This Vegan Restaurant Is Facing Enormous Backlash For Embracing Meat

Sam Stone
·9 min read

Photo by Neubek Photographers LLC

Mollie Engelhart, owner of Sage Vegan Bistro, a Los Angeles staple known for its plant-based menu, calls herself a “card-carrying” vegetarian of 46 years. That’s why many were shocked when she announced on April 22 that her three restaurants, with locations in Pasadena, Echo Park, and a to-go window in Culver City, would be adding meat and dairy products to what was once an entirely vegan menu. In an Instagram post, Engelhart said the restaurants would be renamed Sage Regenerative Kitchen and that they would be “shifting from an all plant-based menu” to one that serves dishes like bison burgers, patty melts, and Philly cheesesteaks.

The reaction from Engelhart’s audience was intense. The post racked up more than 4,000 comments, many harshly critical of the decision. A large portion of commenters were angry that Engelhart had seemingly turned her back on her vegan principles. Some of Englehart’s employees at the restaurant, which opened in 2011, left their jobs in protest. “Will your dishes come with the names and photos of the animals who died for them?” asked one commenter under Englehart’s announcement post. Others called the move “disappointing” or “disgusting.” PETA also piled on in its own post, calling the move a “huge betrayal to animals, the Earth, and your customers.”

In an interview with Bon Appétit, Engelhart says she anticipated the pushback and that it’s a move she’s been thinking about for years. Her experience with regenerative agriculture at her own farm, she says, has shown her just how effective it can be at combating climate change. That’s what has encouraged her to refocus her efforts from veganism to promoting regenerative farming. In late 2023 Engelhart sold her farm in Fillmore, California. She continues to run her California restaurants but now lives and farms in Bandera, Texas, on Sovereignty Ranch, where she promotes regenerative agriculture.

Some detractors argue that regenerative farming—a practice that focuses on promoting soil and ecosystem health—isn’t as sustainable as it seems. And some longtime vegans are aghast that Engelhart is now willing to play a part in killing animals. Engelhart, though, has come to believe that a certain amount of death is inherent to the human experience—and that making sure death happens ethically is more important than trying to avoid it altogether. In an interview, she discusses her evolving views on eating meat, how she responds to social media pushback, and what her new menu will look like.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you get involved with regenerative farming?

I learned about regenerative agriculture in 2013, and I became very interested in it. I bought my farm in 2018 to be able to compost food waste from my restaurant, and to this day we don't process and sell animals. I had a “no killing animals” policy on the farm for the longest time, but one day we had these sheep that we were grazing, and some neighborhood dogs broke into the cage at nighttime and killed all nine sheep—tore their throats out and left them to bleed to death, and didn’t eat a single one of them. I was avidly against guns. I had no guns in my house. My husband had to knock door to door to find a gun to be able to put the rest of the sheep out of their misery. He then harvested all that meat and he fed all these families in the community around us. I remember thinking, “Wow, I'm just here crying, and my husband is salvaging all those calories to give to people.” I was really moved by that, but I still had the policy of nothing being killed on the farm. But I thought, “Nature is just as harsh as anything that humanity can do, or worse.”

Was that experience part of the reason you chose to shift your restaurants from veganism to including animal products?

There were a thousand awakening moments where I recognized that we can work with animals to create much better soil, much better human health, and much better environmental health. The awakening was slow, to be honest, because I was looking through a lens of veganism, and my view was that nothing should die. In reality, everything dies, and every bite of food is grown with it. Whether you're eating a piece of pork or you're eating a cabbage, that cabbage was grown with blood meal or bone meal or chicken poop—all out of the factory farming system. That idea, that I could eat without harm, that my diet could cause less harm—it became really clear that it was a fantasy. My identity was attached to it, and I had to let that identity go to come to where we are.

What was the catalyst for finally deciding to add meat to your menus and to announce that change?

Morally, regenerative agriculture is where I’ve been standing for quite some time. It's not been a secret: I sat on the board of Kiss the Ground, the foremost soil nonprofit in the world, for over five years. My brother co-founded that nonprofit 10 years ago, and I've been publicly speaking about and an advocate for soil health for a long time. But I was afraid of the pushback, and I was afraid to upset a community that had supported me and my life for so long. Those were the things that we were weighing.

Will your farm be providing the meat that you serve in your restaurant?

Currently we are not. Right now, our farm will be providing herbs and we'll be providing the masa for tortillas and tortilla chips and tamales. We will continue to research and look at what gaps need to be filled in the supply chain.

You mentioned that you expected pushback from the vegan community after you announced you’d be serving meat. Was there any part of the community’s response that you weren’t prepared for?

My father, [the well-known vegan restaurateur Matthew Engelhart], ate a hamburger for the first time in four years in 2015, and we received death threats. So I expected a response similar to that. I expected all the “You should go kill yourself” or “You're accountable for a murder”—I expected that.

I didn't expect so much pushback against regenerative agriculture as a concept. I think there's lots of evidence [that it works]. To me, the evidence is so clear. People will say, “Can you show me a paper?” I'm like, “I can tell you my own soil tests.”

Why do you think vegans had such a strong response to your news?

I can't speak for all vegans, but I'm a lifetime vegan or vegetarian. I was born to a vegan mother. I was raised in this lifestyle. I'm saying I believe that I made a mistake. What I believed before is not what I believe now. And when we identify with anything as our personality or as our identity, anything that pushes up against that is scary. We will reject it and try to tear it down so that the personality can stay intact.

PETA has been vocally opposed to your announcement. How do you respond to animal welfare critics?

I believe that vegans and regenerative agriculture people should come together on animal welfare. I think we should all be against the CAFO [contained animal feeding operation] system, and we should all be supporting farmers doing something that's not that. The idea that by not eating meat, less animals die is an illusion. As a farmer, I realized if you're growing avocados, there's ground squirrels being trapped. No matter where man is growing food, he's trying to keep nature at bay so that it doesn't kill whatever he's growing. And therefore, death is happening. To be alive is to be on the back of death.

What do you hope to accomplish by centering regenerative farming at your restaurants?

Regenerative farming was the first glimmer of hope that I had had in a long time. I lived in LA, I owned a vegan restaurant, I used my reusable bags, I always got non-dairy milk in my coffee. I thought I was obviously not doing enough, and we were just all going to destroy the planet. A 2013 Graeme Sait TEDx Talk awakened something in me: Man is the keystone species. We can shift the direction the environment is heading. I was so inspired for the first time, and that's how I got into farming.

Regenerative agriculture, to me, means giving more than we're taking. So if the soil is a bank account, we're always depositing more than we're taking. And we're always farming for future years, not just farming for this year, and it includes practices like animal integration, mob grazing, no-till or low-till methods, cover-cropping and using cover crops as green manure, or using cover crops as ways to keep the ground and the microbiology intact in offseasons. Those practices have been almost like a miracle. I've put them into real-life practice over the last seven years and been amazed at the results. My farm in Fillmore was producing $500,000 of produce a year, and we were not buying any fertilizer after the first two and a half years.

You’ve mentioned that your restaurants have faced significant financial struggles in recent years. Are there specific costs that vegan restaurants like yours have to contend with, and are you hoping this change will help you outpace costs?

I don't believe that there's specific costs associated with vegan restaurants. I believe that all restaurants are struggling. My costs will be greater—meat is always going to cost more than vegetables and grain. I'm just hoping to open up my doors to a broader audience and open up people's minds to regenerative agriculture. Today, every restaurant has a vegan option. We want to offer something to meat eaters that's special and different.

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit

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