Fancy Plants Cafe’s chef Kevin Schuder is making a better vegan burger | Eater Chicago

"In Lakeview I learned that Fancy Plants Cafe is a tiny, 710-square-foot spot opened in January 2019 that has become a go-to for Chicago’s vegan community for its pastries, breakfast sandwiches, specialty coffee and tea — but what really stands out is chef Kevin Schuder’s experimental, multicourse approach to plant-based cooking. While his dinners draw on Japanese, Greek, Korean, Italian, Spanish and Burmese influences, it’s his vegan burger — made from lentils and nori, grown together with tempeh and a koji culture to create umami, new proteins and the right crumble and chew — that commands attention; Schuder developed it in part during a 50-day COVID closure and positions the process as more natural and energy-efficient than many commercial plant-based products. I also learned that he makes house-cultured vegan cheeses (including a Roquefort-cultured blue that he ages for a month and which he praises as “killer” on the burger), ferments and experiments with koji (even making miso from fresh masa), bakes melty cashew burrata inside a corn muffin, uses almond feta in spanakopita, layers cashew mozzarella and smoked lentils in lasagna, and composes a complex chili with lentil tempeh, black-bean miso and smoked poblanos and jalapeños — all reflecting his goal to create a new language of vegan cooking and to scale the burger via a larger prep/central kitchen for future locations." - Lisa Shames