Pinky Cole of Slutty Vegan shares easy vegan Valentine's recipes
Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and romantic dinners for two are on the menu. But what if one of you is vegan and the other is afraid to “commit” to a plant-based diet? As it happens, Pinky Cole, the entrepreneur and philanthropist behind Atlanta’s Slutty Vegan, Bar Vegan and The Pinky Cole Foundation, has got you covered. Cole recently caught up with “City Lights” senior producer Kim Drobes via Zoom to share some easy vegan Valentine’s recipes.
Pinky Cole dishes on her two babies, that is, restaurants:
“Slutty Vegan was really a way to continue on doing what I was doing in my personal life, and that was serving people that I love, eating the food that I love to eat. And not only did I realize I was solving a personal problem, I was actually solving a universal problem, and that’s why Slutty Vegan is so successful as it is today because we get to help people to reimagine food every single day.”
“Bar Vegan is like the little sister that doesn’t get as much attention as the big sister, but also very, very popular,” said Cole. “It feels good to know that I was able to create yet another concept that’s as successful, booming, people love, respected in Atlanta. And we’re coming up on Feb. 28, actually, the one-year anniversary. And it’s been a beautiful wild ride for my second baby. I like to call my restaurants babies.”
On the values and numerous projects of the Pinky Cole Foundation:
“I started the foundation in 2019, and I did it because I was always giving back since I was a kid. I saw my mom do it. I saw my family do it. We come from Jamaica, so like, it is just in your spirit to make sure that the people around you are good, and we foster community a lot. So as I’ve gotten older, I realized that I turned into my mother,” said Cole.
“Through the foundation, we’ve done so much. I paid the rents for local businesses. I’ve partnered with the biggest organizations to provide lights and gas to families. I’ve partnered with the Department of Juvenile Justice to provide ex-offenders a second opportunity to work … I’ve helped to pay the balances of 30 Clark Atlanta University students so that they can graduate from college. Just recently myself and Derrick Hayes, who is another local restaurateur, we partnered together with Prudential to provide life insurance for every single Black man in Atlanta who makes $30,000 or less.”
Vegan Valentine’s cuisine to ignite any appetite:
“I came up with two very delicious recipes. The first one is a ‘sausage sweetie,’ and it is a sandwich, a breakfast sandwich that you can have in bed with the egg replacer; it has the Incogmeato sausage on a Hawaiian bun and it’s so delicious,” said Cole. “And then I have something called the ‘irresistible chick,’ and that’s with the Incogmeato Chik’n Tenders, pickles, kimchi and [vegan] mayo, which is so really, really, really delicious that people wouldn’t even be able to tell that it’s not meat.”
“This recipe called for Follow Your Heart mayo … I used seven tablespoons of Follow Your Heart, a little bit of teriyaki sauce, tablespoon of lemon juice and some ground ginger and salt and pepper to taste. And this, whether you put it on this sandwich or any other sandwich or eat it with some fried rice, it’s so delicious,” said Cole. “I’m a sauce girl. Like, I eat sauce with everything. So I’m telling you from experience that sauces really don’t have to be hard. All you gotta do is get creative.”
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