Vegan News

Fort Worth vegan restaurant scene flowers with new Healthy Hippie Cafe

Vegan dining comes to Watauga.

Photo courtesy of Healthy Hippie Cafe

Watauga is home to a sweet new vegetarian cafe called The Healthy Hippie Cafe, serving vegetarian and vegan eats, at 6600 Denton Hwy. Owner Kelli Myatt is putting out a limited menu, but they make everything in house and supply a lot of their own organic produce.

Their specialty consists of veggie patties available in a quartet of flavors: spicy black bean, savory green pea, cashew quinoa, and red lentil curry. You can get them in a bowl, a pita pocket, or on a sprouted grain bun. You load it up with greens and garden items, then add sliced avocado, boiled egg, or cheese, and top it with your choice of seeds.

A certified Pilates instructor, group fitness instructor, personal trainer, and dance teacher, Myatt says she was feeling sluggish after a holiday and researched ways to detox. She found relief by following a plant-based diet with little to no dairy. She loves to cook and garden, and has put them both to good use. She began selling her wares at the Keller Farmers Market, where she developed a following, before expanding to this location.

There are frequent specials such as one day's creamy vegan leek and fennel soup, with almond milk and red potatoes. There are also smaller bites such as chips and salsa, hummus and dips in numerous varieties which you can order as sampler, and smoothies. Dessert include yogurt parfraits and chia seed pudding. Prices are cheap.

While customers can dine at the cafe, a big part of the business is to go, with lots of take-out options and products such as seasonal kombucha from Holy Kombucha in apple cinnamon spice and pumpkin spice flavors.

She also hosts cooking classes such as the one on soups she's offering on October 14. Attendees learn how to take a basic soup starter and turn it into seven different soups, then get a bowl of soup and crackers, and all the recipes.

They're open Monday through Saturday 11 am-9 pm. They started out Monday-Friday, but Myatt added Saturdays in response to customer demand.

vegan openings

Chef News

Fort Worth's Will Rogers Memorial Center welcomes bright new chef

FortWorthtx.gov

Will Rogers Memorial Center

There's a new chef in town: Waylon Cornelius, named executive chef of catering and concessions for Craft Culinary Concepts, the food and beverage provider at Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Will Rogers Memorial Center is the 120-acre entertainment complex anchoring Fort Worth’s Cultural District, owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Cornelius will oversee menus for trade shows and other events at the center which bring in more than 2 million visitors a year.

Craft Culinary Concepts is headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, and manages food and beverage programs for entertainment, sports and cultural facilities.

Chef Waylon Corneliusfortworthtx.gov

According to a release, Cornelius joined the team this summer and is already shifting the expectations of guests from a typical “BBQ and beans” menu to a bill of fare satisfying every kind of palate.

“We always have fajitas ready to go, but we also make a beautiful Beef Wellington or baked salmon with a pink salt crust,” Cornelius says in a statement.

For consumer trade shows, Craft and its partners Caribou and Taco Heads offer more choices for the thousands of guests who attend events at WRMC annually.

“Some of our equestrian guests are away from home and here for several days, and they need more than popcorn and hot dogs,” Cornelius says. “Our concessions offer biscuits and gravy, burritos made in-house, strawberry salad, fruit and yogurt cups.”

A native of Mansfield, Cornelius grew up helping in a farm-to-table kitchen. He was raised on a farm with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather -- a Vietnam veteran who enjoyed vegetable gardens and raising hogs and chickens. He studied computer science after high school and holds an associate's degree in Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis from Tarrant County College.

He's a 2003 graduate of AIMS Academy of Culinary Arts in Dallas where he was mentored by a number of great chefs. While training as assistant executive sous chef at the AAA four-diamond Grand Hyatt DFW, he worked with Executive Chef Sutti Sripolpa, chef Eric Dreyer (who went on to be Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef), and Chef Jean-Claude Plihon, under whom he honed his French cooking skills.

As executive sous chef at the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille in Southlake, Cornelius gained expertise with volume. While at HG Sply Co., he learned about gluten-free items and other food allergies.

HG Sply is also where he crossed paths with Chef James R. Schell III, Craft’s general manager at WRMC, who recruited Cornelius to the complex.

"James said he needed someone who can hit moving targets, push the culinary team to be more avant-garde and use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, so here I am," Cornelius says. "Culinary is a small world."

“I want people to say, ‘When we were in Fort Worth, you won’t believe what we got at Will Rogers!’” Schell says. “Even the celebrities who perform [in the auditorium] are surprised. When Chicago played here recently and we served dinner backstage, they said they felt treated like the Rolling Stones.”

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