Help Little Rock Get a Vegan Restaurant!

I live in Memphis, and we have several totally vegan restaurants — five to be exact (two of those are juice bars, but they do have food). But just a couple hours southwest of here, in Little Rock, Arkansas, they're still lacking a fully vegan place. Sure, there are restaurants offering vegan options, but it's nice to have a place where you can order whatever you want.

My best friend Sheridan and her husband Drew live in Little Rock, and I visit them there a few times a year. There used to be a vegan food booth called The Veg LLC in the Rivermarket, and we ate there together a number of times. Owner Shiem Swift was awesome, and his food was fantastic — BBQ nacho bowls, chocolate chip cookies, homemade veggie burgers, potstickers, banana pancakes with blueberry pear compote, homemade apple sage sausage. Good stuff!

But Shiem closed the booth awhile back to expand and open a real brick-and-mortar restaurant. He started a GoFundMe page, and here's the link. But he's also getting pretty creative in his fund-raising campaign. This past weekend, he traveled to Memphis for a two-day pizza sale. He took orders for vegan pizzas all day and night (even at 3 a.m., he said!) Saturday and all day Sunday. Of course, I had to get one while he was here.

He delivered the pies around town, but I offered to pick mine up, so I met him in a Kroger parking lot (where we posed for this pic). I got the Schmeat Lovers with Stuffed Crust. That's a massive extra-large pie with Daiya, vegan sausage crumbles, and crispy vegan bacon. The crust was stuffed with even more Daiya! The pizza was $34, which will go toward helping Shiem with his fund-raising goal (after costs for materials, of course).

This pizza was amazing. The crust was soft, yet crisp and chewy. He was generous with the toppings. I love a vegan pizza with LOTS of vegan cheese. So many places treat vegan cheese like a garnish. I want cheesy pizza!

The stuffed crust was a real treat. I haven't had that since before going vegan back in 2004. This was enough for four meals because two hearty slices were all I could eat at a time.

If you want to help Shiem open The Veg LLC again in Little Rock, throw him a few bucks here.