Twisted Plants and Vegan BBQ

September 13th, 2024

Cudahy is strange town. It’s by no means a bad place to live, but it has seen better days. The city was founded by Patrick Cudahy back at the end of the 1800’s when he started his meat packing plant there. The meat packing plant still exists, although “Patrick Cudahy” meats got bought out by Smithfield several years ago. The plant still cranks out tons of bacon and sausage. Animal carcasses go in and lunch meats come out.

Cudahy was a classic industrial town. When I was young, it was not unusual for a kid fresh out of high school to get a good paying job at a factory in Cudahy. Manufacturing made the city prosperous. Besides Patrick Cudahy, there was Ladish on Packard Avenue. The factory there still covers several city blocks along the west side of that road. At one time the factory had the largest forge hammer on earth. They made all sorts of metal parts, some of them enormous in size. The environment in the factory was incredibly loud and hearing loss was common at Ladish. Across the street from Ladish were (and are) rows of taverns. There is an old joke about three guys coming out of the factory at the end of their shift:

One guy says, “It sure is windy today!”

Second guy, “It’s not Wednesday. It’s Thursday!”

Third guy, “I’m thirsty too! Let’s go to the bar!”

That kind of sums up life in Cudahy decades ago. Men busted their asses in factories in probably unsafe conditions. At the end of a long shift, they went directly across the street to their favorite watering hole and held down a bar stool for a while. They earned enough to own a ranch house or a bungalow in town. They raised their kids, loved their wives, and eventually got a full pension.

It’s different now. Many of those manufacturing jobs are gone and they aren’t coming back, no matter what the politicians say. Manufacturing may come back in some form, but the jobs won’t be the kind where a man or woman can have a middle-class lifestyle. As it is now, Cudahy has a number of half-empty strip malls. The neighborhoods are still nice, and the park on the lakefront is beautiful, but the money isn’t in town anymore. Even some of the bars are closed. In this part of the world, if a tavern can’t make a profit, things are rough.

There are some interesting startups in Cudahy. One of them is Twisted Plants. It’s a vegan BBQ joint within shouting distance of the meat packing plant. The restaurant is a hole in the wall operation. There is a tiny dining area, but I have never seen anyone actually eat there. Their money is made in take-out food. The walls of Twisted Plants are plastered with posters from stoner movies. Most of the items on their menu have names from these films: “Pineapple Express” and “Up in Smoke” for example. It is idiosyncratic that a vegan burger shop that extolls the joys of weed exists in Cudahy. Also, almost all the people working there are Black. That too is odd for Cudahy.

A friend of mine turned me on to Twisted Plants several years ago. My friend is an Orthodox Jew who maintains a strict kosher diet. This means that for him dining out or getting take-out food is problematic. He has found that eating vegetarian meals helps him to simplify the kosher diet enormously. So, a vegan BBQ place is perfect for him. He loves the food.

There is a lot to love at Twisted Plants. Their food rocks. Seriously. The waffle fries are to die for. I’m a big fan of their burger, “Up in Smoke”. It has grilled onions, smoky plant-based bacon, BBQ sauce, pickles, twisted smokehouse sauce, lettuce, tomato, plant-based patty, American cheese (plant-based), and onion rings on it. The sweet, tangy aroma of the sauce is overpowering. It’s sloppy eating. The bun barely holds in the contents. I usually wind up using a fork and knife before I’m done with burger.

A few months ago, I went to get take-out from Twisted Plants. My wife is not a meat-eater, so she loves the “Pineapple Express” burger. I generally call in the order early. I don’t go there too often because the prices are not cheap. However, you get what you pay for. When I got to Twisted Plants, the food wasn’t quite ready. I struck up a conversation with the guy at the counter. I told him how much we loved the food. Then I told him about how my wife and I are raising our toddler grandson. He listened. Then he grabbed a plastic card from behind the counter and ran it through the register. He told me,

“Bring this with you the next time you come in.”

I didn’t ask him what the card was for. I thought that maybe it was a card they used to keep track of your purchases, and that after you buy a certain number of burgers, you get one free. I put it into my wallet and forgot about it.

Until yesterday.

I went to Twisted Plants yesterday afternoon to pick up an order. I dug out the card the guy had given to me, and I showed it to the young woman behind the counter. I said,

“I got this here the last time I came in. I don’t know what it does, if anything.”

She looked at it and said, “It looks like a gift card. How much do you have left on it?”

“I have no idea.”

She ran it through the register, and she used it to pay for about half of the order. I paid the rest with my debit card.

She handed me the paper bag full of warm, tangy goodness. I walked out and thought about the guy who gave me the card. Why did he give me a gift card? He didn’t know me, and I don’t know him. He just decided for reasons of his own to do me a solid.

God bless him and Twisted Plants.