CALLING all foodies.
Perhaps the strangest, most eyebrow-raising dish that has filled this space, is here.
A meatless “raw” patty is, from today, being served at Lucky Beach on Brighton seafront.
The city is the only place outside of London where the fully plant-based B12 burger has been stocked, and its creator is excited by what Brighton has to offer.
Simeon Van Der Molen, owner and CEO of Moving Mountains – the company behind the burger – has been working with scientists and farmers for the past two years to perfect the design.
The B12 is aimed at getting meat eaters to opt for the 100 per cent vegan choice instead of a beef burger.
“We are trying to get people to stop eating meat,” said Simeon.
“People need to be eating less meat for three reasons.
“Those reasons are animals, environment and their health.
“They are the people the burger is aimed at, and we want to have it alongside meat burgers – not in a vegan restaurant.
“These burgers are the future.”
The patty gets its name from the nutritional goodness it offers – 100 per cent of your recommended daily intake of vitamin B12.
It is processed like minced meat, with its outside displaying the same colour of a cooked burger, and contains zero cholesterol.
However, when you cut through it, it is as if it is a flash-fried piece of beef cooked bleu.
The burger’s ingredients are: oyster mushroom, pea protein, wheat protein, soy protein, coconut oil, beetroot, flavouring, sugar, colouring, vitamin B12, preservative, herbs, vegetable oil, water and spices.
But how do they get it so close to real meat?
“We use different methods of protein extrusion,” said Simeon.
“We use a lot of wheat and soy proteins.
“When you take them, you put them through an extruder to develop meat-like fibres.
“Then they are put through meat making equipment and it starts to replicate meat fibres.
“The burger replicates meat using plants instead, and we use beetroot juice for that juicy bleed when you take a bite.”
As well as this, the B12 burger has 20 grams of plant protein in is free from antibiotics and hormones.
Moving Mountains’ slogan for the patty is “a bite into the future” and Simeon and his team say it“sizzles, smells, tastes and bleeds like meat”.
Simeon has been hoping to make his mark in the food industry, and the burger has been in the pipeline for years –– being sold in London for a short period earlier in the year.
The name Moving Mountains comes from the metaphor of achieving the impossible – something Simeon and his team believe they are doing.
“We have a whole team focused on learning about protein extrusion,” he said.
“It’s really hard to do.
“It took about two years to get it to where it is now.
“But it is constantly going to be getting better and better because of technology.”
Simeon has been a vegan for the past five years.
He is the found of Ecozone, an eco-friendly household items company which was the first business to sell vegan laundry products.
“I have been vegan stroke veggie all my life,” Simeon said.
“I think when I was growing up, even as a kid, I refused to eat meat.
“When I went vegan five years ago, what you look for is an alternative to meat.
“People want it to replicate what they were eating, but when you go to a supermarket they have dry, cardboard-like burgers.
“Then what happens is people don’t stay vegan for very long because the options are poor.”
Simeon believes he has found the perfect place in Lucky Beach to serve the burger.
The restaurant, in King’s Road Arches, was voted the UK’s favourite sustainable restaurant earlier this year.
It has developed a respectable reputation in the city’s food scene.
The B12 burger will be sold at Lucky Beach’s sister venue, the Temple Bar, in Western Road, too.
Lucky Beach manager Flora McTeare said: “We’re really excited to have exclusivity for the summer and we think it’s going to be really good.
“There are lots of vegans in Brighton and some of our staff are, so they’re very excited.
“It will be interesting to see how people react to it.
“Our chef, Luke, said it was slightly different to cooking meat the first time, but he has mastered it well.”
There will be a number of variations of the B12 burger served at Lucky Beach, with non-vegans able to chop and change what goes into their order, such as dairy cheese rather than the cashew cheese served inside the original patty.
“The industry adapts to trends and the environmental impact of things,” Flora added.
“I think it is important to make more people aware of this.”
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