adapting using substitutes opened that ceiling up.”
Ultimately, Vaknin says his plant-based cuisine is for everybody, not just people who maintain vegan, vegetarian or kosher diets. “I don’t judge anybody. I don’t cater to only this community or that community,” he said. “Food’s got to be good, and if it is good and served well with the right environment, I don’t think that it’s limiting.”
Siete is located at 37 West 19 St., Manhattan.
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