Soon, you’ll be able to recreate Street Beet’s “fake chicken” sandwiches and other faves from the defunct vegan pop-up.
The former Street Beet team, chefs Nina Paletta and Meghan Shaw, are releasing a cookbook with recipes from their popular residency inside Midtown Detroit’s 3rd Street Bar. Presales of the book, Nostalgic Vegan: The Street Beet Cookbook, will be available by the end of February, Paletta tells Metro Times.
“We feel this cookbook is a great way to scrapbook the memories of this chapter while giving something back to our guests who miss the food,” Paletta says.
Street Beet made a name for itself by creating vegan fast food dupes like “Taco Hell,” “Pizza Butt,” and “McDaddy’s.” It shut down after four years inside 3rd Street Bar in 2022.
Luckily, Nostalgic Vegan will include all the faves like Street Beet’s popular “Taco Hell” Crunchywraps, fake chicken sandwiches, and doughnuts. Other recipes include a chickpea tuna salad, crab cakes, broccoli cheddar soup, mac and cheese, and an orange cardamom chocolate chip cookie — all vegan, of course.
Paletta tells us Nostalgic Vegan will be divided into sections: Taco Hell, Tofu Fried Chickies, Crowd Pleasers, Brunch, Desserts, and Sea-friendly faves (aka seafood). Most of the recipes include gluten-free swaps. “It’s as much a gluten-free cookbook as a vegan cookbook,” Paletta says.
She also assures us the recipes are fairly simple, as sometimes vegan cooking can get complicated.
“We’re both self-taught chefs, so while we’ve had a lot of experience in the culinary world, we take a different approach to cooking than the average chef,” she says. “Our recipes are very user-friendly for people who are new to things.”
Paletta has been cooking vegan food for about a decade and says back in the day, there weren’t many vegan options around Detroit, which inspired her to get creative in the kitchen. Street Beet started popping up at bars like PJ’s Lager House in 2018, and its “Taco Hell” nights became an instant hit. They landed a permanent space inside 3rd Street Bar in 2019 but by 2022 Paletta says she and Shaw needed a break from the restaurant industry and parted ways.
After the closure, Shaw briefly helped develop vegan menus for other kitchens in the Detroit area but has since moved away from the food industry. She currently co-owns and operates a creative studio and retail space in Southwest Detroit called Extra Crispy Studios. Paletta continued cooking for a private company and started a new brunch pop-up called Sometimes Sunday.
“Both of us were ready to take our own paths,” she says. “The restaurant industry is a very stressful place and we just really needed to take time away from Street Beet.”
Paletta says the idea for the cookbook came in January of 2023 and it took a year to complete. Shaw was involved in contributing recipes and is listed as a co-author while Paletta handled writing, art direction, and design.
Copies of Nostalgic Vegan: The Street Beet Cookbook will be available online at first and Paletta hopes to eventually get them in local bookstores. She also teases they may be planning a release party in Detroit. More updates, including the link for presales will be posted to Street Beet’s Instagram page, @streetbeetdetroit.
