Vegan Cheese Pizza is Here!

Cheese pizza is the bane of vegans everywhere. Not only is it a delicious comfort food that alot of us have grown up with but the social aspect can leave us ostracized from the group. Now before I digress into a sociological analysis of the tomato on bread ritual lemme just say pizza is good and we miss it!

Of course when I say pizza I mean the cheese variety. There are alotta vegans who are just fine and dandy with cheeseless “pizzas” and veggies but yes there are some of us who yearn for the gooey drippy cheesy kind. With no real decent vegan cheese product to turn to the “Evil Cheese Pizza” (see artist’s rendition above) has plagued our community stealing vegans back into the “slackto-lacto-vegetarian” camp. Taking a clandestine bite of cow cheese pizza one may think “oh well, no turning back now” and go back to dairy eating vegetarianism or nonhuman animal flesh eating. Part of this blame I would contend lays upon the hardline vegans who guard their purity with dogmatic voraciousness policing other vegans and setting them up for failure. This of course is a sad state of affairs and misses the whole point of veganism but we won’t dwell. So back to the pizza/food thing.

For just about every single kind of crappy american food product or dish there is a vegan alternative that we can turn to in times of craving. It may surprise people to know that other people who are vegan didn’t go that route because they hated the taste of dead animals. They are yummy tasting, we grew up on them! But that doesn’t make it right. Luckily we can still have the same foods and even *shudder* explore other cultures who by the way have been around a helluva alot longer than New North Americans and have a rich variety of foods and flavors.

But PIZZA! Why oh why can’t anyone make such a simple thing as a vegan pizza in this town of Chicago who LOVES to claim a whole niche of pizza (mmmm deep dish!)? i aint talking some hippie pizza at some restaurant who put it on their menu as an afterthought but a hardcore pizzera that makes their crust fat and chewy (for real Chicagoans) or thin and crispy (for weirdos) ;). How hard would it be to instead of reaching for that cow cheese just keep some vegan cheese off to the side and put that on? The vegan community in Chicago is big and growing my friend. We’ve been sharing the secrets and getting together in meetings and social events. We’ve hacked the menus of local establishments and made our OWN vegan cheese pizzas supplementing them with Vegan Gourmet Cheese tweaking it out just so with crude implements of squirt bottles and broilers to replicate the food we fondly remember from our childhoods. The company or restaurant that could serve vegan pizza I think would do well to include a large part of the market for little investment.

Welp ok anyway, my WHOLE POINT is that vegan cheese pizza has indeed appeared in Chicago. Local entrepreneurs Chicago Soy Dairy who make the ever popular Tempation vegan ice cream have concocted a vegan cheese they call “Teese” which is the closest analog to cow cheese I’ve tried so far! Look here’s a picture:

and another!

It is currently only at Whole Foods on Halsted where they can make you a pizza with it. ($11.99 per pizza with one ingredient and $1 for each ingredient after that). Word on the street is that Chicago Diner and other restaurants may also be serving this as their vegan cheese. We’ll keep and ear out for further developments. In the meantime if you have a vegan cheese pizza craving and would rather not brave one yourself get over to Whole Foods and ask for it by name!

EDIT: Now also available online! http://www.teesecheese.com/