Health & Science Lifestyle & Culture
Cadence’s vegan chefs reimagine soul food
By Jon David Regis
Executive chefs Haley Duren and Shenarri Freeman place themselves and their East Village restaurant in a camp of plant-based eaters that extends back to pre-enslavement West Africa and, in the United States, includes civil rights and nutrition activist Dick Gregory, who died in 2017, and Queen Afua, a holistic health advocate since the 1980s.
For Duren and Freeman, vegan cooking at Cadence is about remixing soul food as many people know it. It doesn’t have to be heavy or meat-centered, they say. A few creative tweaks make it healthier, while still maintaining the cultural identity that has comforted generations of soul food devotees.
“I was on the phone with my mom every week, picking her brain,” Richmond, Virginia-born Freeman said of how she started veganizing her childhood favorites. “We can still enjoy these flavors and textures without compromising.”
A salad of collard greens, pumpkin seeds, onion rings and blood orange vinaigrette is on the menu at Cadence. The banana pudding is crafted of baby bananas, coconut cream and oat shortbread. Apples, horseradish and basil are in the potato salad. Vegan butter and housemade jam slather the biscuits.
Freeman’s detour toward those kinds of dishes started when she left Howard University, where she’d been studying physical therapy, to attend the Institute of Culinary Education. “That change was converting to veganism, a health and lifestyle decision that also set my professional life in motion,” said Freeman, who earned an institute diploma in health-supportive culinary arts in 2019.
Duren, a native of Albuquerque, arrived in New York six years ago after earning a degree in pastry and baking from New Mexico State University. A sports medicine student-turned-chef, she shares Freeman’s passion and affinity for reimagining foods from her childhood. Her signature wedge salad comes with shiitake bacon and homemade vegan blue cheese. “Feeding people is intimate,” she said. “It’s an act of service and love. I want guests to feel that.”
Like Freeman, she also feels the pressure.
“Running a vegan soul food spot is a huge responsibility.. You’re someone’s first impression of both veganism and soul food,” she said, referring to vegan neophytes who dine at Cadence. “It’s about making sure we do it right.
“Being a Black woman and a vegan chef, you have to continue to outdo yourself,” Duren said.
Hoping to stand out in a competitive culinary world and bring other women chefs along with them, Duren and Freeman host pop-up dinners and share resources like vendors, kitchens and contacts with journalists.
They share recipes and pep talks, the kind of mental health support needed, Duren said, to “navigate the unique pressures of being Black women in a white- and male-dominated industry.”