Delinda Jensen and Kyle Jensen founded the Umami Gorilla vegan comfort food restaurant in 2017. Recently they opened an online store. An interview with Kyle Jensen on the subject of vegan cuisine.
How did you originally come to be vegan?
On August 12th, 2015 I saw a one-day documentary at our local theater called Unity. When I walked in that theater that day I was a carnivore and after the first 10 minutes of that movie I realized that I will no longer contribute to animal consumption but I will also do the research to find out what else is hidden from us in the sense of any form of animal Exploration.
The dishes featured on the website sure look good! What do you most recommend?
The concept of our menu is we want to show individuals that when you go vegan you don't have to give up the foods that you think you might have to. A lot of our items are based off of foods that I grew up eating as a child mainly fast food burgers. Our version of a rodeo cheeseburger from Burger King is called the Kingdom Burger which is barbecue sauce and onion ring. We have a sandwich called the Train Wreck which is our version of a double stack from KFC, we also have our version of what a KFC Bowl would be as we also have a burger called the Bulletproof Burger which is my version of a mushroom swiss hamburger from McDonald's and many others.
How did you come up with "Umami Gorilla" as the name of the restaurant?
The word umami means savory and most gorillas in nature are plant-based creatures so the name Umami gorilla means Savory plant eater. I wanted to show people that you can have amazing comfort food made from plants.
Please tell us a bit about your activism.
There are many different forms of activism when it comes to veganism. I myself have done protests for many different issues but what I realized was that in our area the best way I can show my activism is through my food. If I can show people that you can have chicken and pulled pork and hamburgers but make them all from Plants but still taste the same I'm doing a great honor to vegan activism showing people that veganism is sustainable and not as expensive as others make it out to be.
Have you gotten any notable reactions from non-vegans trying vegan food for the first time?
Non-vegans trying my food I have gotten some very positive feedback at times. One key factor is if they come to the restaurant with an open mind it normally goes well. I know that vegan food is not a 100% replica of meat products as there are differences in texture but we try to come as close as possible to that texture that it was intended to be. There have been a few times where couples will come into the restaurant one being vegan and one not being vegan and after trying our food it allows them to see the possibilities that a plant-based lifestyle can offer.
What inspired the idea to open an online freeze-dried product store as part of Umami Gorilla?
The original idea for the freeze-dried products was actually to have them be military MREs but we had to put that on hold due to the global pandemic of 2020. We saw that there is a very limited market for vegan options in the freeze-dried market for hikers and campers so we decided to move our production to focus on that market.
To visit the official page, click
HERE!
