The Caribe Vegan and How She Got There
It’s hard not to be impressed when you first meet Melissa Guzman. With a sunny smile, she launches into a story of accomplishments and ambitions. Her food truck proclaims “Two Plátanos and a Dream.”
Now 33, she was raised in Miami and grew up in Allapattah, one of Miami’s oldest neighborhoods and sometimes called Little Santo Domingo because of its large Dominican population. Guzman grew up eating yellow rice and beans, chicken and empanadas and plantains – “especially plantains” – along with street food at Hispanic festivals at Juan Pablo Duarte Park. She didn’t cook much for herself, but she paid attention to how her grandmother cut her vegetables, soaked her beans and used fresh herbs in her dishes.
Did we mention Guzman is ambitious? After attending Miami Jackson, she got a Gates scholarship and went to Howard University, where she studied communications. Her vision for herself: to become a comedy writer and get her own Afro-Latina show on HBO.
Then, at 28 came a shocking medical diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, an auto-immune disease. It landed her in the hospital for multiple stays and into a wheelchair, so weak, she couldn’t open her own medicine. “I felt useless,” she says. During her hospital time, Guzman had time to read and learn more about her illness. Concerned about inflammation caused by foods, Guzman decided to try a raw vegan diet.
“I noticed a difference in three weeks,” she says. On the advice of her physical therapist, she joined a boxing gym. “I couldn’t do one sit-up or one push-up,” she recalls. But she stuck to it to build up her strength.
The diet change led to idea of cooking vegan for a living. She got in the kitchen and started experimenting. “The basics – you can’t mess up tacos. I started making them with mushrooms, corn, tofu, adding sazón or adobo.” But her efforts were not satisfying. “I was too busy trying to replace meat. When I realized cooking can be an art form, I recalibrated – I can still be creative,” she says. “I told myself, if you can get out of a wheelchair, you can do this.”
Ups, Downs and a Pandemic
She found a vegan chef as a business partner and, with a grant from the Opa-Locka Foundation, bought a used food truck. Named The Spanglish Vegan, she set up on a corner in a rundown location “but people loved it.” They sold food at vegan events and found receptive audiences. Then came the pandemic. She split with her business partner. The food truck, which broke down repeatedly, was back in the shop. Time for another re-set.
“I renamed and rebranded as The Caribe Vegan,” she says. She changed the menu, taking off the plant-based Impossible Burgers and Philly cheesesteaks. Instead, she turned to Caribbean dishes, like mofongo, a quesadilla tower, crab cakes topped with pikliz, and a tamarind chipotle sauce she created.
Guzman also had to learn to drive the 24-ft food truck in a city where driving is already a disaster. “I cried!” she says. “You can’t drive too fast. People don’t let you switch lanes. You have to make wide turns.”
Still, she persisted. As outdoor events reopened, Guzman took her truck to a market in Pembroke Pines and the Sunny Side Up market in Fort Lauderdale. She signed up for an entrepreneurship class – “I can be better” – where she found out that her teacher, Gail Hamilton Azodo, was looking for a vegan food supplier for her Sips, her cafe at the CIC Building in Miami. Guzman fired off a proposal and got the work making plant-based foods at the cafe for the summer.
Today, the would-be comedy writer does prep work, marketing, cooking, dishwashing and driving the truck. Her illness is still there, but she stays upbeat and pushes past the pain. And there’s a new ambition now. “I want to be the vegan Pollo Tropical.”
“Veganizing” Classic Caribbean Dishes
Black beans, plantains, pico de gallo, roasted corn, rice, salads, essential components of Caribbean cuisine, are already plant-based. But the mainstays of island cuisines include meat and seafood. For her food truck menus, Melissa Guzman and her chefs worked on developing plant-based recipes for classic comfort foods. Here are some of the ingredients she and her chefs have reworked:
• Dominican salami, which she describes as “rich, tomato-y, salty and smoky.” Her version uses wheat gluten, beets, chickpeas and spices.
• Conch fritters, generally balls studded with chewy bits of conch, rely on hearts of palm.
• Deep-fried vegan chicken, made with oyster mushrooms and jackfruit and air-fried.
• Crab cake, using hearts of palm to sub for flakes of crab.
Spices serve as flavor cues for many dishes, and Guzman makes sure her dishes are liberally seasoned. She’s developed a line of sauces, including a tamarind chipotle barbecue sauce and a cajun lime island sauce.
The Caribe Vegan
thecaribevegan.com
You can also order for takeout and delivery. The food truck makes appearances at special events.
