“We’re seeing really good venues closing every day,” says Shannon Martinez, the powerhouse chef, author, and owner of hatted vegan restaurant Smith + Daughters.
It’s the hard truth in hospitality at the moment – but even more so within the vegan community, says the trailblazing celebrity chef.
“Right now is a really hard time in the world for vegan restaurants. This is by far the hardest year ever, and you’ll see around Australia that vegan restaurants are closing so fast,” says Martinez.
Martinez and I are chatting while she’s in Sydney for the launch of her new book Vegan Italian Food, but also because it’s the start of World Vegan Month.
Not one to be dissuaded by the economic climate, Martinez has forged ahead, releasing her latest book, while also developing a range of high-quality vegan products for food service.
Her latest publication is a “sexy” cookbook set in an extravagant Melbourne mansion which follows a dinner party over the course of an evening, from prep to late night revelry. It features “scenes of a really delicious house party,” and culminates in the attendees jumping into the mansion’s pool, fully clothed.
“It was great to be eating and drinking how I like it when I have dinner parties: I don’t want it to be formal, I just like it to be fun,” says Martinez.
“A lot of the photos will be something like a half-eaten arancini on a mantle, with a glass of champagne with lipstick on it,” she says. Not just a celebration of vegan food, it’s also a fun insight into Martinez’s life and the women she surrounds herself with.
“There’s something to me that’s very sexy about just being relaxed and eating. Often when women are eating in photographs, it’s just too proper. You see the girls relaxing and having fun and just being a bit messy, which is good.”
Coinciding with the book’s release, Smith + Daughters is being transformed into an Italian restaurant. The move harks back to a time when Smith and Daughters (in its former venue) went Italian for four years as spin off restaurant Smith and Bellas. “People loved it,” says Martinez.
“I’ve never met someone who says they don’t like Italian food, and I don’t think I would trust someone who said that,” says Martinez.
Menu items include a popular mushroom masala, and the crowd favourite focaccia – which Martinez says every table orders.
Martinez has also been developing a range of products for food service. “I don’t want them to just have replicas of Smith + Daughters food, so I’m giving them the bones to work with.” Products include sauces that are traditionally cream based, and mock meats are also in the pipeline.
While Martinez is working hard across multiple facets to stay at the top of the vegan hospitality industry, she’s not immune to the current economic shifts. The restaurateur says that everyday people are spending less on dinner out, opting for a glass of wine rather than a bottle, or a smaller meal rather than the banquette.
“At the same time everything is going up in cost to run a business so it’s just borderline impossible at the moment. And the government does not make it any easier.”
“Daughters and the Deli are barely scraping through. So it’s really, really hard,” she says.
In the last few years, vegan stalwarts across Australia have closed their doors. In Sydney, Lentil As Anything closed its Newtown venue, beloved yum cha restaurant Bodhi closed, and Suzy Spoon’s closed its physical space in favour of food manufacturing. Melbourne’s three Lentil As Anything locations are now also closed, along with famed vegetarian buffet, Vegie Tribe. The outlook seems the same across the country.
Martinez puts the closures down to the same problems that face the entire hospitality industry (skyrocketing goods, expensive labour, and the high cost of living reducing consumer spending) paired with the vegan market being comparatively small.
“In terms of a global economic crisis situation, where everyone is pulling back on spending – not just vegans, but everyone – when your main demographic is the minority already and then that group is also pulling back, it’s very hard to stay afloat,” she says.
The chef is calling for people to support local vegan businesses, “now more than ever”.
“The quality of vegan food now is better than it’s ever been before, and it’s more easily accessible than it ever has been,” says the chef. “So taking it a bit more seriously is the way to go.”
