Sitting on Decatur Street in the French Quarter, 2 Phat Vegans is one of the most visible fully plant-based spots in New Orleans. The restaurant specialises in veganised versions of the city’s classics — hot sausage po’boys, gumbo, fried mushroom sandwiches, vegan beignets, mac and cheese, and the kind of big-flavour comfort food that defines New Orleans eating.
It’s a Black-owned, flavour-first business run by Corey Mathis, who says he became vegan after falling in love with the foods he grew up on. His personal culinary mission — “I’m not staying vegan unless I can still eat hot sausage” — became the backbone of the restaurant. After a rebrand in 2022, the business moved from the West Bank into the French Quarter, where it now attracts a steady flow of tourists, locals and, like us, vegans on a Louisiana pilgrimage.
The kitchen is fully vegan, but not in the acai-bowl-and-green-juice sense. This is indulgent, fried, saucy, sticky-fingered plant-based cooking. It’s unapologetically comfort food with nothing about it claiming to be light, clean or wholesome. The ethos is simple: if New Orleans has a classic, 2 Phat Vegans will make a plant-based version of it, and they’ll make it kingsize.
Online, the reviews are glowing — huge portions, nostalgic New Orleans flavours, that rare joy of being able to order anything off the menu. So 2 Phat Vegans was our first meal in New Orleans. We had flown in exhausted, hungry and mildly delirious — 7.30 pm local time, but about 1.30 am to our bodies. We were in no state for salad. We wanted carbs, grease and something recognisably substantial, so we headed for UberEats.
I ordered a mushroom po’boy, expecting a crusty French loaf stuffed with crisply breadcrumbed mushrooms. What arrived was not quite that, but welcome nonetheless. More of a limp bun than a baguette, and the mushrooms were far from the crunchy, golden fantasy I’d imagined. My companion’s beanburger earned a similar shrug. But we were starving, and grateful for a meal we didn’t have to interrogate for hidden dairy or chicken stock. The fries, at least, were fine. Sometimes hunger covers a multitude of culinary sins.
We returned the next day, this time to the venue itself, still not sure what to expect but determined to give the actual café a proper go. It’s just round the corner from the French market and the space is one many seasoned vegans will recognise immediately: that familiar combination of moral conviction and DIY charm. Posters, music photos, bright colours. A counter in the corner. A screen blocking the kitchen. A big menu board. No frills, but plenty of soul.
I knew I wanted the deep-fried aubergine — and fries again, because travelling is exhausting. My companion, nobler and more adventurous, opted for a small gumbo, hoping for a vegan take on a local classic.
This was our first experience of a New Orleans café, and the service felt improvised. Not rude, not unfriendly, just as if the guy taking orders had wandered in by accident and decided to give guest-starring in a restaurant a try. The bigger issue was the wait; luckily we were in no rush, but an hour felt a long time to wait for food in a café where we were the only customers eating.
Aubergine fries: dusted in seasoning and served with sauce.
We also made the mistake of ordering root beer — a drink neither of us had ever properly tried before. We expected something like cola with a quirky American twist; instead, it tasted like someone had carbonated a dentist’s waiting room. It was so startlingly medicinal that we ended up deep-diving into its origins while we waited for the food, discovering that the flavour traditionally comes from sassafras root. This at least explained why it tasted like a herbal remedy from the nineteenth century. We finished the bottles out of politeness, but it was an experience neither of us needs to repeat.
When the plates finally appeared, they looked like they’d had a hard day. The gumbo, especially, was a challenge — a dense, heavy sauce with chunks of vegan sausage and a colour that did the dish no favours. My aubergine was better, but still more earnest than impressive.
And yet it still felt like part of the story. The inconsistencies, the long wait, the slightly chaotic service all lined up perfectly with what many reviewers love and dislike in equal measure. 2 Phat Vegans clearly has heart, culture and intention. It also has unpredictable kitchen execution and a possible habit of delivering dishes that fall a step short.
But in a city where vegan food is still finding its identity, 2 Phat Vegans is important. It’s ambitious. Even when it’s messy, it’s doing the work of putting vegan versions of New Orleans staples into the hands of people who miss them, crave them or are discovering them for the first time.
It’s the kind of place where you are rooting for them. You truly want them to continue spreading the plant-based love: the world needs more vegan places, and New Orleans — where by default menus include frog legs, crawfish and alligator cooked in every way possible — most definitely does.
Bardo Burner 